K-pop bands build fresh following in Japan – can Seoul harness music’s soft power to improve ties with Tokyo?
Korean girl bands TWICE and Gfriend, and boy bands BTS and Seventeen, have made the leap into the music market in Japan, and their popularity could burnish country’s image there, but experts doubt it will bring about a political warming
Girl band TWICE, for instance, are red hot in Japan. The band appeared on a year-end television music show, and in February the group starred in a commercial for cellphones. Meanwhile, top boy band BTS, though less physically visible in Japan, sold 500,000 albums in the neighbouring country last year, going double platinum.
These successes indicate the Japanese market is ready to rave about K-pop again.
The South Korean sound’s initial popularity in Japan was led by bands such as BoA, TVXQ, Girls’ Generation and Kara. But in 2012, then-South Korean president Lee Myung-bak visited the disputed Dokdo Island (known as Takeshima Island in Japan) and diplomatic relations between Seoul and Tokyo were frozen. This affected cultural ties.
But slowly, as bands such as TWICE (which have three Japanese members) appeal to Japanese music fans, and the global frenzy over the boy band BTS naturally lands in Japan, the K-pop industry is once again more willing to make big leaps into the music market there.