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| BTS |
BTS Can’t Save South Korea: Of all the South Korean jaw dropping figures, the splashiest is that the K-pop sensation is producing $ 4.65 billion of BTS hit songs as well as GDP.
It puts a seven-member boy band in the same economic league as Samsung and other top seminars. The millions of albums and concert tickets they sell are worse than the annual production of Fiji, Maldives or Togo. Don't tell Donald Trump, but the group's Twitter feed carries four times as much traffic as the US president.
The BTS Youtube economy, it follows, is very good for President Moon Jae-in's country. The same goes for the massive global success of girl-group events such as Black-Pink, Girls' Generation, Red Velvet and more. The soft power boost for Korea's global brand cannot be overstated.
But it can be distracting. As the BTS economy booms, the $ 1.7 trillion in trading power is being faced with headwinds to produce growth to produce some of its own, reform-wise precious few hits.
This is not to dismiss the contribution of the "Korean wave". In the 2000s, pop singers Boa and Varsha turned heads everywhere. So did wildly popular soap operas such as "Winter Sonata", which turned actor Be Yong-joon into the superstar BTS of Asia. He landed Japanese, Chinese and Singaporeans in Busan, Jiju and Seoul. Sai's ubiquitous "Gangnam style" pushed a Seoul neighborhood to global headlines.
It is fitting, however, that Glitz and Pizaz could distract Moon's team from the reason they were elected in May 2017.
Since then, there have been loads of fancy footwork and spin. Countless highly choreographed efforts have been made for a project of energy, change and forward momentum. But we have seen some real-world moves to increase competition amid the rise of China. Or to reduce Korea's vulnerability to trade war.