WARNING: MASS CONSUMERISM (Papiens) What K-pop is really selling (is not music)
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| We're backed by very evil and rich corporations |
Like Korean Buddhism,* K-pop (Korean 케이팝, RR Keipap, "Korean popular music") is a best-selling creation originating in South Korea [2]. The music genre that the term is used to refer to colloquially emerged in the 1990s as a form of youth subculture, with Korean musicians influenced by Western dance music, hip-hop, R&B, and rock [3, 4, 5].
5 levels of American industry plants
Manufactured fantasy: Katseye: fake AF
K-Pop Demon Hunter (SNL)
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| (BTS Inc.) What do fans want, divas or gay dance rapper thug life? |
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| One day we'll be bigger than Blackpink |
As a pop genre, K-pop is characterized by its melodic quality and cultural hybridity [7, 8, 9]. K-pop can trace its origins to "rap dance," a fusion of hip-hop, techno, and rock popularized by the group Seo Taiji and Boys, whose experimentation helped to modernize South Korea's contemporary music scene in the early 1990s [10, 11, 12].
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| We're not manufactured product! We're natural |
By the early 2000s, TVXQ and BoA had achieved success in Japan and gained traction for the genre overseas [14, 15]....
ROSE and PSY perform "APT." (live from Summerswag 2025)
By 2019, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) listed South Korea as the 6th largest music market in the world [116], with boy band BTS alone accounting for $4.65 billion, or 0.3%, of South Korea's GDP [117].
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| Blackpink, biggest in the world? |
In 2024, IFPI declared K-pop the leading global genre in unit sales, across both physical and digital formats. Seventeen of the top 20 albums on the IFPI Global Album Sales Chart that year belonged to this genre [118, 119] thanks to BTS, Blackpink, solo Rosé, Katseye, and a few others. More
*Korean Buddhism for a changing Korea
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| Standing guard statue (one of the Four Heavenly Sky Kings) in a Korean temple, Korea |
Korean Buddhism began in the 4th century CE during the Three Kingdoms Period. Centuries after Buddhism originated in [Gandhara, now modern Afghanistan] and Magadha [a Buddhist territory later brought into the empire under the umbrella term "India" under Buddhist Emperor Ashoka], the Mahayana tradition arrived in China through the Silk Road in the 1st century CE, then entered the Korean peninsula in the 4th century, from where it was transmitted to Japan.
In Korea, it was adopted as the state religion of three constituent polities of the Three Kingdoms Period, first by the Goguryeo (aka Goryeo) in 372 CE, by the Silla (Gaya) in 528 CE, and by the Baekje in 552 CE [1].
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| Korean Buddhist monks Haeinsa |
To address this, Korean Buddhists developed a new holistic approach to Buddhism that became a distinct form, an approach characteristic of virtually all major Korean thinkers.
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| Sam Taeguk symbol, Korean Buddhism |
As it now stands, Korean Buddhism consists mostly of the Seon [Zen] Lineage, primarily represented by the Jogye and Taego Orders. The Korean Seon has a strong relationship with other Mahayana traditions that bear the imprint of Chan teachings as well as the closely related Zen.
Other sects -- such as the modern revival of the Cheontae lineage, the Jingak Order (a modern esoteric sect or Vajrayana), and the newly formed Won -- have also attracted sizable followings [3].
Korean Buddhism has contributed much to East Asian Buddhism, especially to early Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Tibetan schools of Buddhist thought. More
American dance hegemony hits South Korea, Japan...and now Indonesia
