KPOP also known as Korean pop or Korean popular music. Its a musical genre consisting of electro pop, hip hop, pop, rock and R&B music

agencies of South Korea known as SM Entertainment was founded by Lee Soo Man led to the first K-pop girl groups and boy bands. Lee Soo Man led the biggest boy band ever in Korea with 13 members in a group known as SUPER JUNIOR and GIRLS GENERATION consisting of 9 members. Gradually by the end of the 1990s YG Entertainment that leads BIG BANG & 2NE1 two of the biggest names in the KPOP industry, DSP Entertainment and JYP entertainment were also formed. JYP Entertainment is run by the successful Park Jin Young who is the first ever Asian producer to cross over to the US to collaborate with stars like Will Smith, Cassie etc. He has also managed to open up agencies in US and Chine apart from Korea. He leads the best dance groups in Korea By 2011, K-Pop has become popular all over Asia. now consisting of about 184 idol groups. To train & launch a new artist the agency spends about $400.000 on each who have to go through intense training.Many KPOP artist are targeting Japanese markets and are gaining recognition in US, CANADA AND ALSO AUSTRALIA. Nowadays flash mobs in London, Paris, US etc reveals their popularityAN EXAMPLE of a band that clearly exhibits the expansion of Kpop is TVXQOne of Korea’s biggest KPOP export TVXQ made it in the Guinness World Records twice in 2008 and 2009 for having the world’s largest official fan club, Cassiopeia. Apart from this, the band was also listed as the most photographed celebrities in the world with about 50\0 millions of pictures in just 1 year of their debut.In 2010 TVXQs album debuted as #1 on Japan music charts also breaking a 15 year record set by BON JOVI as the highest- first week sales by a foreign group. ANOTHER EXAMPLE IS RAIN who worked under JYP debuting in 2003 rose to fame and success very quickly. Rain has been given the term world star as his acting debut in the the Hollywood films Ninja Assassin and Speed racer was received very well. Rain also made it to 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and was the first Korean to make it to the Most beautiful people in the world in 2007.I’d like to now discuss the criticism received by KPOPAlong with the success of the Korean wave came criticism. In the first few years, during the beginning of the Korean wave many critics predicted that it would soon die down. Instead the opposite happened . An anti-Korean book named Hate the Korean wave was released in Japan on July 26 2005 which also became #1 best seller on Amazon.co.japan.Nationalists in Japan have also led protesters mobs of more than 2000 people recently in August.. On the other hand Tourism rose drastically due to the Korean wave. From 2003 to 2004 alone, tourism increased from 2.8 million to 3.7 million. Korean male celebrities are now among the highest-paid actors outside of Hollywood.OPINIONTo conclude I want to state my personal opinion about all of the points I have brought up which were the history and expansion of Kpop, the bands, the trainee lives, the criticism faced by them and the reason I chose this particular topic. Well over the past few months I have only seen the bright side of KPOP. The music, the fashion, the dance, the amazing role models but as I focused deeper for this presentation I realised it is not as easy as it looks. The fact that over 20 years they have gained a lot of popularity itself predicts the bright future they have ahead but this also highlights the wrath and hate they might have to overcome. The training period of these artists ranging from about 2 – 9 years requires a lot of hard work, will power and strength not to give up. To be precise a lot of upcoming artists nowadays are receiving much more criticism from haters than they deserve which in my opinion is mean and not necessary but just hate. Coming to an end of my presentation, the reason I chose this topic is because it has inspired me to work hard for something I really want. Not only that, but during this period of time due to my interest in KPOP I have also began to learn to play the guitar and learn their language. In the future I would definitely visit South Korea and love to dwell deeper into their tradition, culture, fashion and of course music.