How do East Asians view each other? (speaking, visit, westerners)
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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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K-Pop is just the flavour of the month, it's not gonna last forever. I think before J-Pop and pop music from Taiwan was in vogue, now it's Korea. Korean food, too, as well as Korean products like Samsung etc competing more with the Japanese.
Kpop is way bigger then Jpop even here in SF I hear regular American teenagers going crazy for Kpop groups... never seen it for Jpop. Jpop had its heyday, Kpop is bigger today globally then jpop ever was and who knows who's next. Does Kpop have a lasting chance? I have no clue but after seeing Psy become the #1 most watched toughness video, Girls generation on the lettermen and good morning America show alone with wondergirlz having their own show on nickelodeon there should be no doubt which is bigger. Japan is losing its luster as Korea, Taiwan, etc are catching up. Korea is supposed to overtake Japan in per capital income soon and Japan has been downgraded by major financial institutions to levels below Singapore hongkong Korea and Taiwan.
Kpop is popular mainly because its music is aggressively and extensively promoted across the world unlike JPOP. And like someone else mentioned, importing Korean songs tend to be cheaper than expanding one's homegrown music base (especially for Japan). Same thing applies to Korean dramas.
Also, without the popularity of Korean dramas in Asia to begin with, the popularity of Kpop would not have followed.
The Japanese music industry finds no reason to desperately market their artiste everywhere since they have a much larger market than Korea and Taiwan (Japan has a population of close to 140 million as compared to Korea's 45 million and Taiwan's 22 million).
Kpop is popular mainly because its music is aggressively and extensively promoted across the world unlike JPOP. And like someone else mentioned, importing Korean songs tend to be cheaper than expanding one's homegrown music base (especially for Japan). Same thing applies to Korean dramas.
Also, without the popularity of Korean dramas in Asia to begin with, the popularity of Kpop would not have followed.
The Japanese music industry finds no reason to desperately market their artiste everywhere since they have a much larger market than Korea and Taiwan (Japan has a population of close to 140 million as compared to Korea's 45 million and Taiwan's 22 million).
The Japanese music industry basically didn't have the government trying to flex some soft power worldwide. If anything, it's a bad move on Japan's part because of the kind of revenue they could generate from abroad. They saw it with some of their cultural exports, but as a whole aren't pushing other facets of their pop culture as aggressively as South Korea is. South Korea's government and industry made some good moves, don't see anything wrong or underhanded about that. You're right in that Japan is a much larger industry though your population stats are subtly skewed with Japan at about 127 million and South Korea at about 50 million.
Kpop is popular mainly because its music is aggressively and extensively promoted across the world unlike JPOP. And like someone else mentioned, importing Korean songs tend to be cheaper than expanding one's homegrown music base (especially for Japan). Same thing applies to Korean dramas.
Also, without the popularity of Korean dramas in Asia to begin with, the popularity of Kpop would not have followed.
The Japanese music industry finds no reason to desperately market their artiste everywhere since they have a much larger market than Korea and Taiwan (Japan has a population of close to 140 million as compared to Korea's 45 million and Taiwan's 22 million).
So Korea and Taiwan being smaller nations exporting to stay competitive because they don't have a big enough of an internal market.... I don't understand where your issue with this is?
So Korea and Taiwan being smaller nations exporting to stay competitive because they don't have a big enough of an internal market.... I don't understand where your issue with this is?
My point being is that Kpop owes its popularity to its aggressive advertising campaign which Japan did not resort to, not because Kpop music genuinely appeals more to the music lovers out there.
And back to the main topic, this aggressive advertising on the part of the Korean music industry and the government is partly a move to overtake Japan as the next biggest cultural exporter of Asia. Korea has always wanted to overtake Japan, be it pop culture or in economic dominance in East Asia.
The main issue binding them together, though, is the existence of a common adversary (North Korea).
My point being is that Kpop owes its popularity to its aggressive advertising campaign which Japan did not resort to, not because Kpop music genuinely appeals more to the music lovers out there.
And back to the main topic, this aggressive advertising on the part of the Korean music industry and the government is partly a move to overtake Japan as the next biggest cultural exporter of Asia. Korea has always wanted to overtake Japan, be it pop culture or in economic dominance in East Asia.
The main issue binding them together, though, is the existence of a common adversary (North Korea).
Ok.. so you mean that Korea is being competitive to compete with a strong neighboring country with more then double the population?
The population part is just one of the reasons why Japan did not advertise her music industry as aggressively as Korea did.
I don't see that as a particularly adequate explanation since there are many countries of varying population levels with very widely varying populations and ability to export cultural products. Also, I'm not sure why you used words like "resort to" and the like when it was in a lot of ways a calculated strategy to attain more revenue--which is something all industries generally try to do. In some ways, I think South Korea just had a particular nexus of things happen where a huge part of its industrialization, demographic dividends and transition into one of the world's developed countries occurred at a time of globalization and widespread access to media through the Internet. The pathway was there and the South Korean industry as a whole took advantage of it.
Europeans are given to national/ethnic stereotyping (rude French, lazy Italians, stuck-up Brits, humorless Germans, etc.) so I was wondering to what extent this also exists in east Asia.
For example, do the Japanese think the Chinese are rude?
Are Koreans viewed as pushy?
Are there difference in societal attitudes within China -- for example, do northerners look down on Southerners or vice versa?
I don't know where to begin, but yes, there's animosity. Lots of history there. The short of it is, most Asians are historically suspicious of the Japanese because of their empire during WWII and their continued reluctance to admit wrongdoing. In more recent years, though, the attention is gradually shifting away from Japan and more toward a concern about China and what a Chinese superpower means to other Asian nations.
Just when Asians thought they wanted nothing more to do with the Americans, along come the Chinese. lol!
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