As Victoria Wood once said, I wouldn’t be an adolescent again if you bumped my pocket money up to three and six. But occasionally I feel I wouldn’t mind a day back in my pimpled young body so I could hide among them and try to figure out what they’re up to these days. Until someone can 13 Going on 30 (And the Rest) me in real life, I will have to make do with documentaries like James Ballardie’s K-Pop Idols: Inside the Hit Factory (BBC Four), which tracks the rise of the South Korean music genre that increasingly holds younger generations in its thrall.
Would-be stars are trained, sometimes from the age of 11, to become part of the squeaky-clean and slickly choreographed phalanx of performers who deliver gobbets of hooky, high-energy material via perfectly produced videos. They are trained, like footballers or Russian gymnasts, to be all they can be. Or at least all their producers want them to be. Anyone over the age of 15 won’t be able to tell them apart, but that’s almost the point.
Ballardie lightly traces the history: western music first made its influence felt in Korea via the US presence there during the war, before being clamped down on, along with everything else, after the 1961 coup by Park Chung-hee. But by the early 90s, democracy had been sufficiently restored to let Seo Taiji and the Boys – a Boyz II Men or New Kids on the Block-style boyband – appear on television and give South Korea its Beatles moment. Their first song spent 17 weeks at No 1 and kickstarted a phenomenon. Now, K-pop videos rack up millions of views online, adoring fans synchronise their chants at concerts, K-pop museums flourish – and thousands attend open auditions to become the next big pink-haired thing.
The show goes behind the scenes to give a sense of the indefatigability of those involved. The peoples’ optimism, which is both the effect of living in a post-communist country that has moved from one of the poorest to the 11th richest in the world over the last 40 years, was on display everywhere. Songwriters of all nationalities gather in Seoul to make hits for the big stars, while the idols are mastering social media and mobilising fans with ever greater efficiency. If we’re not quite living in K-pop’s world yet, we will be soon.
Conspicuous by its absence, however, is much analysis of the phenomenon – especially the acknowledgement of any possible downside to an industry involving young people, older svengalis controlling everything from dance moves to diets, and pots of money to be made. The K-pop system is so glaringly ripe for abuse that the absence of any discussion about it actually becomes distracting.
Ballardie does touch on a few sensitive points – the career-ending arrest of one star allegedly involved with all sorts of nefarious activities through a nightclub he owned and the recent passing of legislation to protect young people from exploitation. But even allowing for the fact that the documentary was designed as a primer on the subject, the apparent willingness to believe the hype – and to be charmed by people who have been schooled in compliance – did make for a pretty thin hour.
Now, bring me my bath chair and rug. I feel the cold.