Asia Pacific Business Review Special Issue:

The Globalization of Postcolonial Pop Music: Putting the Success of the K-pop Industries into Theoretical Perspectives

Guest Editors:

Professor Jangwoo Lee, School of Business Administration, Kyungpook National University & Success Economy Institute, Korea

Professor Paul Lopes, Dept. of Sociology, Colgate University, USA

Professor Chris Rowley, Kellogg College, Oxford University & Bayes Business School, City, University of London, UK

Professor Ingyu Oh, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan

Professor Lynn Pyun, Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea

Over the last two decades. the South Korean music market has grown into the seventh largest in the world, while its boy band BTS was ranked number one in 2021 as the most popular and best-selling global artist by IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). All these factsare simply confounding to many pundits of the industry as no postcolonial music market has achieved global breakthroughs as such other than South Korea. Only three countries in Asia are listed on the top 10 global music markets: Japan (2^nd), China (6^th) and South Korea (7^th). Among these, South Korea is the only postcolonial country that became independent from Japan after the Second World War.

Music industry analysts have unfortunately paid little attention to the South Korean music industry until recently. Instead, tomes of studies that deal with Japanese and Chinese music industries in tandem with their North American, European and Australian counterparts have occupied the vastness of the bookshelves of major research libraries and bookstores in the world. Economic, business and sociological studies of the popular music industry have usually focused on its differences from the high [music] culture industry, industrial evolution, music patents, creativity and innovation, media and music genre evolutions, music marketing and industrial strategies (see inter alia, Hirsch, 1969; DiMaggio, 1977; Lopes, 1992; Peterson and Berger 1996; Scott, 1999; Power and Hallencreutz, 2002; Siegel and Chu, 2008; Ogden et al., 2011).

However, few of these studies have foreseen or proposed theoretical and empirical explanations of why postcolonial music and its industry can successfully defend its economic turf from those in the centre countries and even competitively outmanoeuvre them in the domestic and global markets (Lee and Heo, 2012, 2013; Oh and Park, 2012; Oh, 2013; Oh and Lee, 2013; Lee, 2022; Oh and Jang, 2022). These studies have suggested clear implications on the innovative and entrepreneurial aspects of the K-pop and their mega success in the global markets without forgetting to add their emphasis

on gender that makes Korean business culture feminine (Hofstede et al., 1998; Oh, 2017; Siegel et al., 2019).

Given the theoretical and empirical chasm apparent in the study of postcolonial popular music, this special issue invites the submission of newly researched papers for a workshop to be held in South Korea and a subsequent special issue that analyses the nuts and bolts of the global success of the postcolonial music industries. We are looking for works on the South Korean pop music industries with a theoretical and practical implications about the entire spectrum of popular music business. The exemplary topics of papers that we are interested in inviting are:

·        Analysis of K-pop success from the following disciplines: strategy, organization, marketing, talent management, finance and innovation

·        Theoretical and empirical analysis of innovation and entrepreneurship in the K-pop industries

·        The use of new social media for K-pop globalization with emphasis on value chain analysis

·        Cultural marketing and its empirical persuasion in the K-pop fandom analysis with emphases on gender and other social attributes

·        CSR and ethical issues in K-pop music industry

·        Alliance patterns in the global division of labour in K-pop industries, particularly between Japan, the US, Sweden, etc. and South Korea

·        Financing music innovation projects in postcolonial music industries

·        Managing creativity and talents in the K-pop industry with focus on expats, migrants, minorities and women

·        Home country and customer country analyses of the K-pop industry

Timelines

November. 30, 2022: Deadline for abstracts

Dec. 2, 2022: Announcement of accepted and invited papers and information on workshop

Jan. 16, 2023: Workshop among invited papers at Ewha Womans University Feb. 28, 2023: Deadline for the submission of full papers

March 31, 2023: First review results

April 30, 2023: Submission of revised drafts May 31, 2023: Final acceptance decision Publication of Selected Papers in APBR in 2023

For questions in the first instance contact: Professor Ingyu Oh at apbreditor@gmail.com.