♪ ♪
(school bell ringing)
All right, all right, settle down, everyone
because today we're learning about something
that's blowing up all over the world.
No, not climate change.
Okay, I don't teach boring stuff in this classroom.
I'm talking about K-Pop.
It is why your cousin suddenly speaks Korean
more fluently than English.
And believe it or not, K-pop used to be something
that only Koreans knew about.
The rest of the world wasn't always into it.
Like how there was a time
when white people didn't know about yoga.
The first group to really break through internationally
was The Kim Sisters.
Sook-ja, Ai-ja and Min-ja started singing as children
during the Korean War for American GIs.
They sang, they danced, and they played 20 instruments.
I can't even name 20 instruments.
Saxophone, uh...
In 1959, they got a contract to perform in Vegas.
Ed Sullivan was taping a show there,
and they managed to book a performance on the show.
They were such a hit, they got asked back 20 more times.
Do you know how great you have to be
to get asked back to anything 20 times?
I don't even get invited to join LinkedIn that much.
Unfortunately, the growth of K-pop hit a bump
in the road soon after when South Korea fell under
the dictatorship of President Park Chung Hee,
who started banning music.
They even created a black list of songs
that radio stations couldn't play.
Everyone's end-of-year Spotify summary just said,
"Your most played song was 'The National anthem.'"
But Korean artists kept making music
that challenged the status quo, like folk singer Hahn Dae-soo,
whose albums were banned for anti-government messaging,
or rock guitarist Shin Jung-hyeon, who,
the story goes, defied the dictator's request
to write a song in his honor.
And let's face it: wanting a song to be written about you
is classic dictator behavior,
right after military parades and having
a weird haircut everyone tells you looks great.
By the '80s the dictatorship had loosened.
And by "loosened," I mean the dictator was assassinated.
But whatever. It made listening to radio fun again.
Outside music was allowed back in the country.
And two of the most influential genres became hip-hop and R & B.
Black artists from Michael Jackson to Run-DMC
reshaped the musical landscape of South Korea.
It inspired performers like Deux, DJ DOC
and Seo Taiji and Boys,
who were the earliest examples of K-pop as we know it today.
They even made it into the movie soundtrack
for 3 Ninjas Kick Back.
You didn't think we'd be watching a movie
in class today, did you?
Yeah, well, I didn't think I'd still have a hangover,
but sometimes life surprises you.
-♪ ♪ -(clears throat)
This was a big moment for Korean pop music,
even if the song was being played
over a scene set in Japan.
But give them a break, okay? They're the 3 Ninjas,
not the 3 Cultural Sensitivity Experts.
The next big step towards today's K-pop was in the 1990s,
when major music studios started putting performers together
in boy and girl bands.
That's right, Korea was doing that long before
Simon Cowell's nips ever started poking through his T-shirts.
That's a no from me, dawg.
It's no surprise this new wave of K-pop
blew up around the world. It featured complex melodies
unlike any other pop music
and always had next-level dance choreography.
To this day, those remain the signature elements of K-pop.
That, and being Asian. Very important requirement.
Tt this new generation of K-pop stars became so successful
the government started to take notice and soon
launched a program to promote Korean music around the globe.
They saw K-pop as a way to boost Korea's cultural strength
and economy without having to do a Squid Game.
But one of the biggest K-pop sensations
was a surprise no government could predict.
I'm sorry. I know it took you ten years
to get this out of your head, but we got to talk about it.
"Gangnam Style" was the first video
to break a billion views on YouTube.
It was so popular, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
praised the song, saying the arts was the path
to cultural understanding.
He said that about "Gangnam Style."
That's like if they played "Baby Shark" during a war
and all the soldiers started laying down their weapons
and hugging each other.
Since then, the rest of the world
is more into K-pop than ever before,
from girl groups like Girls' Generation and Blackpink
to artists like CL.
But let's get to the group you've been waiting for,
the reason you all enrolled in this class in the first place,
BT-mother(bleep)ing-S.
Three letters so important
the rest of the alphabet doesn't even exist anymore.
They've dominated the charts.
They've generated billions in revenue.
They made it okay to eat butter again.
They even increased tourism to South Korea.
I mean, I'm glad my fans aren't that devoted,
because then they'd have to travel to Australia,
which, trust me, you don't want to do that.
BTS is without a doubt the biggest group in the world.
You can tell by their fans.
The BTS Army is the second largest military after the U.S.
And they've droned zero weddings.
BTS might be on hiatus,
but there's so much new K-pop we can enjoy while they're gone.
And now you know how it got to where it is today.
Oppa, Gangnam style!
-("Gangnam Style" playing) -(clicks tongue) Aw, (bleep).
Now it's in my head again.
Get it out.
Get it... out.
♪ ♪