Boy groups like Sechs Kies (“School Byeolgok“) and Shinhwa (“Resolver”) followed suit, making music with timely messages that struck an emotional chord with young consumers. Common themes included school violence, student stress, anxiety over uncertain futures, and socioeconomic worries—the threads of which can still be found today in the music and visuals of BTS, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, CIX, TXT, Bolbbalgan4, and more. The pangs of adolescence were not only integral to the industry’s domestic success but also its global growth. After the Asian Financial Crisis of the late ’90s, South Korea aimed to bolster its cultural influence through creative exports like Korean dramas and K-pop. This became known as the Korean Wave, or hallyu.
As second generation groups like SHINee, Girls’ Generation, and BIGBANG began to expand their resonance outside of Asia, they also gained the ability to reach young people around the globe with their music and performances. The stages got bigger, bolder, and more choreographed; the groups got bigger too, as designating specialized roles within groups and international casting from China, Japan, and North America became the industry standard. Advances in technology and social media gave third generation groups like B.A.P and EXO the opportunity to go even further, bypassing cultural barriers and physical distance to connect with teens directly through their screens and share their music worldwide.
Perhaps no one understood the true value of fostering such a profoundly sincere and uniquely online relationship between artist and fan quite like Big Hit’s Bang Si-hyuk. He created future Billboard chart-toppers BTS with the goal of giving young people artists they could not only empathize with, but who could also provide a sense of support and comfort through their music—and through their very existence as a group of savvy digital natives who could utilize tools like streaming platform VLive, YouTube, and Twitter to regularly communicate with their fans.
“I recently came across a company document from [2012,] the year before BTS debuted, in which we were debating what kind of idol group to create,” Bang Si-hyuk told South Korean newspaper JoongAng in 2018. “It said, ‘What kind of hero is the youth of today looking for? Not someone who dogmatically preaches from above. Rather, it seems like they need a hero who can lend them a shoulder to lean on, even without speaking a single word.”
In 2013, BTS debuted with “No More Dream,” a fiery takedown of South Korea’s rigid education system that squanders individualism in favor of blind ambition. The song itself was influenced by the debut tracks from senior artists H.O.T. and Sechs Kies, a dynamic combination of hip-hop and socially conscious lyrics. “We tried to tell the story of our generation,” dancer and vocalist Jimin says in a 2017 episode of JTBC’s Please Take Care of My Refrigerator. “So I think we were largely influenced [by H.O.T. and Sechs Kies].” Another 2013 single from BTS, “N.O,” railed against the high expectations placed upon teenagers to attend Korea’s most prestigious universities. “Adults say that we have it so easy,” RM raps. “They say I’m on my way to happiness / Then how do you explain my unhappiness?”
“There’s not a lot of fluidity to life [in South Korea],” Colette Balmain, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in Media and Communications at Kingston University, tells Teen Vogue. Especially for youths, who are more stressed out than their international peers. A 2018 survey from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs found that on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the happiest, South Korean youth ages nine to 17 rated their overall happiness level a six-point-57, making them some of the least happy among the OECD nations. And research shows they face extreme stress due to overwhelming academic pressure. In South Korea, young people spend an average of 12 hours a day on their schoolwork, including a full day of classes, after-school exam prep, and hours of homework. “Everything is very rigid, and young people have a lot of responsibility to succeed,” Balmain adds. “Education is rigid, and they have very little free time and very little chance to be kids, I think.”
