To many, it's no surprise that glamorous K-pop has an unsavory side.
"No other industry has so much blatant in-your-face payola," says a music business insider who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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Kim, the lead prosecutor, says the total amount of bribes being paid by music moguls to executives at major television networks and cable TV stations is "huge." Industry observers say it runs into millions of dollars' worth of freebies, company stock and raw cash-in one case, wads of bills delivered in shopping bags. At least eight companies-including four not yet named-are under suspicion. Investigators seized documents and computer discs in search of evidence, carting them away in cardboard boxes. According to Seoul District Prosecutor Kim Kyu Hun, the arrests of Hwang Yong Woo and Kim Jong Jin were just the first in a wide-ranging investigation into systemic corruption in South Korea's music business that threatens to disrupt the careers of some of Asia's best-loved performers.Įarlier this month, agents descended on the offices of four major entertainment production companies-SidusHQ, god's management agency GM Planning Doremi Music Publishing and SM Entertainment, the country's leading production house whose founder, Lee Su Man, is widely credited with turning Korea's pop music industry into Big Business. Last week, government agents arrested two former television producers for accepting under-the-table payments guaranteeing TV appearances to aspiring singers and musicians.
South Korea's star-making machinery that, by cranking out high-gloss acts such as god and femme songstress BoA, has become a regional music-marketing powerhouse rivaling Japan's, is getting spattered with grime. But to this list of indignities, add one that could make the others seem genuinely insignificant. The band members aren't even allowed to have girlfriends, lest they lose their boy-next-door wholesomeness. Grouses Yoon Kye Sang, the band's 22-year-old rapper: "We are only tantara"-Korean slang that loosely translates as itinerant lounge lizards. Meanwhile, there are endless rounds of TV appearances, talk shows, dance routines, silly comedy skits. God (an acronym for Groove OverDose) this month embarked on a 100-concert tour that, counting a break to cut their fifth album, will last at least six months. The house on the outskirts of Seoul shared by the quintet was burgled a year ago-the only things missing were socks and underwear purloined from the washing machine. Wherever south Korea's hottest boy band goes, its members are assailed by heaving, hormonal throngs of teenage girls, all of them aching to rip out a lock of pop idol hair.
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