The four-night run in LA was the finale to a tour of 31 sold-out shows, with combined attendance of approximately 1.92 million, according to figures released by the band’s agency. For comparison, Beyoncé’s 2023 Renaissance tour sold about 1.73 million tickets across 35 North American shows.
Those performances and prizes will have brought smiles to the faces in Seoul’s foreign-policy circles, where there is a keen appreciation for the soft power that K-Pop brings South Korea. In Beijing, it will have led to much gnashing of teeth.
The interest went beyond public musing: Beijing resolved to learn from Seoul’s example. China’s culture ministry signed an agreement with its South Korean counterpart, providing for annual cultural-industry forums and cooperation in marketing cultural products abroad.
The audience Wang wondered about now extends well beyond America and Europe. Blackpink’s leading Spotify markets in 2024 included Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Brazil, spanning across the Global South, where Beijing has invested billions in the pursuit of soft power. These audiences' affection for K-pop reaches across linguistic and political boundaries, giving Seoul a welcome that its diplomats would struggle to arrange.
That incentive would have achieved little without companies willing to adapt to foreign tastes. Korean agencies combined intensive training with production and promotion, recruited performers internationally, and hired foreign songwriters and choreographers. They built acts whose appeal survived the loss of the lyrics. For instance, fans didn’t need to understand Korean to dig Psy’s dance moves. The resulting music would not satisfy a purist’s definition of national, but its borrowings helped it travel: Korea’s entertainment industry learned to please people elsewhere.
Chinese performers, on the other hand, face greater difficulty getting that circulation started. YouTube and Instagram are blocked at home, separating their domestic following from the platforms where potential foreign fans congregate. They can release music overseas, of course. But their most enthusiastic supporters cannot pass it along as easily, so a hit on a Chinese platform has further to travel before it reaches a Mexican listener. Beijing’s determination to police what enters the country complicates its ambition to export what comes out.
This is an expensive preference for a government seeking friends. Joseph Nye, the political scientist who developed the concept of soft power, wrote that “popular entertainment often contains subtle images and messages about individualism, consumer choice, and other values that have important political effects.” The messages themselves—lyrics about youthful love and angst—needn’t concern foreign policy to help a foreign minister. A country that others around the world have encountered as a source of pleasure has a better chance of receiving a sympathetic hearing when it asks for support. Seoul still needs persuasive policies, but K-pop gives it an advantage over governments whose principal introduction to foreign publics is a dispute or a threat.
Seoul has good reason to encourage an industry capable of sustaining such loyalties. Chinese officials might point to the Korean government’s support for entertainment companies to argue that the state has a useful role in cultural exports, but public assistance doesn’t entitle officials to supervise the relationship with the audience. Foreign listeners bring tastes no ministry can predict, and successful performers need room to accommodate them. China can afford the studios, the training, and the promotion. Its leaders must decide whether they can tolerate a pop star whose first obligation is to please the fans.
Meanwhile, back in the US, there is every expectation that K-Pop will continue to break new ground in 2027: BTS and Blackpink feature prominently in speculation about who will perform in next year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The best Chinese officials can hope for is to score tickets to the game.
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