K-Everything

Yeah, yeah!

[indistinct Korean announcement]

So how long did you enjoy the success of that song?

As a singer? Forever.

But as a songwriter, oh, my God.

Dream and nightmare at the same time.

Really.

How can I top this song?

- - Five, four...

three, two, one...

I'm Daniel Dae Kim.

- Actor... - Daniel. Nice to meet you.

...producer, and proud Korean-American.

All right, we have to stop before I get emotional.

When I was a kid, it was not cool to be Korean.

Then this happened.

Cultural phenomenon or Korean Wave...

Korean Wave...

K-pop along with TV dramas...

Now I'm going to South Korea...

It's so good.

...where I was born...

It's exactly what I remember as a kid.

...to find out how this small nation in East Asia

rose from the ashes of war...

The end of three years of conflict.

...dictatorship and poverty...

Decades of sacrifice, years of success.

...to conquer the world...

- Parasite. -

...with its culture in just one generation.

Oh, we can go global now.

Oh, my God.

- Bottoms up. -

- From K-pop... - Day Ones, we love you.

...to K-beauty...

Ah, this is a new world.

...to K-Everything.

I'll turn it on.

How many times have you listened to that drum track?

- Ten thousand times! - Yeah.

We started with the chords and bass.

[drum track playing with upbeat melody]

Along with the pad, synth, and lead.

- - Instantly recognizable now.

This is where the global phenomenon began,

with this very riff.

Golden from the 2025 animated movie KPop Demon Hunters .

And if you're watching closely,

you just might catch me in it, too.

Everyone talks about Golden

everywhere I go in America, in Korea.

The song made K-pop history,

winning a Grammy, Golden Globe, and at the Oscars, Best Original Song.

After we complete it, we make the bridge.

Coproduced by Joong, Lee Yu-han

and Nam Hee-dong, together known as IDO.

It was created to express darkness and sadness.

The writers, including Ejae

who also sings the part of Rumi from HUNTR/X,

together crafted the melody and lyrics on top of this track.

- [ Golden's instrumental music playing] - Yeah.

All right.

With all due respect to Golden because I love Golden ,

the first song that caught my ear

in KPop Demon Hunters was Soda Pop.

Producer and singer-songwriter Vince

and producer Dominsuk worked on that.

The bell sound was created first.

- [electronic bell playing with upbeat melody] - Already so cute.

- Yeah. -

Next, the drums come in.

- - Snare drum, high hat.

- And then someone's whistling on the top, right? - Yeah.

Why did you think of that for the song?

24 is also another producer that worked on this.

He actually went in the booth and whistled it himself.

The whole song, we were trying to be cute.

Like, you can tell, we're not the cutest people in the world,

but making this was a hell of an experience, for sure.

I feel really happy because

I think we played a small role in spreading K-pop to the world.

You can heard Golden in the streets

and you see children wearing the gat .

I find it very amusing.

We're proud 'cause we were able to promote traditional Korean culture through music.

You guys created something that has definitely, I think,

changed our culture for generations.

The world is very happy that you did it.

- Thank you so much. - Thank you so much.

Golden is only the latest Korean-made pop song

to dominate global charts.

This is the most-streamed group on Spotify in history, globally.

In less than two years, BTS charted four number one albums in the U.S.,

faster than any band since the Beatles.

I was lucky enough to go to a BTS concert in L.A.

Music aside, what really blew my mind was seeing non-Koreans

singing along to the music in Korean.

- BTS! - BTS, of course.

BTS!

That would have been unthinkable when I was a kid.

If Americans had even heard of South Korea, it was because of war.

Just 40 years ago, South Korea was under military rule.

Western-style music deemed too decadent was banned.

Same with long hair on men and short skirts on women.

And today, this is the Korea everyone knows.

Thank you.

So how does a country go from censorship

to pop culture trendsetter in just one generation?

Let's start at the beginning.

How would you define K-pop?

Oh, wow!

It's a mix of hip hop, there's R&B, there's techno dance,

all these different genres from different cultures,

different music styles,

and then on top of that, we have our own Korean touch to it.

All that is K-pop.

- K-pop... - K-pop...

David Kim is an adjunct professor in media creation

and a YouTuber.

The Korean music industry wasn't really existent back in the '60s

because we were just getting off of the Korean War.

And with the influence of like American troops

coming in military bases, they brought in the Western culture,

the American music such as R&B, jazz, rock,

and groups like The Kim Sisters just started to pop up.

The Kim Sisters are like pioneers.

Two of the women lost their father in the Korean War.

Alongside their cousin,

they started singing in the 1950s to support their family.

Performing for American soldiers stationed in South Korea,

one of the first Korean music groups to break through in the U.S.

What's interesting is, even back in the '60s,

they made American feeds.

Like The Ed Sullivan Show,

Then came restrictions.

So the '70s and '80s are like a dark age for music because we had, like,

an authoritarian administration with Park Chung Hee and like Chun Doo-Hwan

So back then, there were a lot of censorships, blacklisting,

and you couldn't do anything that's Western or too provocative

in, like, the government's lens.

- When I came to Korea for the first time in 1977... - Mm-hm.

my cousins who were older than I am,

they would kind of sneak me into their room...

- Mm-hm. - ...and show me all their records.

The first time I ever heard Aerosmith,

- they had American LPs in their stash. - Right. Yeah.

And so those were considered

a little bit dangerous to have at the time.

Some certain records, or some certain groups,

for example, Bob Dylan, was also kind of censored too.

So if it's too progressive to our culture back then,

the government was like, "no".

That changed in June 1987,

when nationwide protests

led to the end of military rule in South Korea.

The culmination of mostly student-led demonstrations that began

in the 1960s.

The 1988 Seoul Olympic Games gave the country a chance

to transform its image from war-torn dictatorship

to modern democracy and economic powerhouse.

When we enter the '90s, this group over here,

they are like the genesis of K-pop.

Seo Taiji and Boys.

Seo Taiji and Boys.

The band debuted their first single, Nan Arayo

or I Know , on national TV talent shows.

They experimented with something unprecedented.

They introduced hip hop, very quirky dance styles.

The younger generation, they were like,

"Wow, this is refreshing."

- Mm-hm. - "This is something we needed."

They actually incorporated very creative but also liberal lyrics.

They criticized society as well, too,

but people loved it because it was, like, so rebellious.

Yeah. I remember being in the U.S.

- when Seo Taiji came out. - Mm-hm.

- I first heard Nan Arayo , and I was like... - Yeah.

..."Koreans are rapping?"

Nan Arayo was number one on Korean charts for 17 straight weeks.

You brought it to life.

The lyrics in the group's 1995