South Korea

K-pop is South Korea's globally popular idol pop, blending dance-pop, hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music with polished visuals and tight choreography. Its modern form is usually traced to Seo Taiji and Boys, whose 1992 debut broke from traditional Korean pop by fusing rap and rock with Korean lyrics. Entertainment agencies later built a training system that produced groups like H.O.T., Girls' Generation, BIGBANG, BTS, and BLACKPINK.

For most of the twentieth century, trot was Korea's dominant popular music, a sentimental style with a steady two-beat rhythm that dates to the 1930s. The 1960s and 1970s brought folk and psychedelic rock, led by figures like Shin Jung-hyeon and the protest singer Kim Min-gi. Lavish pop ballads then ruled the 1980s before Seo Taiji and Boys reset the mainstream in 1992.

Cho Yong-pil is widely called the King of Pop in Korea. Active since 1968, he topped charts across ballads, rock, trot, and folk, dominated the 1980s, and returned to number one in 2013 with the single 'Bounce' from his album 'Hello.' A career spanning more than five decades makes him one of the most enduring figures in Korean music.

BTS debuted in 2013 and reached global scale in the late 2010s, topping the US Billboard charts and earning Grammy nominations, with the 2020 single 'Dynamite' among their biggest hits. BLACKPINK debuted in 2016 and became one of the most-watched acts on YouTube, headlining the Coachella festival in 2023. Both helped turn K-pop into a mainstream force worldwide.

Last reviewed: 2026-07

Trot is the oldest form of Korean popular music, known for its dramatic vocals and a characteristic two-beat rhythm nicknamed ppongjjak. It emerged in the early twentieth century and remained the country's mainstream sound for decades. After falling out of fashion, trot was revived for a new generation through popular television singing contests in the 2010s and 2020s.