The Koreas | Society | East Asia
Socially aware Ok-pop followers are demanding extra from South Korean leisure corporations. Can this result in significant adoption of environmental insurance policies within the trade?
Folks go by an commercial exhibiting members of South Korean Ok-Pop group BTS selling an area financial institution at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, December 17, 2021.
Credit score: AP Photograph/Ahn Younger-joon
In keeping with rising traits within the world artistic market, South Korean leisure companies are making main investments in creating nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that certify possession of digital information containing their merchandise. The revenue potential is apparent – followers are wanting to personal irreproducible content material from their favourite artists, and particular person NFTs have bought for as much as $70,000. Nonetheless, leisure corporations are going through push-back from followers over the environmental impression of making these new digital merchandise. And this carries broader implications for Korea’s future financial route.
Whereas Ok-pop followers stay avid shoppers, their engagement with artists and studios has modified. Within the final decade, company entrepreneurs empowered loyal prospects by relinquishing some management of content material creation and enabling fan communities to advertise their favourite artists in their very own distinctive means on platforms of their selecting. On account of this multi-level advertising and marketing marketing campaign, many followers now see themselves as integral actors within the success of their bands.
For this new technology of followers, the conflation of fandom and social activism is widespread. They spend cash on causes that will make their idols look good, resembling planting forests or donating to catastrophe reduction. For millennials and Gen Z-ers born between 1980 and 2010, local weather change is a specific concern. Ok-pop 4 Planet is a corporation of followers that promote environmentalism on behalf of Ok-pop artists. Teams like this have known as on leisure studios to scale back the waste produced by promotional packaging and live shows. These engagements additionally align with the values of an more and more worldwide fan base — as local weather change is a problem that each Korean and world denizens share.
On this context, many followers are naturally involved with the Korean leisure trade’s new give attention to NFTs. The carbon footprint of a single NFT transaction is estimated to be round 48kg CO2. NFT transactions are reliant on a course of known as “mining,” wherein a community of computer systems use cryptography to find out the validity of transactions. Such transactions require an enormous quantity of power – “mining” for the favored cryptocurrency Bitcoin consumes power equal to over a day’s consumption by a mean U.S. family. Using this form of know-how to certify the numerous merchandise launched by South Korea’s extremely productive leisure studios would demand appreciable quantities of power.
For the leisure trade, producing NFTs is a option to higher management their very own content material in an period the place customary digital merchandise are extremely reproducible. With the metaverse promising extra financial actions within the digital house, NFTs supply limitless potential for progress each domestically and abroad with out requiring manufacturing of extra tangible items like albums or bodily merchandise. As well as, the businesses see manufacturing of NFTs as a option to interact with the digital youth tradition and produce distinctive content material for tech savvy followers.
However the revenue motives of the leisure studios are in direct battle with an more and more socially-conscious fan base. Earlier this yr, HYBE — the leisure label that manages boyband BTS — introduced a three way partnership with firm Dunamu and promoted the idea of limited-edition digital picture playing cards. Followers typically purchase dozens, and even tons of, of bodily photos of their favourite members. Nonetheless, the announcement was met with sudden resistance. Worldwide followers of the group expressed their disapproval on social media and threatened a boycott. BTS has cultivated a picture of being delicate to problems with social justice and even spoke in entrance of the U.N. earlier this yr concerning local weather change. To followers, the corporate was being hypocritical in utilizing the group to advertise Korea’s stance on local weather change whereas additionally investing in tech that’s dangerous to the surroundings.
Because the affect of Ok-pop teams grows internationally, so do expectations of the trade’s tasks. This has led to requires larger consideration to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impression of the trade’s actions. Nonetheless, audits by Shinhan Monetary Group present that leisure companies have been sluggish to get on board. Not like different conventional industries resembling manufacturing the place carbon emissions are an apparent concern, the leisure trade is a latecomer to creating these concerns, and efforts to adapt ESG are nonetheless of their infancy.
This hesitance could also be reflective of the contradictory environmental and industrial insurance policies of Korea as an entire. Sustained financial growth and environmental safety are largely nonetheless thought of a zero-sum recreation. The nation is the ninth largest client of power on this planet, and the eighth largest emitter of carbon. Criticisms from different nations contributed partially to Korea declaring a purpose of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
On this surroundings, continued promotion of NFT and blockchain know-how could place leisure companies at odds with the federal government’s promotion of South Korea as a “inexperienced” nation and guarantees made to contribute to world local weather change mitigation efforts. Equally, the recognition of Korean content material on the world stage implies that companies producing them should additionally take into account the worldwide impression of their selections.