Korean Band Music Surfing the Korean Wave: The Case of the Korean Band Survival Audition TV Program,Great Seoul Invasion

Abstract

This study examines the cultural politics of Great Seoul Invasion, a 2022 Korean band survival reality TV program produced by Mnet with Master Plan Music Group funding to create global Korean bands amid the rising Korean Wave. Through textual analysis, this study explores the program’s commodification of Korean band music while promoting diverse styles. To this end, the paper introduces “K-wavification,” combining “Korean Wave” and “commodification,” to analyze Korean band music’s transformation into transnational commodities. This concept reveals the ideological embodiment of K-wavification in the program by focusing on global commodification, genre hierarchization with K-pop at the apex, and spectacularization of Seoul and Korean histories. The study identifies moments of resistance where authenticity pursuits in reality TV intersect with indie bands’ artistic integrity, challenging, yet absorbed by commodification.

Introduction

The cultural wave from South Korea (hereafter Korea) has gained unprecedented global momentum in the 2020s, with K-pop groups such as BTS topping the Billboard charts, the movie Parasite winning an Oscar in 2020, and K-dramas, including Squid Game, spreading through Netflix worldwide in 2021. Riding this wave, the Korean government and industry stakeholders have implemented strategies to accelerate this Korean Wave expansion globally (Jin 2023; Jin and Yi 2020). Previous Korean Wave studies on cultural commodification have focused primarily on government roles (Kim 2019c, 2024b; Ryoo and Jin 2020), leaving gaps regarding Korean TV programs.

This study conducts textual analysis of Great Seoul Invasion (2022) (hereafter GSI), a Korean band survival audition program. Aiming to create global K-bands, the program exemplifies the Korean cultural industry’s strategy of leveraging the Korean Wave. Mnet, a Korean music channel self-promoting as a “global music network,” produced and broadcast GSI from July 20 to September 29 using its survival audition format. The show showcases eighteen Korean bands ¹ competing in six main rounds and two mini rounds. GSI was produced under the auspices of Master Plan Music Group (hereafter MPMG), with the objectives of introducing diverse band music to audiences. This research fills a gap by examining band audition programs, whereas existing studies have focused exclusively on K-pop (Hong and Jeong 2018; Lee and Zhang 2021; Pang and Oh 2018).

While international Korean Wave scholars emphasize its counter-hegemonic nature, approaches examining Korean cultural commodification remain scarce. This paper introduces “K-wavification,” combining “Korean Wave” and “commodification” to critically analyze band music commodification in the program. “K-wavification” refers to the process by which specific Korean cultural elements are signified as and articulated with global cultural products and integrated into the existing Korean Wave. The concept allows critical approaches to the commodification of Korean culture driven by cultural industries in tandem with their global expansion of cultural contents, while recognizing the possibility of ruptures in these processes.

Building upon this framework, the paper conducts a textual analysis of the show’s content, production materials, and related media discourse to analyze GSI’s distinctive characteristics of Mnet’s survival audition program format. I examine not only the ideological embodiment of “K-wavification,” but also fissures within the commodification process that emerge in GSI.

Literature Review

Mnet’s Survival Audition Reality Program

Mnet, a leading Korean music channel run by CJ Entertainment, has produced survival audition programs, a popular reality TV subgenre, since Superstar K’s massive 2009 success. Superstar K follows the format of the British audition program Pop Idol and its American counterpart, American Idol (Kim 2011). Following Superstar K, Mnet produced themed survival programs including hip-hop (Show Me the Money), K-pop idols (Produce 101), dance (Dancing 9) among others.

Participants’ performances are evaluated by industry experts and public votes. This embodies “participatory culture,” allowing anyone to become contestants or voters engaging in real-time candidate selection, offering viewers emotional rollercoasters of victories and defeats (Jenkins 2008). This participatory nature has been further enhanced by the rise of digital platforms and social media, where audience engagement now encompasses commenting, sharing, and fandom-driven meme production around the shows (Kim 2019b).

Reality TV typically achieves authenticity by presenting participants’ genuine selves appearing spontaneous under perpetual surveillance (Andrejevic 2010). Participants’ authentic self-expression creates a powerful connection between viewers and participants (Holmes 2004). Korean survival audition shows particularly present contestants’ emotional backstories and emphasize participant bonds (Kim 2011), enhancing viewer empathy through interspersed documentary-style scenes. Presenting narratives of personal growth and allowing viewer voting to shape outcomes, these programs foster authentic engagement.

However, this authenticity is constructed through selective casting, scripted elements, and editorial manipulation, orchestrated by production teams (Hill 2005; Kim 2019b). Mnet’s programs are notorious for “evil editing” techniques that heighten drama and amplify specific participant characteristics. Maintaining a continuous consciousness of being filmed while actively managing their public perception, reality participants balance personal desires, production imperatives, and audience expectations (Levy 2025). In Mnet’s programs, contestants demonstrate authentic talent and genuine aspirations to viewers, seeking to distinguish themselves from competitors in stardom pursuit.

By staging authenticity, the reality TV genre idealizes social norms, transforming participants into subjects of evaluation. Korean reality programs exemplify this process across different contexts. Istad et al. (2022) show how multiculturalism programs use captions and voice-overs that “serve to rank foreigners as assimilated (good) or non-assimilated (bad)” (p. 541). Similarly, Choi (2019) demonstrates how diet reality shows convert participants into disciplined, self-managing subjects through survival-competition narratives, positioning conforming bodies as indicators of social success and moral superiority.

Notably, the survival reality TV genre disseminates neoliberal ideology (Kwak and Ryoo 2024; Ouellette and Hay 2008; Ryoo and Park 2012). Despite competition unfairness in constructed environments, the genre portrays survival competition as fair (Hong and Jeong 2018). It spreads the ideology of meritocracy, legitimizing survival and elimination based on an individual’s merit (Kwak and Ryoo 2024). Ambiguous “merit” quantified on viewers’ preferences according to participants’ charm and entertainment value, plus subjective judge evaluation, represents musical performance as rankable commodities based on enjoyment.

Cultural studies of survival audition programs have focused on the K-pop ² show “Produce 101,” critically exploring young participants’ affective labor (Pang and Oh 2018), and the idealization of specific femininity (Hong and Jeong 2018). Lee and Zhang (2021) argue that Produce 101 resonates with several Western reality programs by embodying neoliberal narratives of self-entrepreneurship construction. The show expanded beyond Korea across East Asia through Japanese collaboration featuring Japanese participants and localized broadcasting. The 2021 K-pop idol survival program Girls Planet 999 included Chinese participants, reinforcing this East Asian expansion trend.

Despite extensive Korean K-pop survival program research, no studies specifically address Korean band survival programs and their Korean Wave intersection. This renders GSI a distinctive scholarly inquiry subject, as band music possesses potential to disrupt conventional survival audition program formats commodifying Korean music. Specifically, the program utilizes this format to create global K-bands in line with the rise of the Korean Wave.

Korean Wave Studies in North America and Korea in the Korean Wave 3.0 Era

According to Jin (2021), the Korean Wave evolved from regional East Asian popularity in the 2000s (1.0 era) to North American expansion (2.0 era, late 2000s–2017) and today’s global reach (3.0 era since 2017), encompassing diverse content from TV dramas and K-pop to webtoons and mobile games. Global digital platform growth, including YouTube and Netflix, alongside transmedia storytelling, has activated transnational distribution and consumption of diverse Korean cultural contents. While American digital platforms like Netflix have elevated the Korean Wave globally, they have also constrained it through U.S.-centric cultural dominance (Jin 2017).

Korean scholars in North American universities have spearheaded international Korean Wave studies, illuminating Korean cultural contents advancing globally as a counter-hegemonic culture (Jin 2022; Kim 2021; Kwon 2022; Yoon 2022). Jin (2022) argues the Korean Wave stems from “transnational proximity” of globally shared social anxieties and critiques of social inequalities.

Kim (2021, 1072) presents “BTS as method” theory, arguing “BTS is a counter-hegemonic formation that displays alternative possibilities of non-western/peripheral views, experiences, and methodologies.” With rising online fan networks and streaming services, BTS’s songs with Korean lyrics offer cross-border consolation and empowerment to global youth under oppressive conditions. Furthermore, fans’ collaborative voluntary translation efforts and political struggle participation challenge English-speaking pop stars’ privileged status and create counter-hegemonic moments opposing social injustices. While promoting multiculturalism among Western white fans, Yoon’s (2022) fandom research in Canada also argues that K-pop provides cultural capital and empowers Asian identity among Asian-Canadian fans, though potentially creating new hierarchies.

Meanwhile, Kim (2019a) critically addresses the commodification of K-pop female idols, demonstrating that K-pop industries “systematically commodify young, docile female bodies in the process of transforming the social and material bases of Korean economy” (Kim 2019a, 41). The idol reflects Korea’s historical shift from physical labor exploitation under 1960s–70s developmental dictatorship to affective labor exploitation under patriarchal neoliberalism since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Despite such exceptionally limited research, international studies tend to pay less attention to the commodification of Korean culture intertwined with Korean Wave rise.

Conversely, a handful of studies written in Korean, particularly in Korean cultural studies, have developed critical perspectives on the commodification of culture regarding the Korean Wave. Resonating with Kim (2019a)’s studies, Cho (2022) argues that Korean popular cultural industry growth was facilitated by the social conditions of Korean modernization such as industrialization, urbanization, middle-class formation, and mass consumption, established through the Korean capital accumulation system in the 1980s and 1990s.

Unlike existing Western modernization, Korea’s “compressed modernity” (Jang 2011) embodies unique specificity dynamically hybridizing advanced and backward elements (Kwak and Ryoo 2024). For example, the rapid development of the sophisticated global city of Seoul, driven by government policies, has been based on gentrification displacing poor residents from local sites since the 1980s (Shin and Kim 2016). While capital has concentrated in few multinational corporations such as Samsung and LG, the neoliberal knowledge-based economy spreading throughout Korean society during the 2000s pushed youth into precarious labor environments (Yulee 2023). Thus, Korean culture offers a beacon of hope for rapid progress to people in the Global South (Kim 2022b), while sharing the discontent surrounding neoliberal values prevalent in the Global North (Cho 2022; Kwak and Ryoo 2024).

After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Korean government has considered the Korean Wave as new driving force for Korea’s economic growth (Cho 2022). With the development of digital media technology, major actors in the Korean cultural industry have attempted to introduce their cultural products into global markets (Lee 2018). Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) enacted the basic Hallyu industry promotion plan in 2024 to promote widespread global dissemination and consumption of cultural products.

However, these processes involve exploitative mechanisms in the commodification of culture. The K-pop industry particularly has roots in unstable youth labor (Kim 2022b; Kwak and Ryoo 2024; Lee 2018). In the industry, neoliberal governmentality conducts youths to voluntarily compete for very limited celebrity spots, based on the value criterion of “competitiveness,” which implies the ability to charm and attract people’s attention (Kim 2022b). The ideology of meritocracy rationalizes and justifies the tacit acceptance of the absurdities and injustices within the K-pop system. This includes the debut exclusivity reserved for a select few, the sacrifice of other academic pursuits during youth, and the grueling intensity of labor. Produce 101 serves as a symptom revealing the shadows of the K-pop industry, while simultaneously reinforcing them through the spectacularization of the competition.

These studies urge a critical investigation into the commodification of Korean culture by highlighting the underlying regressive elements and forms of exploitation within the Korean Wave. Connecting these academic tributaries from Korea with international Korean Wave studies, the next section presents the concept of “K-wavification” for expanding critical Korean Wave studies.

Theorizing “K-wavification”

This section introduces “K-wavification,” combining “Korean Wave” and “commodification.” Political economy approaches have advanced “commodification” as transformations from use values into exchange values in communicative processes. McChesney (2015) analyzes “hypercommercialization,” where corporate concentration subordinates editorial content to commercial logic, while Mosco (2010) identifies three types of commodification involving not only content but also audiences and labor.

The commodification driven by multinational corporations is heightened in today’s platform-dominated media environment. Digital platforms like major OTT services and YouTube create unprecedented global audiences by accumulating diverse regional cultural contents, leading to asymmetrical relationships between international giant platforms and local cultural workers (Kim 2022a). Cultural products, digitalized into replicable information goods, are produced, distributed, and consumed globally in real-time, intensifying commodification for maximum capital profit (Mosco 2010).

“K-wavification” refers to the transformation of Korean culture into transnational cultural commodities by commercially appropriating and utilizing the global popularity of the Korean Wave. This process involves corporations, governments, and cultural workers discovering, selecting, adapting, and branding Korean cultural elements aligning with global consumer tastes. Similarly, “J-cool,” Japan’s global trade in youth goods from Pokémon to Harajuku fashion in the post-industrial era, transformed Japanese youth culture into a national economic resource through government promotion and corporate leveraging (Allison 2009). K-wavification likewise reconstructs Koreanness as sophisticated, cool cultural identities for global consumption.

Rather than the political economy approaches focusing on systemic transformations of corporate concentration, regulatory institutional frameworks, and macro-structural market processes across media industries, this paper employs Jameson’s (2010, 1991) theory to analyze how commodification’s cultural logic becomes ideologically embodied within specific cultural artifacts like GSI. Unlike Horkheimer and Adorno’s (2002) focus on the standardization and commodification of cultural artifacts without theorizing the resistant potentials of these products, or Appadurai’s (2010) emphasis on local reinterpretation against the homogenization scheme of global cultural flows, Jameson’s theory offers a dialectical cultural criticism. It captures both positive and negative aspects of cultural artifacts produced and distributed by cultural industries, recognizing that cultural commodities contain utopian impulses with emancipatory potential in that they are designed to meet popular desires.

Jameson’s (1991) framework provides a critical understanding of how distinctive cultural elements become commodities while maintaining their superficial uniqueness as they are integrated into global commodity circuits. Cultural commodification leads to globalization, hierarchization, dehistoricization, and spectacularization of cultural elements. As culture becomes a global commodity, it caters to broader tastes transnationally. Original historicity, meaning, and use-value are replaced by exchange-value, emphasizing globally marketable elements and creating hierarchies. Cultural works lose depth, becoming superficial spectacles. Signifiers dominate rather than represent reality, causing loss of historical consciousness. Thus, cultural works no longer represent the past but instead consume it as nostalgia or reproduce stereotypical visions of the past, stripped of their original histories and meanings.

The transnational dissemination of Korean cultural products through digital platforms exemplifies this accelerated phase of platformized late capitalism’s cultural logic. Korean cultural products have been adapted to satisfy massive cross-border audiences. Korean dramas on global OTT platforms primarily conform to internationally appealing action or romance genres, demonstrating how local cultural expressions become standardized for global consumption (Noh and Ryoo 2024). Exporting various programs and formats internationally, Mnet operates the global K-pop platform, “Mnet Plus.”

Through K-wavification, Korean cultural elements are evaluated and selected based on their potential exchange value. Figures, performances, themes, images, and anything evoking global interest can be selectively integrated into the existing Korean Wave. Selected elements are reconfigured as differentiated, globally attractive cultural codes that are accessible, consumable, and spectacularized for transnational appeal. Meanwhile, those difficult to convert into profit or consumer appeal are excluded, particularly elements requiring deep cultural understanding, carrying historical complexity, or presenting consumption barriers.

For instance, the “Imagine your Korea” campaign, posted on the Korea Tourism Organization’s YouTube channel since 2016, combines local sites with globally recognized Korean cultural elements like the Chahamun Tunnel from Parasite, Lee Jung-jae from Squid Game, and BTS members (Kim 2024a). Aligned with MCST contemporary interests, the representation bleaches the historical localities and spectacularizes these areas as tourist sites. Koreanness is reconstructed as an attractive cultural image and identity to elevate the potential exchange value of scenic resources for prospective global tourists.

Conversely, popular cultural commodities reflect and amplify utopian aspirations against social oppression through global market networks, providing conditions for the possibility of social change by revealing specific oppressive histories (Jameson 1991). Rock band music enjoying commercial popular success has shown glimpses of resistant potentials. Through punk rock, youths have rearranged or appropriated the overproduced images and signs of the postmodern era to express their discontent with the given social structure (Hebdige 1991). Rock and Roll, growing during World War II, possesses energy for pleasure and liberation disrupting the boredom of daily life and the capitalist order (Grossberg 1984). These were crucial references for first-generation Hongdae indie bands in the 1990s.

Jameson’s dialectical approach critically captures the contradictory dynamics of popular culture, whereby commodification both amplifies possibilities for popular resistance and alternative expansion and simultaneously reabsorbs these resistant elements back into the commodification process itself. As addressed previously, the popularity of Korean cultural content as alternative cultural artifacts disseminated through global platforms may create cracks in the existing Western-centric dominance, while simultaneously being appropriated by major platform corporations as cultural codes for global consumption in international markets. Moving beyond simplistic binaries of global-center-homogeneity-commodification versus local-periphery-hybridity-resistance, the concept of K-wavification, as theorized through Jameson’s framework, enables capturing the tension between the commodification and resistance of popular cultural artifacts.

Korean Band Music: Between Commodification and Resistance

Korean band music, rooted in the “Hongdae area scene” (hereafter Hongdae), often embodies DIY culture, emphasizing diversity, spontaneity, and musician subjectivity. However, the genre demonstrates varying degrees of commercialization. K-pop corporations listed on financial markets and receiving capital investment have produced K-pop bands such as The Trax, a 2003 Korean-Japanese band project that performed with pre-recorded backing tracks on Korean music broadcast stages instead of playing live instruments, exemplifying the tension between dance-focused K-pop idol performances and band music. Later examples include FNC’s FTISLAND and N.Flying, and JYP’s Day6.

Hongdae, the scene located in the mid-western part of Seoul, demonstrates that subcultural artists including indie band musicians have maintained independence from the dominant logic of capital (Lee 2007). It emerged as a hub for underground and experimental music in the mid to late 1990s, but post-2000, gentrification and soaring rents threatened the indie music scene’s survival. In response, MPMG, which started as a live house club label related to underground hip-hop in the late 1990s in Hongdae, expanded its business by extending its genre boundaries to include band music and hosting music festivals since 2007. From the early 2010s, indie bands have strategically sought survival by embracing government support programs like K-Rookies and Seoul Mucon while pursuing international collaborations with prominent producers, as demonstrated by Asian Chairshot’s work with a Smashing Pumpkins’ guitarist and Glen Check’s partnership with a former U2 producer (Kim 2019c).

Meanwhile, Boongaboonga Records maintained its indie ethos through “small-scale handicraft-manufactured records” even after relocating from Hongdae due to gentrification (Shin 2012). Kiha & The Faces associated with it gave voice to a hopeless generation of Korean youths affected by neoliberal precarity in the 2000s. Furthermore, the Duriban eviction conflict marked significant moments of anti-capitalist Korean popular music production. Duriban, a small restaurant in Hongdae, became a site of protest and a music festival venue against gentrification, bringing together musicians, artists, and citizens to challenge forced eviction. The struggle led to the creation of Jarip co-op, aiming to provide an optimal environment for musicians to freely plan and execute minor music-related projects regarding albums and concerts, and to establish an accessible infrastructure for music production independent of capital and the major music industry. This movement showcased subcultural activist DIY ethos and urban commoning through art (Shin 2018). This study employs “K-wavification” to examine the commodification of Korean band music through Mnet’s survival program format, while highlighting ruptures within the commodification inspired by the band music.

Method

This study employs a multi-method textual analysis approach combining genre analysis, discourse analysis, and semiotic analysis to examine GSI and its commodification processes. The research data includes the complete broadcast of GSI (twelve episodes plus episode 0), production materials including MPMG press releases, and media coverage related to the production conference. All broadcast content was transcribed and analyzed according to program structure, narration, missions, performances, evaluation criteria, and statements from participants and judges.

These methodological approaches serve different analytical purposes. Genre analysis examines how GSI selectively deploys structural elements from previous Mnet survival audition reality TV formats, identifying both continuities and variations from established genre conventions. Discourse analysis and semiotic analysis reveal signification processes operating in GSI’s various scenes, investigating how meanings around global success, Korean identity, and authenticity are constructed through statements, interviews, imagery, and audiovisual representations.

The analysis proceeds through three sections. The first section uses genre analysis to examine the structural framework through which the program commodifies band music. Following Neale’s (1990) conception of genre as encompassing both repetition and variation, this section analyzes how GSI operates within established Mnet survival audition format conventions while introducing distinctive features such as YouTube integration and emphasis on original songwriting. Paratextual materials including MPMG press releases inform examination of the relationship between production discourse and genre features.

The second section investigates how K-wavification’s ideological embodiment manifests within the program, examining the globalization, hierarchization, dehistoricization, and spectacularization of Korean cultural elements (Jameson 1991). This section analyzes how production teams deploy survival program elements including judging panel composition, mission design, and competitive structures. Discourse analysis examines how discourses around global success and Korean identity are constructed through program titles, narrative settings, media articles, and producer/participant statements. Semiotic analysis investigates audiovisual characteristics of performances, including Seoul imagery in stage backdrops and video sequences.

The third section examines tensions between commodification logic and authenticity pursuits emerging when reality TV intersects with bands’ artistic practices. This section focuses on genre elements operating differently from typical survival audition conventions, analyzing visual and discursive elements of participant interviews and performance content, particularly lyrics addressing program constraints and evaluation systems.

Between the Commodification and Diversification of Band Music

This section analyzes how the survival audition genre commodifies Korean band music. Unlike other Mnet’s survival audition programs, GSI was fully funded by MPMG, whose press release (2022) expressed the wish to “revitalize the [Korean] band scene” beyond their own artists through “unstinting investment.” The program embodies the tension between the hierarchization and diversification of band music.

On one hand, GSI commodifies band music by establishing a hierarchy through faithfully following the survival audition program format. Throughout the twelve episodes, in addition to episode 0, which introduced the eighteen finalist teams, the bands competed based on six unique missions judged by a panel of experts, an on-site audience, team leaders, and through online pre-voting. In the first round, bands performed original songs within a three-minute limit. The second round had teams competing with songs about different decades, ranging from the 1970s to the 2000s. Two mini rounds took place after these, serving as a second chance for eliminated teams. The “A Song Dedicated to” mission came next, where bands dedicated their performances to influential figures. After the next “One on One” mission, where teams collaborated with other artists, the remaining three teams competed in the song remake round. “Touched” emerged as the winner in the final round.

Following the quantified indicators of the “merit” evaluation system of survival audition programs, GSI disseminates the ideology of meritocracy. In the first episode, the host, Yoon Park, introduces the show’s premise, stating, “Only one band that survives until the end will enjoy privileges beyond your imagination,” which include “a prize of 100 million won, a dedicated studio, appearances at domestic and international festivals and tours, and the production of an album.” Similar to other Mnet survival programs adding tension to the survival narrative, GSI intentionally highlights the competitive structure among bands. For example, in the first round, bands had to evaluate other bands’ performances, creating a competitive atmosphere and tension. Therefore, as a survival audition show, GSI ideologically represents musical performances as rankable objects and hierarchizes them based on popularity and entertainment value.

On the other hand, following MPMG’s claim, GSI attempted to revitalize the band music scene by introducing various bands to the public. Although the program focused on the competition among the eighteen teams that made it to the finals, the performances of the forty-five bands including those eliminated in the second preliminary of the live streaming audition were all uploaded to Mnet’s YouTube channel in April 2022. Furthermore, the band pool system provided two additional rounds called “mini missions” to bands that were defeated in the first and second rounds, also giving several bands a second chance to advance to the next round. These measures helped overcome the constraint of introducing a limited number of bands in a few episodes, providing opportunities for various Korean bands to be widely exposed to the public.

Moreover, unlike K-pop survival programs, the competition was mainly based on the bands’ original songs. MPMG (2022) stated,

With the belief that each band’s identity is important, we requested the production team to have a competition focused on original songs that can showcase each band’s characteristics and abilities, rather than the cover song format mainly used in other programs.

In every round, bands performed either their original songs, songs in their unique style to match the given theme, or their own interpretations of remake songs. Compared to K-pop competitions, which have evaluation criteria based on how well the participants perform the given songs and performances, GSI reflects the DIY culture that values song creation and artistic integrity.

Although these opportunities facilitate the exposure of various bands’ unique and genuine identities to the public, they are inherently designed to enhance the commodification of music by promoting diverse music products to the audience, contributing to the band music boom. While MPMG stated that they want to boost the band music genre boom rather than the rise of specific bands, they seek to appropriate the interest and recognition generated by GSI after the show by signing exclusive contracts with the final two teams, including YUDABINBAND and Touched, in addition to their existing affiliated artist Surl.

K-Wavification’s Ideological Embodiment

This section examines K-wavification’s ideological manifestations in GSI, focusing on the globalization of Korean band music as commodities, the hierarchization of music genres, and the spectacularization and dehistoricization of Korean places and histories. Firstly, GSI hails Korean band music as a transnational cultural product by incorporating band music as a new genre of the Korean Wave. This intention is clearly articulated by the show’s producer, who explained at a press conference that the title was inspired by the “British Invasion” with the goal of following K-pop’s global success.

These days, K-pop is a globally influential genre, and I thought [Korean] band [music] could follow the same path. The most influential time for bands was probably when the Beatles conquered the American market. The title is derived from the term ‘British Invasion’ (Park 2022).

The producer’s reference reveals not only the aspiration for global reach, but also the problematic frameworks underlying such aspirations. His reference to the Beatles “conquering the American market” directly reveals how global success is fundamentally conceptualized through U.S. market dominance, positioning success in the American market as the benchmark and primary pathway for global achievement. While GSI seeks to reach diverse international audiences with Korean band music, the pathways for global dissemination remain heavily dependent on American-dominated platforms such as YouTube and content partnerships with U.S. streaming services like Apple TV+. This American hegemony in defining global cultural success reveals the inherent asymmetries within transnational cultural circulation, where seemingly global expansion remains structurally dependent on U.S.-centric media infrastructures and market logics.

These global aspirations extend beyond producer discourse, becoming embedded within the program’s narrative structure through a fictional character named “Mr. G,” a wealthy old man who does not reveal his face and is dressed in luxury brands. GSI is set in a scenario where Mr. G, the leader of a fictional Korean band, “THE GREAT,” which once rivalled the Beatles but failed in the 1960s, scouts millennial and Generation Z bands by watching multiple monitors from the top of a tower and controls the competition. In Episode 1, the big brother says, “Now, I can help young generation bands achieve success. I know what it takes to create a world-class band.” The host, Yoon Park, an agent of Mr. G, presents the program by inviting judges and delivering missions to the participating bands. The program’s concept is expressed by the host’s rhetoric that GSI is for proving “the global potential of K-bands” and witnessing “the birth of global K-bands.”

In Episode 0, participating bands accepted this global purpose, citing entry into the global market as a primary motivation for joining the competition. D82 expressed their hope that GSI would be an opportunity to “introduce Korean bands (to the world),” while Touched aimed “to touch global fans,” Hwanho also expressed their ambition to “become a superstar, rockstar, and a band of another class that receives love calls from abroad,” and PATZ desired to embark on a “world tour.”

The aspiration to transform Korean band music into an internationally successful cultural commodity is expressed in the song choices of the bands. Particularly in the third round mission, where bands dedicate songs to specific Koreans, W24 and PATZ showcased songs dedicated to figures who have succeeded globally. W24 dedicated their song “RUAH” to soccer player Son Heung-min, who they noted “achieved tremendous feats as a Korean and Asian.” PATZ dedicated their song “Pathfinder” to fashion designer Woo Young-mi, who they highlighted “captivated the world with her own identity.” These songs ideologically serve as musical embodiments of the participating bands’ national ambitions through imaginary identification with internationally successful Koreans in the global market.

GSI maneuvers the K-wavification by idealizing the global success of K-pop to follow, thereby creating music genre hierarchies. GSI articulates K-pop with band music by including elements such as judges from the K-pop industry. Although the judges and team leaders included a few Hongdae indie band musicians and producers, the majority of the judging panel consisted of figures from the mainstream K-pop industry, including a former participant of Produce 101, a K-pop music video director, a K-pop Artists and Repertoire (A&R) producer, and members from K-pop bands, The Trax and N.Flying from major K-pop companies.

GSI manifests K-wavification through opportunities given to bands to advance based on their existing connections to the K-pop industry and in missions involving the reinterpretation of popular K-pop songs. Despite the diversity of band music genres such as shoegazing, reggae, trancecore, garage, and punk rock in the live-streaming preliminary round, bands representing these alternative genres were eliminated. Notably, ONEWE, W24, and South Club, bands that blur the boundaries between Korean bands and K-pop through their more commercially accessible sounds and polished, idol-adjacent esthetics or famous idol-turned-vocalists, all passed the preliminary round. This K-pop orientation becomes more apparent in the second Round Mini Mission, where the nine bands eliminated in the first round were allowed to select one of two BTS hit songs, “DNA” or “Fake Love,” to compete with their own arranged versions.

The participating bands also directly combine K-pop with their own music. In the fourth round mission, where bands collaborate with other artists, W24, ONEWE, and Band Nah showcased collaboration stages with K-pop idols. In this round, the leader of Band Nah directly fused K-pop trends with band music, stating, “We incorporated elements that always appear in K-pop, such as a build-up followed by a drop, or a rap-like element in the second verse.” Reflecting the K-pop stage composition that features “the ending pose,” a dramatic and choreographed stance held at the end of a performance to leave a lasting impression, Band Nah adopted this pose at the end of their performance.

It indicates that GSI is not a level playing field for fair competition, but ideologically imposes the idealized standards of K-pop onto the values of the bands’ performances to augment their global marketability. In the gravitational pull of “K-wavification,” the hierarchization and diversification of band music, discussed in the previous section, become refracted. The hierarchization is restructured by the goal of global expansion by idealizing the genre of K-pop, while the diversification becomes dispersed.

K-wavification produces the ideological effects of spectacularization and dehistoricization of Korean places. The title borrows from the “British Invasion” but uses “Great Seoul Invasion” instead of “(Great) Korean Invasion,” revealing an intention to strategically leverage the brand value of “Seoul” rather than Korea as a whole. The stage backdrop, filled with skyscrapers, along with scenes of glamorous downtown landscapes and Seoul’s tourist attractions exuding a cool urban vibe, was selected to be represented. It overrepresents Seoul as synonymous with Korea, while spectacularizing it as an urban scenic resource for global tourism consumption.

The spectacularized images of Seoul whitewash the history of gentrification that the Korean government has pursued since the 1980s through extensive demolition and redevelopment to achieve compressed modernization and beautification. Along with the state, the aspirations of the middle class and Korean conglomerates for better living environments and real estate investment returns have driven the establishment of commercial and residential buildings and infrastructures in various areas of Seoul, including Hongdae, leading to the destruction of affordable housing for poor families, forcibly displacing them from their local communities (Shin and Kim 2016). Disregarding its historical localities, GSI ideologically reconstructs Seoul as a vibrant and sophisticated city.

The bands’ performances expressing each decade during the second round also dehistoricize and spectacularize Korean culture by highlighting only selective and romanticized aspects of the eras, thus ignoring the oppressive histories during the compressed modernization. D82’s “70’s Night” had the concept of inviting the audience to a free club in the 1970s. This portrayal of the era overlooks the oppressive realities under the Yusin regime, an authoritarian period under Park Chung-hee, who ruled for eighteen years, that suppressed freedoms of the press and seized control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Band Nah delivered the festive vibe of the 1988 Seoul Olympics through “88,” while the glamorous depiction obscures the military dictatorship’s forced urban redevelopment and suppression of democratization movements. Lacuna’s “1998” expressed the fear of the millennium bug through a fairy-tale-like sentiment, likening it to the feeling of love. The narrative focuses solely on the vague anxiety surrounding the millennium bug, detached from the 1997 Asian financial crisis that significantly impacted Korean society. ONEWE sang about the freedom of the young generation in the 2000s, who pursued their individuality in “Hippie” (Freedom from MM), while disregarding the precarious status of youths under the neoliberal order since the late 2000s. Therefore, the scenes erase Korean historicity, transforming music into a spectacle that provides only sensory pleasure for a global audience.

Ruptures Between Commodification and Authenticity

This section examines the ruptures between the commodification of band music and artists’ pursuit of authenticity. As shown in the previous section, GSI follows Mnet’s survival program genre, a format-cum-product structured for mass consumption, commodifying band music by imposing hierarchical standards based on entertainment value following Korean Wave standards. Meanwhile, band musicians’ artistic integrity and pursuit of unique identity express resistance against these imposed standards. The reality genre, designed to capture participants’ authentic selves, ironically incorporates musicians’ opposition to these standards into its own entertainment framework. The tension between band musicians’ pursuit of authenticity and the reality genre’s commodification logic creates paradoxical ruptures, manifesting through direct challenges to program rules, creative expressions of dissent, and even complete withdrawal from competition.

The first rupture emerges through participants’ vocal challenges to the program’s commodification logic. The show deliberately features interviews and comments where participants openly challenge the program’s standardization requirements, revealing their commitment to artistic integrity. When required to compress songs into three-minute performances, Walking After U’s Haein states, “I thought it was cruel. These are our precious songs, and they’re asking us to pick just one and cut it down.” After seeing the first mission requiring bands to score other bands, Band Nah’s leader declares, “Music cannot be ranked by grades,” directly challenging the show’s meritocratic premise. The leader of OWALLOIL demonstrates meta-awareness of reality TV conventions with exclamations like “(Mnet) Survival! You’re truly evil!” when confronted with the evaluation rules. After elimination, a W24 member maintains their artistic convictions: “We accept the results, but I don’t think the scores represent our music or our performance.” However, these complaints were appropriated by the program itself for amplifying entertainment appeal rather than being seriously addressed and developed.

The second rupture occurs when bands transform their frustrations into musical expressions of dissent. The third mini mission exemplifies this process, requiring participating bands to create songs based on a 4-bar guitar riff they had just heard within thirty minutes, followed by only five minutes of rehearsal before performing, a format designed to create a dramatic and tense atmosphere.

The bands sublimated their discontent into music, articulating through lyrics their dissatisfaction with the pressure of completing songs in such short time. ONEWE directly conveyed their feelings with lyrics, “This situation is really funny. This makes no sense.” Lacuna portrayed a sense of self-mockery as participants with a melancholic melody and lyrics like “Someone save me. Before all my blood dries up, in this darkening night, we’ll be in a box. Love song or sad ending, I’ll entertain you.” With a rock and roll sound, Surl used the Korean expression, “Gulline”(굴리네), which translates to “rolling” in English but also means to make someone work hard, delivering their feelings with the lyrics “Rolling, rolling, rolling, Naleul Gulline (you’re making me work excessively).”

Uniquely, the bands express rebellious affects against the intense labor conditions inherent to survival programs, such as tight deadlines and demanding schedules. Unlike K-pop audition programs, where participants must perform assigned songs, the DIY culture of band music allows for more creative freedom, which manifests resistance.

However, rebellious artistic expressions intended for broadcast are mediated by institutional constraints. As Korean broadcasting regulations mandate pre-broadcast review and modification of lyrics to ensure compliance with standards on language and profanity, artists cannot present their genuine, raw, unfiltered expressions, but rather must deliver a negotiated and sanitized product suitable for broadcast. This filtration process exemplifies how authentic resistance is ultimately refracted by the broadcasting format to align with the logic of commodification.

Paradoxically, this creative resistance was embraced by the program’s evaluation system, with judges praising these acts of defiance. Consequently, Surl presented a similar song, “No Jam,” in the next round, effectively commodifying their rebellious spirit as entertainment value. Notably, the participants’ expressions of resistance against labor conditions become strategic assets.

While the previous fissures are sutured as entertainment elements by the program, the third case demonstrates the artists’ rejection of Mnet’s music industry environment, representing a glimpse of resistance against commodification. When The Next Generation passed the first round but decided the program’s direction differed from their envisioned “romance,” they chose to withdraw from the competition, prioritizing their artistic beliefs over competitive success. The exceptional moment indicates “the fraught relationship between trusting the process and trusting the self” (Levy 2025, 759) in reality programs.

Notably, the program did not portray their decision negatively. Instead, it expressed respect for the resistance spirit of Hongdae indie bands. The program aired a video of The Next Generation performing in their practice room-cum-concert hall in Hongdae, adding a caption stating, “They are happier singing in their small but precious self-made concert hall than on the glamorous spotlight stage.” In their departure scene, the program inserted the phrase, “May the romance they desire always be with The Next Generation on the path they walk.”

The scene is alien to the survival program genre that usually “excludes or silences the voices of the many who are eliminated” (Ryoo and Park 2012, 159). The characteristic of Korean-style survival programs that emphasize the bond between participants is manifested in the reactions of other participants, such as “They’re taking care of Hongdae Pride” and ‘I respect that.’

This authenticity-pursuing program makes visible the bands’ artistic integrity while simultaneously absorbing it into the commodification process to enhance entertainment value. The unique articulation between the authenticity pursuits of survival programs and the resistance-oriented values of indie band culture presents a paradox. Excavating these sutured fissures allows us to critically imagine music’s role in countering commodification.

Concluding Remarks

This study positions music not as a fleeting consumer good, but as a cultural form embodying complex relationships between creativity, authenticity, and market forces. By examining K-wavification, this research analyzes how cultural industries reshape artistic expression while constraining creative autonomy. The stakes involve not only the economic viability of cultural workers but also the preservation of music’s power to critique social oppression and activate alternative imaginaries (Hesmondhalgh 2013). This study therefore analyzes commodification to understand how to resist music’s reduction to mere exchange value and preserve the cultural diversity that fuels this transformative potential.

The concept of “K-wavification” was devised to critique the commodification process within the Korean Wave, not to essentially identify the two. Cultural commodification represents merely one dimension among the multifaceted trajectories aligned with the global ascendance of the Korean Wave. This trend potentially facilitates alternative networks for transnational solidarity among marginalized nations challenging hegemonic cultural dominance of the global North (Yoon and Labarta Garcia 2024). GSI demonstrates the possibility, albeit limited, of cultural artifacts inspired by the indie band music scene that resists commodification of music.

These findings, however, emerge from a textual analysis approach that acknowledges several methodological constraints that point toward productive avenues for future investigation. This methodology limits examination of various material production conditions that may influence television content creation. Beyond the textual analysis, production studies methodology involving interviews with production teams and participants would provide crucial insights into the specific production constraints and regulatory pressures that shape content creation, such as Korea’s Broadcasting Act and other institutional policy frameworks that govern television production. Additionally, global fandom studies examining audience reception would illuminate how international fans interpret and respond to programs like GSI and their K-wavification processes.

Future research could apply K-wavification to other genres and formats for broader understanding of cultural transformation processes. Programs such as Mnet’s World Street Woman Fighter (2025), the animated film KPop Demon Hunters, and Apple TV+’s series KPOPPED exemplify how K-wavification transcends traditional media boundaries across different genres. Comparative cross-national studies would illuminate new forms of global-local cultural interactions.