K-pop Industry and Environmental Issue

As a K-pop fan, despite knowing how K-pop has always been a huge part of modern music industry, it is inevitable that many K-pop related activities negatively impact our environment in many aspects. One aspect in which I would talk about today is the album production and album consumption. Purchasing albums are consider typical activities for K-pop fans as to support their favorite artist. As the competition within the industry have been increase gradually, K-pop fans need to purchase tons of albums in order to put their favorite artist to their highest reputation. But without realizing, are we actually harming the environment?

The Problem

Buying physical albums is one of the ways to support our favorite artist. As the sales of albums determine the popularity of that artist and prove their group relevance. Many K-pop entertainments use this strategy to attract the fan clubs like having fan sign events for the top spender fans or having awards based on the group's physical album sales. These kinds of events lead to “bulk-buying” which refers to buying a practice in which fan clubs would buy the same albums in an immense amount. Especially nowadays, K-pop albums come with many versions and merchandise to boost their sales, especially that many photo-book albums nowadays have included many pages (can be up to 250 pages). Thinking in terms of how much paper and plastic have been used and wasted to create a single album is massive.

According to Areum Jeong, an assistant professor of humanities and writing at the Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute who have research about the K-pop industry stated that the bulk-buying trends have arisen drastically especially during the covid-19 pandemic as before the pandemic, fan signs were held in person and the audience was limited in size but because of the pandemic, the fan sign was held as online where every Fan club from all over the world can take part, bringing incurred additional environmental costs as global shipping has come to a role.

In addition, the albums that have not been used become waste, mentioning that there are fans who attempt to sell, give away, or donate albums to obtain access to certain fan engagement activities, but the environmental effects of their buying cannot be mitigated. I, as a part of this community, see this issue as a serious problem. Not only that these physical albums are turning into waste but also considering the amount of carbon footprint made during the process of making and shipping those goods. As plastic pollution is considered to be one of the most concerning environmental issues in 2022. Therefore, it can be said that this is a concerning issue by reducing the amount of album production and consumption, it would at least help reduce the rise of plastic pollution.