How Korean Entertainment Stayed Ahead of the Game During COVID

As businesses struggle to adapt to a new world of shutdowns and social distancing, the entertainment industry has been particularly hard hit. Unable to hold concerts or continue to film shows and movies, entertainment companies all over the globe have worked to keep creating content and to access fans while they’re stuck at home.

In many ways, the South Korean entertainment industry was particularly well positioned to quickly transition in the COVID era. For one thing, the government’s quick response and extensive contact-tracing allowed them to relax distancing guidelines and let production get a little bit closer to normal, at least until recent spikes this summer. But even beyond the governmental response, South Korea has long invested in technology and infrastructure that allowed them to shift to a world of “untact,” or contactless, interactions, and then “ontact,” recreating social interactions in online spaces.

The South Korean entertainment industry is no different, and existing trends focused on increasing online content allowed them to stay ahead of the game once the world transitioned into the online, COVID era.

Music

Music is one of the key arenas where, while still significantly impacted by COVID-19 shutdowns, South Korean artists have been better positioned to weather the storm. Live events form a significant portion of income for artists worldwide, and the small shares of revenue paid out to artists from streaming services have been a controversial topic that has only gained more attention in the COVID era.

While live events are, of course, a significant form of revenue for South Korean entertainment companies as well, they also have the benefit of strong physical CD sales, which fans buy up as collectors items or to win entry into events with their favorite stars. In fact, despite COVID-19 sales are doing more than fine, with album sales up 40 percent for the first half of the year. Some speculate that fans are taking the money they might have spent on concerts – or money that got unexpectedly refunded back to their bank accounts after shows were cancelled – to show support for their favorite artists by buying more physical albums.

In addition, South Korean artists are finding ways to bring “ontact” to their album promotions. Many artists have held online “fansign” events, replicating a typical promotion event but online instead. Fans purchase copies of the album to enter in a drawing – the lucky winners get to do a video call with their favorite artist while the singer personally signs a CD, which is later mailed to the recipient.

Online concerts are also booming in South Korea. The Beyond LIVE series – which calls itself the world’s first “Online Customized Paid Concert” – held its first show with SuperM in April and earned an approximated 2.4 billion won ($2 million) from its 75,000 paid viewers. Some groups streamed previously shot concert footage for fans – BTS’ free Bang Bang Con back in April included a marathon of their previous shows, totalling 24 hours of footage over two days. Their paid follow-up, Bang Bang Con: The Live, drew 756,000 fans, becoming certified by the Guiness Book of World Records as the world’s largest streamed concert. That number – 756,000 – is more than 10 times the capacity of many of the stadiums that BTS played for their physical concert tour in 2019, and all the attendees were able to join in from the safety of their homes around the world.

This has been one of the positives of the shift to ontact – world-wide streaming and relatively low prices have significantly increased access for K-pop fans around the world. Because fansigns were held online, fans from all over the world were able to enter, whereas normally they would have to be in South Korea to attend such an event. Same with concerts – for fans who don’t live near a major city where groups often tour, this could be their first chance to “attend” a K-pop concert, and at a relatively reasonable price too (most tickets cost around $30 and often have unlimited playback included).

The fact that the Korean music industry was able to get these events off the ground so quickly was due in part to forward-looking investments in digital technology and platforms that have been taking place for years. Take Augmented Reality, for example – which K-pop companies had already started using in recent years, including for merchandise. By integrating AR elements into their streamed concerts, groups were able to add an extra element to their online performances. And some groups had already started offering paid live-streams of their physical concerts last year, which made the transition to fully streamed concerts slightly easier for both companies and fans.

This relatively optimistic picture does not hold across the board, though. For up-and-coming acts who are still trying to build interest and capture loyal fans, the COVID era has been a major setback. Groups that are not yet popular enough to hold an online concert are left without any options to gain at least some revenue during this time.

TV and Film

Outside of the music industry, the picture is more mixed. Although schedules for dramas and TV shows had been moving back to normal, many had to halt filming entirely again at the end of August as cases spiked, and several shows scheduled to start airing at the end of August have been postponed. Starting September 1, some production started up again in keeping with official guidelines, but new premiere dates have not yet been announced.

The tight turnaround for drama productions has both helped and hurt them during this time. On one hand, shows are usually filmed very quickly and stories wrapped up all at once, which means that dramas are less likely to be caught in the middle of a long story arc with no resolution. On the other hand, when production is halted it can have almost immediate impacts on the availability of new content on South Korean airwaves.

One sector that is less affected as of now is Netflix productions – in recent years, the streaming giant has invested heavily in Netflix-produced Korean content as well as joint ventures with local companies. These Netflix productions work on a longer timeline, and a Netflix source told Variety in August that despite the shutdowns their content for the rest of 2020 remains “largely intact.”

As in the music industry, the pandemic may have hastened trends that were already beginning to take hold. For example, there is growing interest in web dramas, YouTube videos, and other short-form content had already gotten the attention of media companies – the fact that this content can be produced more quickly and with smaller crews makes them even more ideal during the COVID era. In July, Kakao M, the entertainment arm of tech giant Kakao, announced in July that it would be investing 300 billion won ($249 million) in digital content for Kakao TV and YouTube, with the goal of releasing 70 minutes of new content every day.

But with this focus on short, quick content, some in the entertainment industry have expressed concerns that COVID-19 will hasten a turn toward quantity over quality. Film industry insiders had already been calling for increased government support and now say that the pandemic has only worsened their ability to make films that are not just seen as another piece of content, but as a form of art.

Entertainment’s New Normal?

Thanks to long-standing investments in digital technology as well as existing moves to adapt to consumer demands, South Korean entertainment has been able to adapt relatively quickly to the COVID-19 climate. The transition has not been smooth across the board, of course, and the country needs to be aware of places where people are likely to fall through the cracks – including new or relatively unknown artists, as well as filmmakers already struggling with the financial burdens of the industry.

But given the massive success of things like live, online concerts, which allow fans from all around the world to join in regardless of their location and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional concert, it is entirely possible that some of these COVID-era strategies could be here to stay even after the pandemic has gone.