Waiting for home bands to play the right tune

The hottest topic of discussion among students, according to Sina micro blog, is neither education nor future careers; it is Hallyu stars of the Republic of Korea. A quick glance at the micro blog, reveals how much Chinese teenagers adore ROK music groups.

Chinese teenagers' love for Hallyu stars may seem superficial to many. But there is a lesson here for the Chinese music industry. Hallyu, or the Korean wave, a term coined by Chinese journalists in the late 1990s, has been used by Asian people to describe the popularity of ROK pop music, TV dramas and films.

K-pop, the pioneering Korean wave, is extremely popular in East and Southeast Asian countries - it is catching on in other parts of the world as well. The mind-boggling popularity of "Gangnam style", a song by K-pop singer PSY - whose video had generated over 1 billion clicks on YouTube by the end of 2012 - is hard to explain. So what does K-pop owe its success to? The answer: reform and government support, and the ROK entertainment industry's well-organized "star-producing" system (though some have criticized it for its "slave contracts").