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K-Pop takes centre stage at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang

  • MMU K-Pop society celebrates global explosion of interest in Korean pop music
  • Korean Pop music heavily feautured during the Winter Olympics Ceremony in Pyeongchang
  • Participating atheletes reveal they are huge fans of K-Pop

The Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang in South Korea is the perfect opportunity for the country to display its popular music artists to the world.

The ever-growing Korean pop phenomenon headlined the opening ceremony on February, 9, 2018 as the athletes marched in to catchy K-pop songs.

The industry is full of acts that display high-adrenaline performances that include singing, rapping and elaborate dance routines which attract people from all over the world.

One of the songs played during the Olympics opening ceremony was ‘DNA’ by seven-member band BTS, who have been making waves in the west after breaking pop industry records in the United States.

 

Other songs featured included Fantastic Baby by South-Korea’s most popular boy group Big Bang, Likey by girl group TWICE, and Red Flavour by Red Velvet.

The USA team walked into the Olympics to ‘Gangnam style’ by PSY which is possibly the most famous Korean song in the world with more than three billion views on YouTube.

One of the members of Big Bang, Taeyang. released an Olympic song called Louder and performed it at the Olympic Torch Relay back in November last year.

Trixia Mercado, 20, a committee member of the K-pop society at MMU, said: “I think K-pop has blown up over the years because Big Bang won an MTV Europe Music Award in 2011, and also recently BTS won the Billboard Top social artists award at Billboard Music Awards, exposing them to the west and gaining more fans.”

The closing ceremony today is set to include performances from the likes of nine-member boy group EXO and K-pop star CL.

Trixia said: “With EXO performing it will definitely give them more exposure and CL will be performing too, which will give her exposure to the worldwide viewers.”

Many athletes themselves have said they are huge K-pop fans and listen to the music to pump them up for their events.

South Korean speed skater Lee Yubin said she loves to listen to BTS before performing to relieve stress.

While Russian skater Evgenia Medvedeva told the Washington Post she listened to music by EXO before her skating performance.

South Korea has made sure that k-pop has been incorporated in the opening and closing ceremonies.

Trixia added: “K-pop is open to everyone and people are embracing the music, it’s getting bigger in terms of fans and it’s music and will continue to grow.”