Over the past 10 years, Korean music — primarily K-pop — has become more popular on an international basis. Groups like Girls’ Generation , Super Junior , and 2NE1 are now recognized not only in Korea, but in Europe, North America, South America, and most of East Asia. This is thanks to Korea’s music industry taking its cues from the most prominent international music industries, yet keeping true to their culture, and promoting it worldwide through television and endorsements.
Now there are signs other music industries outside of Korea is recognizing K-pop. Reports now show the Teen Choice Awards are adding a category for international musical artist and half of the nominations are prominent K-pop groups.
According to Koreaboo , the aforementioned K-pop groups (Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, 2NE1) are nominated in the inaugural “ Choice International Artists ” category for the 2015 Teen Choice Awards . They’ll be hoping to win alongside Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer and British pop acts One Direction and Little Mix.
Though this year is the first time the Teen Choice Awards featured an international artist category, international artists have been featured before, as reported by KpopStarz . Back in 2013, Psy was nominated for Choice Breakout Artist for the global success of “Gangnam Style.” However, he lost to English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran that year.
Among the K-pop community, they are very excited that three of the nominees are prominent K-pop groups. Yet, they also showed disdain at the fact BIGBANG was featured following with the success of their hit track “Bang Bang Bang,” which made it on the iTunes Top 100 in the United States. Still, half of the nominations is an accomplishment.
Voting for the”Choice International Artist category takes place on the Teen Choice Awards official website . Each category has a limit of one vote per category per Facebook account per day up until July 24, 2015. Afterwards, winners will be announced at this year’s Teen Choice Awards on Saturday, August 19, 2015.
[Image digitally created by Jan Omega]