The US has become the second largest market for Korean music, surpassing China

The United States has become the world’s second largest K-pop music market, surpassing China. According to the data released on Tuesday, the East Asian country Japan is the largest market for K-pop until the middle of 2023.
According to this data, it seems that the Korean pop music market in America is still expanding. By mid-year, US K-pop album exports reached an all-time high.
According to the Korea Customs Service’s import and export trade data as of Tuesday, the volume of album exports from January to June this year was 132.934 million dollars (about 168.5 billion won), which is 17.1 percent higher than the same period last year.
K-pop music market of music industries
This export is the highest ever in the first half of the year. For 6 months of the year, Japan has become the top export destination with 485.2 million 3 thousand dollars (about 61.5 billion won). After that, it seems that the United States has 25.519 million dollars (about 32.3 billion won) and China has 22.64 million dollars (about 28.7 billion won).
Germany, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Canada, UK and France are also in the top 10. What is noteworthy is that the United States, which is considered to be the world’s largest music market, has overtaken China to become the second largest music exporter.
Apart from the year 2012, from 2020 until now, China has become the second largest export market for K-pop between Japan. In the first half of this year, Korean pop stars were achieving maximum success without BTS in America, which is considered the home of pop.
BTS singer Jimin made history as the first K-pop singer to be listed on the US Billboard list with his solo album ‘Like Crazy’. K-pop albums ‘Stray Kids’, ‘Tomorrow X’, ‘Together’ are also listed on the American Billboard. Jimin and Suga of BTS, Seventeen, Atiz and Twice are on the second place in the list.
With K-pop achieving such results, US music market analysis company Luminet said in its mid-year report that Korean became the third most streamed language in the United States, after English and Spanish.
Choi Kwang-ho, secretary general of the Korea Music Content Association, says, “K-pop, represented by BTS and Blackpink, is now established as a genre in the North American market. It took many years to establish itself after BTS won an award at the US Billboard Music Awards for the first time in 2017.”