Girls Gone Wild

Girls Generation, the nine-member female idol collective, is the latest K-pop group to take a stab at expanding its fan base beyond Asia.

Encouraged by the group’s popularity in Japan and the Philippines, Korean broadcaster KBS, which organized a pair of recent sold-out Girls Generation concerts at Tokyo Dome that brought in $6.8 million, says it is planning to bring the group to Europe and South America “within the year,” according to Reuters.

More than half the songs the group performed in Tokyo were in Japanese or English.

K-pop stars have also been successful in one endeavor that has always eluded Korea: Penetrating the huge Japanese home electronics market.

Though companies like LG Electronics and Samsung have always had some sort of presence in Japan, their market share has always been extremely low relative to other countries.

However, thanks to promotional efforts by the likes of K-pop acts Kara and TVXQ, Korean exports of electronics to Japan increased by 50 percent over last year during the first six months of 2011.

Much of this growth was in the area of smart phones. Samsung’s Galaxy has outsold both the iPhone and Japan’s most popular domestic phone since it went on sale June 23. Samsung is now the third-largest handset vendor in Japan.