Korean Grammys
Ride The Wave

Malaysia is said to have the most K-pop fans in Southeast Asia, so it was appropriate for the country to host the Samsung Galaxy 27th Golden Disk Awards Jan. 15-16.

The GDA have been called the Grammy Awards of Korea and were founded in 1986. The New Straits Times reports that Malaysia beat out “two other countries” for the hosting honors, though the paper didn’t mention which countries.

“The hosting of the event will be timely and will further enhance Malaysia’s profile as the host for major events,” said Seo Nak-Won, director of Korea’s Mediartncomm, prior to the awards. He added that the Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau was instrumental in making the ceremony a success.

Seo estimated that his company, which put on the awards, had invested RM11.4 million ($3.8 million) in terms of venue rentals, advertising and promotions.

“It is the biggest South Korean music festival ever organized in Malaysia,” he said. The only other country outside of Korea to host the GDA is Japan.

What distinguished the Malaysia ceremony was that most of the attendants were standing, because the event tried to accommodate as many fans as possible and the focus of the ceremony was on performances.

More than two dozen K-pop acts showed up, including G-Dragon, CNBlue, T-ARA and Beast.

Super Junior won the top album award for Sexy, Free & Single, edging out Psy and fellow boy bands SHINee and Exo.

Psy did, however, win for best song with “Gangnam Style,” though he was not present at the ceremony. 

On a related note, the Global Post reported that Asians are starting to grow tired of the so-called Korean Wave due to overexposure.

Even before Psy conquered the world, Taiwanese regulators were requesting that local radio and TV stations play less K-pop and China placed a cap on Korean content that could be broadcast on TV.

In both cases, bureaucrats feared that the popularity of Korean content was hurting local producers.

However, now it seems that the public in these countries are growing tired of the Korean Wave.

The Global Post conjectures that the backlash partly has to do with “the growing perception that South Korean pop culture is shallow, a view perpetuated by the relentless sponsoring of K-pop by the South Korean government, often at the expense of its traditional culture.”

However, the backlash needs to be viewed in perspective.  As Mark Russell, an expert on the Korean Wave, told the Global Post, “Girls Generation‘s [single] ‘Gee’ got 95 million YouTube hits [in Asia], “while Frank Ocean doesn’t even have more than 12 million.”