The electrifying sound of K-pop drew eager students and guests to the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism the morning of Oct. 18 for the “Behind the Scenes of K-pop” speaker event.

The event was hosted by Visions and Voices and organized by Hye Jin Lee, clinical assistant professor of communication, in collaboration with Annenberg and the Thornton School of Music. It was also co-sponsored by the Korea Foundation and Asian Pacific American Student Services.

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The event officially began at 9:45 a.m. with a warm welcome from Jason King, dean of Thornton, as he thoughtfully acknowledged the land USC sits on. He then introduced Youngwan Kim, consul general of the Republic of Korea in Los Angeles, who expressed his gratitude to the event organizers and panelists.

A session focused on K-culture marketing featured a myriad of speakers including Soy Kim, head of North American music and podcast content strategy at YouTube. Kim recalled her experience working with boy band BTS, as she emphasized how important it is to have a universal understanding of what music can be and how it can feel.

“It was really important to understand, ‘What did the band want?’ And they wanted to be seen as a voice of the youth, of the generation,” Kim said. “So if that’s a story, then we need to make sure that’s coming across in everything that we do.”

Hye Jin Lee was the moderator for a panel on K-pop journalism, introducing the speakers of the first session: Jae-Ha Kim, a columnist at the Chicago Tribune, and P. Claire Dodson, the associate director of culture at Teen Vogue. Kim emphasized the importance of having an editor who cares about K-pop, recounting an experience with editors who did not share that passion.

“It was awful because they didn’t know what I was writing about and they wanted to know why I was using some common K-pop terms,” Kim said. “I felt really bad for the artists who had spent an hour talking to me … and to see that all they saw them was not as a human being, but as metrics.”

Furthermore, Dodson shared her experiences as an editor at Teen Vogue and what she often looks for in K-pop stories.

“It was important for me to look at the ways K-pop brings in all these different cultural stories, all these different kinds of subjects and influences,” Dodson said. “What I’m looking for in coverage is a deep dive with an artist about something they made.”

At a later session on K-pop songwriting, songwriter for ITZY, ENHYPEN and NMIXX Charlotte Wilson spoke on her mindset during the songwriting process and how K-pop has allowed her to explore and be unique.

“Writing a K-pop song, especially one that has a mixture of genres, is basically like you’re one or two people writing the top line, but you need to be 10 people,” Wilson said. “Basically, your mind needs to be in every single genre.”

K-pop is not only a mixture of various musical genres, but it also features the personalities and styles of different members. Music producer and songwriter for TWICE, NCT and AOA David Amber shared how he, and many other songwriters, approach this and write a song that embodies these different styles.

“There’s two ways to approach it. There’s one way, which is just ignore it, and then just write a great record, and then they’ll figure out who goes where and what does what,” Amber said. “Or you do the other way, where every two bars, you switch it up really, really hard … and it just becomes a mathematical show-off game for all the writers.”

Following a lunch break and an energetic dance performance from the Spade A Dance team, a session focusing on K-pop live events began. This panel featured Joen Choe, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships at CJ ENM America, and Marlene Tsuchii, a music agent at Creative Artists Agency.

Choe, who joined CJ ENM earlier this year, shared his insights and experience working on KCON, a K-pop convention, for the first time and how the event has developed since its first celebration in 2012. Originally attracting 10,000 attendees, KCON has grown to an event of 140,000 people that takes over most of L.A. Live at the Crypto.com Arena.

“I mean, from those 10,000 folks who are mostly of Korean heritage or adjacent, to now, where the event is effectively 80% non-Asian,” Choe said. “And so even within the 20% Asian group, it’s probably minority Korean, in fact.”

The final session consisted of Meg Harkins, executive vice president at Imperial Music and Casablanca Records, and Daniel Hong, COO of JYP USA, as they explored the topic of K-pop in the United States.

Both Harkins and Hong highlighted the importance of physical products in the K-pop industry, as 90% of K-pop releases in the U.S. are physical copies. Whether it be randomized photo cards or albums, it is crucial that these products are released on time as they are all imported directly from Korea.

“A majority of consumption is coming from physical, so if you miss that deadline or timing … then you’re in deep trouble,” Hong said.

Harkins noted that more people are looking for cross-cultural moments in K-pop to make it more meaningful, although she expressed that she is unsure of how K-pop will evolve in the coming years.

“I’m very hopeful, but I think that ‘K’ is going to stay in there, whether it’s through language or just through process,” Harkins said.