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Use of English phrases - Article Selection

Three different fields, pop singer or group names, titles of songs, and lyrics, have exhibited a significant growth in the usage of English words according to Korean music charts like Melon. The names of singers showed the big change at first. No singers in 1990 who are in the top fifty charts have English in their names. Before this time, people who work in the Korean music industry view using Korean names as a standard, which most musicians followed. Fourteen (28%) singers began using English names in 1995, and the environment was now different from before. Some popular singers at the time such as Gun-mo Kim, Mi-kyung Park, Jin-young Park, Seong-chul Lee, and Jin-seop Byun still used Korean names, but singers and groups such as DJ DOC, 015B, Piano, and Solid now used English names, which set a difference from the early 1990s. Due to mostly the 1997 financial crisis and how the government now no longer censored English lyrics, Korea started to have a boom in English. Therefore, since the late 1990s, English usage in singers' names, song titles, and lyrics has grown quickly. Seventeen singers (34%) used English names in the top fifty charts in 2000, and more than half of the singers (thirty-one, 62%) did so in 2005. In 2010, which is more recently, forty-one (82%) singers used English names among the top fifty songs, but usually three or four singers and groups had more than one or two songs on the chart simultaneously. Korean names (e.g. Ji-youg Baek, In- young Seo, and Gak-Hue) are seen less frequently because many K-pop singers have English names (e.g. IU, Sistar, T-ara, GD&TOP, BEAST, and After School). Notably, until the early 1990s, musicians had Korean characters for their English names, but now singers would just take their English names without turning them into Korean characters.

Hybrid K-pop has imported different styles from foreign countries and has presented its internationality through English lyrics. Korean pop music from singers or groups who are Korean-American such as Fly to the Sky, G.O.D., Rich, You- Seung-jun, and Drunken Tiger both has American style and English lyrics. Since these Korean-American singers' music has such a unique style that is different from common Korean music, young people quickly invest interest and want to learn more about these types of music.

The entertainment companies help to expand K-pop to other parts of the world through a number of different methods. Singers need to use English since the companies want to occupy markets in the other parts of Asia, which enables them to open the Western market in the end. Most of the K-pop singers learn English because it is a common language in the world of music, but some singers also learn other foreign languages such as Japanese to approach the Japanese market.

According to Elaine W. Chun's research, even though hybridity appears more and more often in K-pop, and sometimes may even make fans admire their K-pop stars more because it is fresh, new and interesting, it is hard to change those who believe in a perfect ideal for pure linguistic. This means that the original form of language is still hard to be altered.

East Asia has many different languages, which makes recording in English a working choice to make up the language gap that disturbs the international music communication. Nonetheless, probably because singers do not want to take the risk of presenting a wrong identity, this option is certainly not used most commonly. The reason why the frequency of the strategy is comparatively low is because not many East Asian artists have fluent English skills, which people often make comments about a singer's English fluency. More importantly, the East Asian music wave is not simply about the sounds and products of music. Flows of language and identity come with the East Asian wave, and more of these flows will enable researchers to have a better understanding of the international flow in East Asian music.