K-pop turns to foreigners to solve talent shortage

Students train at SM Universe, an academy for K-pop trainees. [KIM KYUNG-ROK]

The K-pop industry is struggling with a shortage in staff and trainees amid K-pop's rising popularity, and some companies are turning to foreigners to solve the problem.

According to the Korea Employment Information Service, the average age of employees working for the arts, entertainment and sports industries was 39.5 in 2019. The age has gone up compared to the average age of 37.1 in 2010.

The workforce is not only lacking new and young talent but also losing those already in the industry.

Employees under 29 worked an average of 1.2 years in the industry in 2019. The average working period was 1.7 years for the same age group in 2010.

"The entertainment industry's demand for labor has been rising continuously between 2014 and 2019, and we expect labor demand and the number of employees to rise in the mid-to-long-term," a spokesperson for Korea Employment Information Service said. "But in the industry, a lot of young workers only work for the short-term or move on to other industries."

Entertainment companies have been experiencing a labor shortage for a long time.

"It does depend on the number of members in one K-pop group and what's on their schedule, but there need to be at least two artist managers on-site," an entertainment company CEO said. "Even if we can hire an on-site manager, many of them leave the company before they get promoted."

Some say better working conditions haven't been able to solve the matter.

"When I first started working as a manager, my salary was 300,000 won [$227] a month, and the working environment wasn't good either," a director at another entertainment agency said. "Things have changed now, and we allow them to work 52 hours a week and give them increased wages, but on-site managers are still hard to find."

"It's difficult to find people because the on-site managers are considered a job that people have to sacrifice their personal life for, and the people we do hire tend to think that they can work for a short time and move on to find another job."

More trainees are needed as well.

"We have more female trainees than male trainees, and that could be because girl groups are more popular these days," another director at an entertainment agency said. "If the total pool of people we can go looking for trainees in decreases due to the low birth rate, it's inevitable that the number of trainees we find will decrease too."

"The number of people interested in K-pop itself has increased, but it might be that we haven't been able to find them."

With Korea's population declining, entertainment agencies have been turning to foreigners to find trainees.

YG Entertainment is traveling to countries abroad to host global auditions and is planning to visit Vancouver and San Francisco in September. It has also been going around Thailand through May and August to hold auditions, visiting cities like Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok and Chiang Rai.

SM Entertainment also focuses on training foreigners, opening SM Universe, an academy for K-pop trainees.

More than the majority of its students are foreigners, with 84 foreign trainees and 36 Korean trainees.

"[Korea's] low birth rate will make it difficult for the supply of its people to match the demand," Cho Young-tae, professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Health, said. "Perhaps there could be a day when V-pop in Vietnam, where the fertility rate is 2.1, could become more popular."

"Even with the number of births falling every year, companies need to find talented trainees and have them compete with each other to debut. It's inevitable that companies will be more reliant on overseas [trainees]."

Bang Si-hyuk, chief of HYBE, said at a forum hosted by the Kwanhun Club in March that improving overall working conditions in the industry could be a solution to the talent shortage K-pop is facing.

"HYBE is also doing its best, but some 600,000 entertainment industry employees can't all become happy just because one entertainment company aims to make improvements," Bang said at the forum. "It's important to have an association that will improve working conditions in the overall industry."

"We see associations in other industries get association fees from its members to help smaller companies that can't provide better benefits for their employees. Yes, there could be some help from the government, but it's necessary to have the industry help each other."

BY HWANG JEE-YOUNG, LEE TAE-HEE [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]