K-pop (케이팝), short for Korean pop (popular) music, is a genre originating in South Korea as part of South Korean culture. It can be collectively called as an "industry", representing a contemporary pop scene as it incorporated multiple different music genres such as Contemporary R&B, Dance-Pop and hip hop.

Background[]

Originally developed in the 1940s by a small amount of Western artists, the original Korean pop scene can be dated back to the 1980s, where there was a rise of korean ballad singers like Lee Moon-sae, Byun Jin-sub etc. Over the years, the scene started to develop its own thanks to the popularity of Seo Taiji and Boys in 1992.

The scene's modern evolution took place in the late 1990s when Lee Soo-man founded SM Entertainment, which led into the movement of developing entertainment companies and the formation of so called "idol groups". The other two major companies in South Korea were YG and JYP, which they were founded around the same period. H.O.T. was one of the first boy groups developed and later inspired several others groups of the genre. Baby V.O.X. and S.E.S. were some of the key girl groups active around that time.

While the first wave of "idol groups" being declined in the early 2000s, K-pop has been quickly rose to international fame when the scene saw the incorporation of electropop and dance-pop, leading to a new wave of artists of the genre such as Tvxq!, Bigbang, Super Junior, Shinee and Girls' Generation. One of the most notable achievement of that time was when Psy's 2012 song "Gangnam Style" being the first music video, anywhere in the world to reach a billion views on YouTube. Although the scene has been dominated by "idol groups" lately, there are also popular soloists around such as BoA, IU and Rain.

Key Artists[]

The following list is some of the key groups or soloists sorted by the generation where they emerged.