‘2025 K Culture Trend Forum’ poster. Provided by Culture Code Research Institute
The ‘2025 K Culture Trend Forum’ is coming, bringing together voices from the field and expert analysis that embroidered Korean pop culture this year.
This forum, which will be held at Amore Hall on the 2nd floor of Amore Pacific’s Yongsan headquarters at 10 am on the 7th, is hosted by the Amore Pacific Foundation and organized by the Culture Code Research Institute (Director Jeong Min-ah) and Kyung Hee University’s K-Culture and Story Content Research Institute (Director Ahn Soong-beom).
This forum, which started in 2022 and is now in its third year, was prepared to conclude this year’s popular culture and forecast future trends.
The forum consists of a total of 4 sessions. First, a pop music session will begin at 10 a.m., followed by a forum on dramas and entertainment at 12:40 p.m., webtoons at 2:50 p.m., and movies at 4:50 p.m.
First, in the popular music session, Cho Il-dong, a professor at the Academy of Korean Studies, Kim Young-dae, a popular music critic, Ko Yun-hwa, a senior researcher at Seoul National University’s Hallyu Research Center, and Newsis reporter Lee Jae-hoon will address current issues.
They explore social and cultural meanings surrounding entertainment companies and artists, the music craze in the rock band format, Japanese J-pop that appears throughout Korean popular music, and analysis of the reversal phenomenon shown by the group Day6.
In the second session dealing with drama and entertainment, Seokjin Yoon, a professor of Korean language and literature at Chungnam National University, Sooyoung Ahn, PD of MBC’s entertainment headquarters, Nam Ji-eun, a reporter for the Hankyoreh newspaper, Kyo-seok Kim, a pop culture critic, and Sang-baek Lee, CEO of Ace Story, discussed various narratives, starting with the recently emerging similarities between drama and entertainment. Talk about categories.
First, we examine how ‘female’ keywords in dramas such as ‘Good Partner’, ‘Queen of Tears’, ‘Seonjae Jumps Up’, and ‘Jeongnyeon’ are combined with narrative elements. It also discusses the process of establishing season and spin-off dramas and rediscovering past dramas through remastering and re-editing.
In the entertainment field, it deals with acute issues in terrestrial and online broadcasting, such as analysis of the topical factors of ‘Black and White Chef: Cooking Class War’, phenomenon caused by the decline in advertising sales, recent trends in YouTube and influencers, and the end of the golden age of MCs.
Participants in the webtoon session include Kim So-won, academic research professor at Kyung Hee University, Hanyang University academic research professor Seo Eun-young, Conist CEO Kang Tae-jin, and Content Lab Blue director Lim Min-hyuk.
They look into the popularity and fandom of BL genre webtoons such as ‘Night Flowers’. In addition, we continue to analyze various webtoon media franchises linked to dramas and animations such as ‘Jungnyeon’, ‘Murderer O’ and ‘Only I Level Up’, the performance of Korean webtoons in entering Japan, and the crisis in the webtoon industry.
In the final session, in the field of film, opinions will be shared by Jeong Min-ah, professor of film and video at Sungkyul University, film critic Lee Hyun-kyung, film journalist Kim Hyeong-seok, JoongAng Ilbo reporter Na Won-jeong, and Hive Media Corp CEO Kim Won-guk.
The panelists will cover the trends of this year’s 10 million movies such as the ‘Pamyo’ and ‘Crime City’ series, the success of franchise movies, the survival strategies of mid-level movies, and the dynamics of movie-OTT.
In particular, attention is paid to the phenomenon of the boundary between the film industry and the non-film industry collapsing, such as ‘Hello, Installment’, ‘Hachuping of Love’, and ‘Lim Young-woong | I’m Hero the Stadium’.
A forum official said, “This year’s forum is significant because the number of people in the field participating as panelists has increased significantly, and voices from the field have been emphasized.” He added, “It is even more meaningful because reporters, experts in related fields, and the general public interested in the topic can participate freely.” “It can be a venue for free and broad exchange of opinions,” he said.
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