How K-Pop Bridges English and Korean Languages Despite the Vast Geographical Distance

Dr. Erica Brozovsky of the PBS series Otherwords explains the linguistic phenomenon in K-Pop, noting how the songs bring the English and Korean languages together despite the vast geographical distance. It all started when US soldiers brought their music over during the Korean War.

Much of the time that two languages bump up against each other, it’s because they’re physically adjacent. And close proximity is how English and Korean started coming into contact, too…..these American soldiers also brought American music, setting off a cultural exchange that would snowball into the global K-pop phenomenon we see today.

Brozovsky talked about how K-Pop bands seamlessly mix English and Korean lyrics.

These days, K-pop artists flow so freely between Korean and English lyric is that the genre isn’t defined exclusively by the language it’s sung in, so much as the artists who are singing it.

She also reiterates that it’s cultural proximity rather than geographic proximity that has brought these two languages together

It’s true that English and Korean have been in close contact for at least 70 years, but the past few decades have seen so much intermixing between English and Korean, not because of physical or geographical closeness, but because of cultural proximity. K-Pop’s global rise is giving artists and fans a pop culture playground.