Katseye, the first global K-pop group born from a reality show and meticulously crafted to succeed

"Lara Raj, 19, was chosen from 120,000 applicants to become one of six members of Katseye, an unprecedented experiment in the music industry. The group was designed to export the methodologies of Korean pop, or K-pop, to the rest of the world. And it seems to be working: a few weeks ago, they won their first award, the Video Music Awards for Push Performance of the Year."

"The group finished by saying thank you in two more languages: Filipino and Tamil. The fact that the group speaks different languages is no accident. Nothing in Katseye is. Neither the countless commercial campaigns like the one they led this summer for GAP nor the TikTok dances that accompany, and sometimes overshadow, viral tracks like Gabriela. Everything has been meticulously studied for years by dozens of executives, led by a single figure: Bang Si-hyuk, the visionary leader mentioned in the speech."

"Bang is the founder and chairman of the South Korean label Hybe, responsible for the success of bands like BTS. He began as an amateur musician and is now considered by Forbes one of South Korea's richest men, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion. In 2021, with K-pop on the verge of conquering the international market thanks to groups like Blackpink, Bang decided it was time to export the unique universe surrounding this phenomenon to other countries."

Lara Raj, 19, was selected from 120,000 applicants to join Katseye, a six-member group engineered to export K-pop methodologies globally. Katseye mixes multilingual performance, commercial tie-ins, and viral choreography to reach diverse audiences and recently won a Video Music Award. The group's multilingualism and curated campaigns were planned deliberately. Hybe founder Bang Si-hyuk led the project, leveraging data-driven audience analysis and long-term executive planning. Bang rose from amateur musician to Hybe chairman and major wealth, and in 2021 directed efforts to replicate K-pop's ecosystem internationally, comparing group creation to engineering and using AI-like methods to study reactions.

Read at english.elpais.com