[Han Sang-jin] Beyond ‘factory’ critique: BTS and Hybe

Recent coverage by a global news outlet has revived a familiar criticism of K-pop: It operates as a “factory-like mass production system,” driven by discipline, hierarchy and tightly controlled training.

The critique is not without basis. It reflects real structural tensions within the industry. Yet it ultimately misreads what is most significant about the global rise of BTS and Hybe.

The issue is not whether the system exists. The issue is how we understand it.

To describe K-pop primarily as “factory production” is to see only its surface — its visible organization, repetition and control. It overlooks a deeper transformation: the emergence of a knowledge-based system of cultural production. What appears externally as standardization may, internally, function as a method for organizing, refining and scaling creativity.

A more adequate framework for understanding this transformation can be found in the concept of the “new intellectual,” proposed by Kim Dae-jung at the National Convention for Rebuilding Korea on Feb. 3, 1999. Kim argued that Korea’s future competitiveness would depend not on labor or capital alone, but on the capacity to generate and apply new knowledge. The “new intellectual” is not simply a bearer of information, but a creator of value through innovation, practical know-how and continuous learning.

Seen from this perspective, BTS and Hybe are better understood not as a cultural factory but as a new intellectual platform.

This claim is grounded in the internal logic of the system itself. In a recent column for a local daily here, Isaac Lee of HybeAmerica has described the company’s model recently as a “synchronized” system integrating artist development, music production, choreography, marketing and fan engagement into a consistent and repeatable framework. He has also emphasized that this model can be adapted across different cultural markets.

This is not the language of mechanical reproduction. It is the language of methodology, a transferable and evolving form of creative know-how. What is being systematized is not simply labor, but the process through which creativity is generated, tested and expanded.

The evolution of BTS provides the clearest evidence. Often treated as a product of the K-pop system, BTS in fact demonstrates the system’s most advanced form. News media reports that the group’s recent transition — described as “BTS 2.0” —reflects a deliberate effort to move beyond earlier formulas. Performance styles have been reconsidered, choreography selectively reduced and musical identity more strongly emphasized.

This is more than adjustment. It is reflexivity in action.

The system here is not merely repeating itself; it is re-examining its own principles and deliberately revising them. Such self-transformation is precisely what Kim Dae-jung’s concept of the new intellectual anticipates: the capacity not only to apply existing methods, but to reconstruct them under new historical conditions.

Digital technology further deepens this transformation. Platforms such as Weverse, combined with AI-based translation, create continuous feedback loops between artists and global audiences. Cultural production becomes interactive and adaptive, shaped through ongoing communication rather than one-directional delivery.

The recent Gwanghwamun performance illustrates this shift at a symbolic level. By staging a global event at the historic heart of Seoul — linking cultural heritage, national identity and digital media circulation — BTS and Hybe created not just a performance, but a layered cultural narrative. It integrated memory, identity and technology into a single communicative space.

From this standpoint, the familiar opposition between “factory production” and “authentic artistry” becomes too crude. It assumes that organization and creativity are mutually exclusive. However, contemporary cultural production shows that creativity can be institutionalized, coordinated and scaled without being extinguished.

The real question, then, is not whether K-pop is organized, but what kind of organization it represents.

A rigid system may suppress creativity. But a reflexive system — capable of learning, adaptation and self-transformation — can instead function as a platform for expanding it. BTS and Hybe suggest that the Korean cultural industry has moved decisively in this direction.

This does not mean that criticism should be dismissed. Issues of labor intensity, managerial control and inequality remain important and deserve continued scrutiny. But to reduce K-pop to a “factory” is to miss its most innovative dimension.

What, then, is a new intellectual platform? It is a system in which knowledge, creativity and technology are not separate elements but are actively integrated and continuously recombined. It is a platform that cultivates the capacity to generate new value by organizing creativity in a reflexive and globally connected environment. It is, in essence, a social and cultural infrastructure for producing innovation.

In this sense, the success of BTS is not an exception to the system; it is evidence of what the system has become.

Han Sang-jin

Han Sang-jin is a professor emeritus of sociology at Seoul National University. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.

khnews@heraldcorp.com