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| BTS performs "DNA" during American Music Awards at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles in November 2017. AP-Yonhap |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Although K-pop CDs are still selling in large quantities in Korea, they are also turning into a massive amount of plastic waste. Buyers apparently discard them because it is not the disks themselves that they want. Indeed, what they want are the various bonus materials enclosed within the albums and singles.
A local environmental group on Wednesday released a statement addressing the issue and demanding K-pop agencies cease these marketing techniques, which only add pressure to the country's waste management problem.
Referring to the March report by the Korea Consumer Agency, the environmental group stated that over 77 million K-pop CDs were sold in 2022, exceeding the previous year's figures. However, only 5.7 percent of K-pop fans said they bought the CDs to listen to the songs in the last two years, implying that most of them are not interested in listening to the music via CD.
"Despite this fact, companies are releasing different versions of the same song on separate albums and including random goods in each album. They do not even disclose the specifications of these goods in the product details, aiming to attract the buyers and encourage them to buy more albums out of curiosity," the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM) said in a statement. It was jointly written by Community IT Social Cooperative, which is based in Seoul.
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| Photocards included in albums by Stray Kids, left, and IVE are among the most common items that K-pop marketers use to attract consumers nowadays. Courtesy of Korea Federation for Environmental Movements |
K-pop albums now come with a variety of bonus items such as photocards, posters, postcards and stickers, which vary from item to item, meaning fans don't know what they will receive until they open the album. For example, a Stray Kids album may contain two photocards randomly selected from a pool of 24 types, while an IVE album includes three random photocards, each coming from three different sets which consist of six cards each.
KFEM said the companies even donate hundreds of CDs to social welfare service centers in the country, causing some of the centers to complain about the CDs ending up as waste and asking the companies to stop donating them.
"There are albums in downloadable formats that could be an alternative. But to solve the problem fundamentally, the companies should stop with these random card marketing strategies," the group said.
Domestic sales of CDs increased from 25 million in 2019 to 42 million, 57 million and 77 million in subsequent years, according to the Korea Consumer Agency. The agency examined 50 different albums released in the past two years and found most of the albums contained various random goods. They also found that over 57 percent of consumers of those CDs bought them for the goods.
"The biggest reason for the increase in the sales appears to be the companies' fandom marketing, which pushes K-pop fans to collect more random goods through album purchases," the agency said.
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