#i:five

170207 — 경향신문 (via Naver, trans: PYHForSHINee)  It's known that BoA, TVXQ, Bigbang are Korean artists who began the road and maintained their status in Japanese market. They developed this new market, spread the Korean wave, and created the genre KPOP. Following these artists, who can we count on to lead the next generation of KPOP? Five member group, SHINee, is in the lead. SHINee, a part of SM Entertainment, will restart interest in this year's Korean wave. The top singers with the most fan activities in Japan, TVXQ, are currently enlisted and even Bigbang is starting to enlist this year. So everyone is gaining anticipation to see what presence SHINee will have in this recently emptied KPOP space. Something worthy of showing this presence, objectively, is their appearance last year on Japan's representative end of year music program, FujiTV's 'FNS Music Festival'. This music festival, together with NHK's 'Kōhaku Uta Gassen' are Japan's most important end of the year programs. At the peak of the Korean wave, up until 2012, there were many Korean guests like TVXQ, Girls Generation, and Bigband on these end of year programs, but then, for a while you could not see any Korean artists. Last year's program finally changed with BoA and SHINee as the only two Korean artist guests on FNS. SHINee has already begun an arena tour which began last month. The arenas' seating scales are 15-20 thousand seats per auditorium. Their arena tour last year drew more than 400 thousand fans. The tour this year, lasting until April plans to go to Tokyo, Osaka, Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kobe and more, up to 20 arenas, with 5 more potentially added on, this could increase to 25 arenas. Even though the schedule after May isn't decided, following the current fervor of the public, there is a high possibility of adding 50 thousand-seat capacity domes to their tour. The past two years SHINee has succeeded with both Tokyo Dome and Osaka Dome concerts.

Though many Korean artists advance into the Japanese market and are active, SHINee's success has a different meaning. After BoA and TVXQ's success, the popularity of KPOP spiked and Japanese fans would flock around as soon as they heard the word 'KPOP'. Like a dream, groups like Super Junior, Girls Generation, KARA all successfully carried out Tokyo Dome concerts, and even groups that had only just debuted would have hundreds, even thousands of fans show up at fan meetings and concerts. But when political relations between the two nations deteriorated and an anti-Korea sentiment grew around 2012, the interest in the Korean wave weakened substantially. When SHINee debuted in 2011, the mood of society and the press had completely changed. As they met these difficulties from the start, the method they chose to overcome it was to focus their attention on growing close local fans. Instead of big events or advertising, they held smaller concerts in small cities and districts to create bonds with locals. Aside from TVXQ who had to clear the path from the beginning, no other top Korean artist had used this method to connect with Japanese fans. In 2015 SHINee finally had their first Tokyo Dome concert after four years of activities in Japan. A marketer of Universal Music said, "Their attitude for a famous singer from a large company yet consistently shown has opened Japanese fans hearts, and it seems like their fandom has grown strong and distinguished."