K-pop fan Kim Na-yeon used to buy stacks of the same album when there was a new release, hoping to find one of the rare selfies of her favorite stars tucked between the plastic covers.
Over the years, her burgeoning CD collection expanded to every inch of her shelves, prompting her to question its impact on the environment.
“These things are made from materials that are really difficult to recycle,” Kim said. “That got me thinking about how much carbon must be emitted to produce or get rid of them.”
Photo: AFP
Kim’s collection is part of a growing mountain of discarded CDs and merchandise waste that has swelled alongside K-pop’s global popularity.
Made with polycarbonate, CDs can be recycled but only through a special treatment process that prevents toxic gases from being released into the environment. Along with the plastic packaging, producing a CD generates about 500 grams of carbon emissions, according to an environmental impact study by Britain’s Keele University.
Based on that calculation, the weekly sales of a single top K-pop group could be “equivalent to the emissions from flying around the Earth 74 times,” said Kim.
The fan has joined a climate protection group called Kpop4Planet, which wants to hold the industry responsible for its impact on the environment.
‘MANIPULATION’
Started in 2020 by an Indonesian K-pop fan, the activist group has held protests outside the headquarters of music labels, urging them to stop “Plastic Album Sins.” The group has also collected signatures for petitions demanding a reduction in plastic production and other marketing schemes that fuel consumption as CD sales continue to rise significantly.
More than 115 million K-pop CDs were sold last year, the first time sales breached the 100 million mark for the industry.
It was a jump of 50 percent from the previous year, even though most fans are now streaming the music online rather than putting physical CDs into music players.
But K-pop fans continue to snap them up because they are attracted by the labels’ marketing ideas, Kim said.
Using promotions like offering limited edition “photocards” of the stars in the albums or a chance to win a video call with the idol, the music labels tempt fans to buy more CDs.
“So each album is basically a lottery ticket,” said K-pop fan Roza De Jong.
“The narrative is very much ‘the more you buy, the bigger your chance,’” she said, adding it was “common to see piles of plastic albums stacked on stairways and scattered across the streets of Seoul” after the buyers had picked through them for the promotional photo or ticket.
EXPLOITATIVE
Albums are also sometimes released with different covers.
“We call all of these (sales techniques) exploitative marketing,” said Kim, accusing the music labels of “manipulating” fans’ love for their artists.
HYBE, the agency behind megastars BTS, said the company has been putting effort into becoming climate friendly.
“As part of our environmental initiatives, we are using ecofriendly materials for our albums, video publications and official merchandise, minimizing plastics,” the entertainment powerhouse said, without offering greater specifics.
Industry figures suggest that album production skyrocketed during the pandemic, with experts saying that labels were looking to sales to make up for the lack of touring revenues.
While CD consumption is not limited to K-pop, activists say the South Korean industry has to play a part in cutting the waste.
Seventeen, a popular South Korean boyband, alone sold over 5.5 million copies of their album FML last year, setting the record for the highest-selling single album in K-pop history.
To discourage CD manufacturing and purchases, South Korea’s environment ministry began charging a penalty in 2003, but the tiny sums involved have had little effect in the face of the huge revenues generated by album sales.
Entertainment labels last year were charged approximately 2.0 billion won (US$143,000), said Yoon Hye-rin, deputy director of the ministry’s Resource Circulation Policy Division.
While taking aim at the labels, Kim said she would not boycott the artists.
“They aren’t the ones who know or decide the marketing schemes,” Kim said. “Every fan wants to see their artist thrive, so boycotting isn’t an option.”
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
RSS