Music
Korea exports more music than television — but only just, and not always
In 2012 the two were the same size to within half a percent. Broadcast was ahead again as recently as 2022. In 2024 music pulled to $1.80bn against $1.26bn, the widest gap in thirteen years.
Ask which Korean cultural export is bigger, music or television, and most people will guess television. The drama series are what the world talks about, and Squid Game alone has been watched five billion hours.
The answer is music, and it has been for most of the last decade — but never by much, and not without interruption.
They started the same size
In 2012 Korea exported $235.1m of music and $233.8m of broadcast programming. That is a difference of half a percent: for practical purposes, two identical businesses.
| Year | Music | Broadcast | Music ÷ broadcast |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 235,097 | 233,821 | 1.01 |
| 2014 | 335,650 | 336,019 | 1.00 |
| 2016 | 442,566 | 411,212 | 1.08 |
| 2018 | 564,236 | 478,447 | 1.18 |
| 2020 | 679,633 | 692,790 | 0.98 |
| 2022 | 927,613 | 948,045 | 0.98 |
| 2023 | 1,222,535 | 1,047,219 | 1.17 |
| 2024 | 1,801,449 | 1,257,183 | 1.43 |
Thousands of US dollars.
Broadcast was ahead in 2013, again in 2020, and again as recently as 2022. The lead has changed hands three times in thirteen years. Anyone who declared a winner in 2020 would have been wrong by 2023.
2024 is the widest the gap has been
Music finished 2024 at $1.80bn against broadcast’s $1.26bn — a ratio of 1.43, the largest in the series. Music grew 47.4% in that single year; broadcast grew 20.0%.
Over the whole thirteen years music multiplied 7.7 times and broadcast 5.4 times. Both are extraordinary numbers for any export category. Music is simply further along the same curve.
Together the two came to $3.06bn in 2024, from $468.9m in 2012.
Why the framing matters
Cultural exports are usually discussed one title at a time — this drama charted in ninety countries, that group sold out a stadium. At that resolution television looks dominant, because a drama is a single object that a great many people watch at once and a song is not.
At the level of what the industries actually sell abroad, the two are close enough that the ranking has flipped three times in thirteen years, and the current gap opened up in the last two of them.
One caution. This is not K-pop against K-drama. The music series covers the entire music industry’s exports and the broadcast series covers programme sales; each contains activity most readers would not picture under those names, and neither survey separates a genre. What the comparison supports is the size of two trades against each other — not a verdict on which art form travels better.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Korea Creative Content Agency (한국콘텐츠진흥원) — 콘텐츠산업조사 (Content Industry Survey) — music industry exports by region, table DT_113_STBL_1020468, and broadcast programme exports by company type, table DT_113_STBL_1025706, via KOSIS open API · https://kosis.kr
What we checked
- Both series come from the same survey family, are published by the same agency in the same unit (thousands of US dollars), and are compared only over the 13 years both cover — 2012 to 2024
- The 2012 figures are 235,097 for music and 233,821 for broadcast, a difference of 0.5%. The 2024 figures are 1,801,449 and 1,257,183, a ratio of 1.43
- Broadcast exceeded music in 2013, 2020 and 2022, so the lead has changed hands three times inside the window and the 2024 gap is not a settled state
- Over the shared 13 years music grew 7.7 times and broadcast 5.4 times. Both are read between the stated endpoints and neither is annualised
What we left out, and why
- Any claim that this measures K-pop against K-drama. The music series covers the whole music industry's exports and the broadcast series covers programme exports — each includes activity outside the part of it people picture, and neither survey breaks out a genre
- Inflation and exchange-rate effects. Both series are nominal US dollars as published, so part of the growth in each is price rather than volume, and we have not adjusted either
- Film, games, webtoons and publishing. Korea exports all of them and they are surveyed separately; adding them would need definitions we have not checked, so this article is about these two series only
- What counts as an export inside each industry. A licensing fee, a physical shipment and a streaming settlement are not the same kind of transaction, and the two surveys do not use one definition between them
- Anything after 2024, the latest reference year both tables publish