Acknowledgements

A huge thanks to all the music companies and their international PR teams who participated in this book: SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment, TS Entertainment, Star Empire Entertainment, Starship, Pledis, Loen, Cube Entertainment, Jungle Entertainment, Sidus HQ, FNC, CJ E&M, Nega Networks and Big Hit.

I am also incredibly grateful to everyone who was willing to be interviewed for this book, in particular Brian Joo, Kevin Kim and Simon and Martina Stawski.

Thanks to Robert Koehler for his excellent photos of Seoul, as well as all the other individuals and companies who supplied photos for the book.

And thanks to all of you who bought this book. K-pop producers in Korea may be big companies with a lot of marketing power, but the success of K-pop around the world has very much been a grassroots sensation, powered by people like you who found out about it online or by word of mouth. It’s pretty awesome to be a part of your network.