Paris K-pop concerts will be posted online

The highlights of two upcoming K-pop concerts in Paris will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook.

SM Entertainment plans to hold the “SM Town World Tour in Paris” concerts on June 10 and June 11 at Le Zenith de Paris as part of the 2010-2012 Visit Korea Year(s), the country’s largest entertainment agency said.

The company added the June 11 show after hundreds of French K-pop fans in May rallied in front of the Louvre Museum calling for an extra concert. Tickets for the June 10 concert at the 7,000-seat venue, priced from 45 euro ($65) to 200 euro, had sold out in just 15 minutes. The rally that followed involved a flash mob and a group dance to Korean pop music.

Pop groups performing in the Paris concerts will include TVXQ, Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, SHINee and f(x). The “SM Town Live World Tour” has been held in Seoul, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Shanghai. On Sept. 3-4, it will head to Tokyo.

SM Entertainment said it will edit highlights of the concerts immediately after each show and upload them onto the company’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/smtown and Facebook page at www.facebook.com/smtown.

Fans will also be able to view video clips of their idols’ departure and arrival at airports, as well as behind-the-scenes and rehearsal footage.

The agency’s Facebook page, which opened on June 1, had attracted more than 170,000 “like” button-clicks as of Wednesday. It said an increasing number of K-pop fans from the U.S., Mexico, Australia and Italy are requesting concerts in their countries through the Facebook page.

Two other major agencies, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment, are also running YouTube channels, uploading the latest music videos and short video messages of their K-pop groups.

Jung Tae-soo, a researcher at the Samsung Economic Research Institute, said in a recent report that social media is playing a crucial role in globally distributing content of Korean pop groups.

“So many video clips show how much effort Korean idols are putting in in practicing singing and dancing. Plus, a surge in the number of Koreans studying abroad has partly contributed to the spread of hallyu,” Jung said.

However, he said that regional differences in cultural content will be narrowed down in future.

“It is important to continually differentiate the content from others. To do so, there should be a wide range of diversity in cultural content,” he said.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)