Kpop4Planet (K4P), a climate activist group founded by K-pop fans advocating for a more sustainable K-pop industry, held a protest titled “Plastic Album Sins” in front of Hybe’s headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Wednesday, urging the industry to take stronger environmental protection measures.
During the protest, K4P cited an August survey that gathered input from over 12,000 K-pop fans here and overseas. According to the survey, 42.8 percent of respondents identified marketing strategies that increase fans’ chances of attending a fan sign event based on the number of albums purchased as Hybe’s “worst business practice.”
K4P demanded an immediate end to these marketing tactics, which encourage excessive album purchases and contribute to environmental pollution. The group then performed a symbolic scene where a puppet, bound in strings, cut itself free, representing liberation from such harmful practices.
Entertainment companies including Hybe have employed various tactics to boost album sales, such as releasing multiple versions of albums with minor design changes and including random photo cards to entice fans into buying numerous copies in pursuit of their desired cards. Another criticized practice of fan signing events, where the more albums a fan purchases, the higher that person’s chances get of being admitted to a fan sign event. These tactics have long been criticized by K-pop fans both in Korea and abroad.
“I bought over 100 copies of the same album just for a chance to meet my favorite artist at a fan sign event, and now they’re piled up in boxes at my home,” said a 23-year-old K-pop fan surnamed Kim on Wednesday.
Ironically, as the world has transitioned to digital streaming, physical K-pop album sales have skyrocketed over the past decade. According to Circle Chart, the combined album sales of the top 400 albums grew from 7.37 million in 2014 to 115.77 million in 2022, leading to a significant rise in plastic usage by entertainment companies.
Data obtained by Democratic Party of Korea Rep. Woo Won-shik, who sits on the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee, revealed that entertainment companies used 801.5 tons of plastic in 2022 to produce physical albums, including CDs, photo cards, and packaging — a massive increase from 55.8 tons in 2017.
Since 2021, the K-pop industry has made some efforts to be more eco-friendly, such as using FSC-certified paper and biodegradable materials. However, these measures have not fundamentally addressed the environmental damage caused by excessive album purchases, which often end up as waste. CDs made from polycarbonate are not economically viable to recycle, and Korea has limited facilities to handle the toxic substances released during the recycling of polyvinyl chloride, commonly used in packaging.
“The use of soy ink and recycled materials, which entertainment companies tout as their ‘eco-friendly’ efforts, shows that these companies don’t truly understand what fans want. Companies need to change the methods for entering fan sign events and develop systems that don’t generate waste from photo card collecting,” said Mathieu Berbiguier, a visiting professor of Korean Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, in a press release on Wednesday.
