The Invisible Field: The Cultural Co-evolution of K-pop and the Korean Indie Scene

This study analyzes the structural interrelationship between K-pop and the Korean indie music scene through the theoretical frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Howard Becker’s concept of art worlds. While K-pop occupies the forefront of globalized, market-oriented popular culture, it is underpinned by the often-invisible foundation of the indie scene, which sustains creative labor, artistic experimentation, and alternative value systems. Rather than framing their relationship as a binary opposition, this paper interprets it through the lens of cultural co-evolution. In contrast to existing scholarship that primarily emphasizes K-pop’s industrial success, this study highlights how the cultural practices of the indie scene function as an essential, though largely unseen, basis for the K-pop field. Indie creators maintain independent, creativity-driven production while expanding the overall diversity and experimental scope of the music industry—a role that is closely connected to the dynamism and globalization strategies of Korean popular music as a whole. By foregrounding interaction and co-evolution over hierarchy and separation, this research seeks to reinterpret the Korean music industry as a multilayered structure of interrelated cultural fields.