K-pop superstar-turned-entrepreneur tells small agencies not to copy giants at MU:CON

Former TVXQ member Kim Jae-joong is taking on the global music industry in a new role — not as a superstar but as an underdog entrepreneur.

Even though he began his career at one of K-pop’s biggest agencies, he now faces the challenge of producing and managing rookie groups through his startup. Rather than trying to compete head-on with major agencies, he said his company, Inkode, has set its sights on carefully selected markets.

“The most dangerous notion a small entertainment company can have when it comes to global ventures is thinking that it can imitate what large companies are doing with smaller budgets,” said Kim during his keynote speech at MU:CON, Korea’s major annual music industry get-together, held at Sangam Cube Convention Center in western Seoul on Wednesday.

Kim, who serves as chief strategy officer of Inkode, said small agencies begin from a very different position than their much larger competitors, meaning that attempts to merely keep pace will inevitably fall short in quality.

“So we decided to begin with a different question: What markets can we win with the resources we have?”

Organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency (Kocca), this year’s MU:CON marks its 15th edition. The three-day event features an industry conference, networking opportunities for professionals and global music showcases open to the public.

Kim debuted in 2003 as a member of SM Entertainment’s TVXQ, left the group in 2009 and is now a member of JYJ. Inkode, the K-pop agency Kim founded in 2023, launched girl group Say My Name last year and boy bands Keyvitup in April and Vayonn in July.

On Wednesday, he took the stage for MU:CON’s keynote session with a presentation titled “From Superstar to Ecosystem Designer: How Inkode is diversifying K-music in the global digging era.”

While Keyvitup was designed to target the broader K-pop audience and the U.S. market, Vayonn prioritizes the Asian market and takes a heavily fandom-driven approach. For Inkode, Kim explained, global expansion is not an extension of its business but part of its original blueprint.

“I have been a singer active overseas for more than two decades, but from a producer and a businessperson’s perspective, I came to realize completely new things,” he said. “When I was an artist, what I used to think about was where most of my fans were, wanting to go there. But now that I run a business, I think about the budget and how to sustain those relationships.”

Such a selective focus, along with the flexibility to change course quickly according to the market response, should be a small K-pop agency’s weapon, Kim said. He stressed that failure itself is not something to fear — the real danger is failing to recognize that something is not working.

Kim therefore called on Kocca and the government to create a safety net that would enable smaller K-pop agencies to take risks and pursue new ventures.

“Among the things Kocca can do, providing subsidies is of course important, but I believe creating infrastructure that reduces the cost of failure for small- and mid-sized agencies is even more important.”

He suggested establishing a shared network of local promoters and event organizers, as well as legal and administrative support for overseas markets, that smaller agencies could access when pursuing expansion abroad.

Kim also suggested that small and large K-pop agencies could work together in a mutually beneficial way.

“We can offer creative agility [through experiments], while bigger companies have global infrastructure,” Kim said. “I believe we need a system through which we can exchange those strengths, rather than bigger companies helping out smaller ones in a one-sided relationship.”

At the start of Wednesday’s conference, Kocca President Kim Yoon-ji described the K-content business as a key economic force for Korea.

“It is symbolic that Korean artists such as BTS are forging their own paths without being confined by the existing system, while making their voices heard,” the agency president said in her opening speech. “This signifies that K-music is becoming a rule maker in the global music industry rather than waiting for recognition from the existing market.”

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]