K-pop hitman Bang Si-hyuk aims to repeat BTS phenomenon

Bang Si-hyuk created the world’s biggest boy band, BTS, making K-pop music a global sensation and himself very rich. Can he repeat the trick with a girl band?

Bang SiHyuk Chairman of HYBE speak onstage as HYBE x Geffen Records Announce Contestants for Forthcoming Global Girl Group on August 28 2023 in Santa Monica California Photo by Vivien KillileaGetty Images for HYBE x Geffen Records AUGUST 28 2023
(Image credit: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for HYBE x Geffen Records)

Vintage groups, from The Monkees to The Spice Girls, bear witness to the power of the manufactured pop band. Mix it up with K-pop, bang it out on TikTok and YouTube, sit back, and take the profits. That, at any rate, is the hope of South Korean music mogul Bang Si-hyuk, who for the past two years has been sifting through more than 120,000 applications to form a new girl group in partnership with one of the world’s largest record labels, IGA

The hype surrounding the joint venture – dubbed “The Debut: Dream Academy” – is so intense that a documentary charting its twists and turns is already slated to air on Netflix next year. 

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.