Conference Agenda

Located in Gangnam, South Korea’s most competitive educational district, SM Universe Academy—an arts institute founded by SM Entertainment—launched a training program in 2023 to nurture future K-pop artists. Like pre-conservatory systems in classical music, the academy reflects a broader ecology of elite training in contemporary Korea. Through intensive instruction, disciplined practice, and highly structured pedagogical systems, the goal of the institution is clear: to cultivate musicians into virtuosos from an early age, defined narrowly through technical perfection. This parallel between K-pop and classical music invites a broader reconsideration of how “virtuosity” is produced and valued: which bodies, performances, and musical practices have been historically recognized as legitimate and trained within prevailing evaluative hierarchies.

Drawing on debates surrounding the “manufactured” dimensions of both K-pop and contemporary Korean classical pianism, this paper reframes musical virtuosity as a disciplined, embodied practice produced through sustained labor, institutional authority, and pedagogical training. I argue that the virtuosic achievements of Asian musicians reveal and challenge Western hegemonic aesthetic authorities. Tracing the genealogy of virtuosity to nineteenth-century European aesthetics and the formation of modern taste hierarchies (Bourdieu), I examine how these systems of valuation became embedded in East Asian educational institutions during the twentieth century. Within this context, virtuosity in Korea became a sociocultural capital through which Korean musicians gained legitimacy, recognition, and opportunities for social mobility in national and international spheres. In particular, classical pianism offers a strategic comparative lens because both fields operate through a shared cultural logic of disciplined labor, technical perfection, and institutional validation.

This paper further asks why certain forms of musical labor are pathologized as “mechanical repetition” while others are celebrated as evidence of genius. Utilizing Foucault’s theories of disciplinary power and discourse, I investigate how institutions regulate bodies, shape performance practices, and define legitimate forms of musicianship. By examining contemporary discourses, I deconstruct the myth of innate virtuosity and propose instead that virtuosity should be understood as a politically and socially cultivated embodiment: the product of routinized labor, culturally specific bodily practices, and pedagogical systems.