K-pop은 무엇을, 어떤 언어로 노래하는가: 2017∼2025년 빌보드 핫100 진입곡의 가사 구성과 한글 표기 비중의 탈한국화

초록

This study examines what K-pop songs at one of the most visible points of the global music market sing about, who speaks through their lyrics, and in what linguistic form. It analyzes all Korean popular music entries on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2017 to 2025 (N = 107) in terms of lyrical orientation, lyrical subject, value vocabulary, and script use. Three findings emerge. First, 92.5% of the entries employ a universal lyrical subject without national, cultural, or regional markers. Their lyrical orientation is divided between addressing an intimate other (56.1%) and addressing the lyrical self (43.9%). Second, the visibility of Korean script in the lyrics has sharply declined. The average share of Korean-script tokens fell from 73% in 2017 to 7% in 2025, and approximately two-thirds of the entries in both 2024 and 2025 contained no Korean script. Across the nine-year period, only seven songs had Korean-script tokens accounting for more than half of all lyrical tokens. Third, lyrical orientation, lyrical subject, value-vocabulary density, and Korean-script share did not significantly differentiate chart performance among the Hot 100 entries. These findings indicate a shift from linguistic mixing toward the declining visibility of Korean linguistic markers. They provide population-level evidence of script-level de-Koreanization in K-pop lyrics in one of the most visible sites of K-pop's globalization.

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