Paris’ K-Street Festival Highlights K-Pop’s Transition into Mainstream Culture Through Orchestral Performances

K-pop and Hallyu culture are making their way onto Europe’s mainstream artistic stages. The “K-Street Festival 2025,” held over the first weekend of September in Parc André Citroën in Paris’ 15th arrondissement, demonstrated that every aspect of Korean street culture—food, fashion, K-pop, and traditional games—has fully integrated into French daily life. France has become the epicenter of Hallyu in Europe due to its cultural openness. French people are historically accustomed to embracing American movies, Japanese animations, and foods and music from around the world, and they tend to integrate new cultures into their lives rather than reject them. The sold-out SM Town Live Paris concert in 2011 proved K-pop’s potential, with fans organizing a flash mob in front of the Louvre Museum to demand a second performance. This event marked the beginning of K-pop fanbase growth across Europe. Currently, there are approximately 800 K-pop fan clubs in France, totaling 1 million fans. These fanbases are expanding their interest beyond music to include Korean culture as a whole, such as food, fashion, and beauty. Korean movies and dramas have also gained recognition on France’s traditional cultural platforms like the Cannes Film Festival, capturing the hearts of French audiences. The Palme d’Or victory for “Parasite” was a symbolic event reflecting this trend. K-pop’s global influence is further proven by its chart performance. Jung Kook’s solo song “3D” by BTS achieved gold status on the French album charts, thanks to over 15 million streams—a metric indicating the strength of the K-pop market in France. K-pop is now expanding into classical music venues as well. SM Entertainment’s classical and jazz label, SM Classics, plans a concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in February next year, following a performance in Tokyo last month. Around 20 songs by SM artists will be presented in classical arrangements during this concert. Game developer Nexon also held orchestral performances of the soundtrack for its role-playing game “Blue Archive” in five cities, attracting a total of 12,000 attendees from May to September 28. Classical arrangement concerts are no longer one-time events; they have evolved into full-scale productions involving album releases, digital tracks, and regular performances, with companies owning the IP participating in every stage from planning to arrangement, production, and promotion. Pinkfong Company’s orchestral version of “Baby Shark” is a project created over a year starting in August 2022 in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra. Arranger Kyle Gordon was hired for the three-minute video, and the London Symphony Hall provided on-site recording and sound engineering support. K-pop’s success signifies not just a fleeting music trend but the formation of an entire industrial ecosystem. The South Korean government is pursuing “soft power expansion” by focusing on the “Big 5”—music, dramas, webtoons, beauty, and food—by 2030, with France emerging as a key European hub for this strategy. KFTV, Europe’s first streaming and commerce platform dedicated to Korean content, began in France and is now expanding across the continent. It offers not only streaming but also a system allowing viewers to purchase Korean products directly. French mainstream media are also evaluating Hallyu as a cultural phenomenon. The mainstream newspaper Le Monde presented Hallyu as an exemplary case of soft power, noting that industries such as K-pop, movies, food, and beauty are driving global cultural trends. Academics have also analyzed that K-content has established itself not as a mere trend but as an industry and form of cultural exchange. The fact that there are over 300 Korean restaurants operating in Paris symbolizes how deeply Hallyu has penetrated everyday life. The wave of Hallyu, which began with K-pop, movies, dramas, and beauty, has now fully permeated the sensibilities and daily lives of French people, indicating that Hallyu is no longer a temporary trend but a universal culture.