K-pop's first low-carbon concert guidelines body launches in Seoul

K-pop's first carbon-neutral concert body is official

KeepKpopOnEarth (케이팝포플래닛) launched the 'Consultative Body for Establishing Carbon-Neutral Concert Event Guidelines' on September 8 at the National Assembly Members' Hall in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. The launch ceremony doubled as a policy discussion forum.

Public, private, and academic stakeholders now sit at the table. Four areas anchor the work: measuring concert carbon emissions, transitioning concert energy sources, reducing and managing waste, and designing incentive structures to support compliance.

Data gaps are the first problem to solve

The forum exposed a real bottleneck. Cho Hyo-jin, CEO of Naeil's Use (내일의쓰임), walked through her team's attempt to measure emissions from K-pop concerts including BLACKPINK: "We faced difficulties in securing data on audience movement, concert venues, and partner companies." She pushed for a shared data collection system that ticket sellers, venues, and partner companies could all use.

Lee Ji-eun, Senior Researcher at Law Firm Sejong, widened the lens. "K-pop's low-carbon transition has already begun," she said, "but spreading leading companies' practices industry-wide requires common calculation standards, measurement systems, and government and local government incentives to back them up."

Fans as part of the equation

Ida-yeon Lee (이다연), Campaigner at 케이팝포플래닛, named the fandom directly. "Fans played an absolute role in K-pop's growth as music enjoyed by people around the world," she said. She hopes K-pop will set the standard for sustainable concerts and lead change in the global music industry.

(Getting measurement infrastructure right before the guidelines are written matters more than it sounds—it's the difference between a framework that actually works and one that doesn't.)

The consultative body will keep working through the four agenda areas as it moves toward finalizing specific guideline directions.