Snowman on M Countdown

The Japanese group Snowman appeared on the episode of M Countdown that aired on August 28, 2025 in a very momentous crossover of J-idol music and K-Pop. 

While it’s safe to say that Mrs. Green Apple are the biggest artists in Japan, Snowman are, without doubt, the current top idols in Japan. They had the two top selling singles and the top selling album in 2024, dwarfing any of the K-Pop boy groups and soloists. There have been crossovers on K-Pop shows before but not from the top boy group in Japan. You’d never have seen Arashi or SMAP on a Korean music show—not in a million years and a million episodes, despite both of those groups being very dominant among both idol fans and the mainstream public in their eras. And sure, part of that was because they literally couldn’t appear on Korean television because of broadcast rules but there was also a real cultural gap.

To the outsider (or to the recent English-speaking enthusiast of Asian idol pop), Seoul is the obvious center of the idol universe; it’s the gravity well into which all groups are pulled, whether they’re from Kazakhstan or Thailand. And it’s not the Korean market that these groups are after but access to the broader, global K-Pop market. Seoul has become a massive distribution hub for idol product. You don’t really think those millions of albums credited to Korean fans were actually all purchased by Korean fans do you? Consider that something like 14% of the entire population of 52 million people would have to had bought a physical copy of a Seventeen album in 2024 for that to make sense. While Seventeen are quite popular among idol fans, they aren’t 14% of the entire population out buying CDs popular.

This Korean dominance in the global idol sphere is quite recent. As I’ve covered on other episodes of the podcast, the gravity well of distribution used to be in Tokyo. That is why SM Entertainment worked so hard to launch first BoA and then TVXQ in the Japanese market. Singers from countries like Korea and Taiwan not only wanted access to the large Japanese market but, via Japan, they would also get distribution around the larger Asian market. 

(It’s important to note that the Seoul distribution channel that exists today is specifically a K-Pop channel to a global K-Pop market. Any artists swept along via that channel will get a K-Pop audience, whether it’s Rap Monster’s old hip-hop crew or indie group Hyukoh. And that might be fine—an album sale is an album sale—but K-Pop audiences are idol fans first and foremost and the cross pollination to a broader audience or even a genre specific audience is going to be very minimal. Artists looking for a music audience are still going to be better off in Tokyo for Asia or a label like 88Rising in the USA.)

While the Japanese idol market is still heavily geared towards domestic fans and gatekept to an extent (although this is changing quickly), the K-Pop industry reached out globally via the Internet through normie social media sites like YouTube and when all the in person domestic activities came to a halt during the pandemic, K-Pop was ready. And many of the new fans that came in, especially English speaking fans who arrived during the pandemic, think the K-Pop market is the beginning and end and middle of everything idol. 

These fans would have no clue that Snowman even existed. Let alone that the members have been performing on stage for live audiences at a very high level since they were young teens. Snowman is a STARTO group and until very recently, there was almost no officially sanctioned video of STARTO groups on easily and globally accessible sites like YouTube. And as I laid out above, easily and globally accessible video helped build the K-Pop empire, which is something that clearly STARTO has been paying attention to. There have been Korean fans of STARTO groups since well before STARTO changed its named from [redacted]—Arashi played to packed stadiums in Seoul in 2008 without being on a Korean music show—and Korean idol fans interested in STARTO would almost certainly already know who they were. The audience Snowman are likely targeting is that large, largely online global K-Pop market.

Snowman may be facing a tougher battle than they expected. The gap between J-Idols and K-Pop idols in terms of performance styles and specialities used to be a lot bigger than it is today but there is still a gap. When I watched Snowman performing their new single, “Charismax,” it just seemed like a normal high-energy STARTO style dance performance to me. There’s a bit of comedy, lots of smiles, and more focus on keeping the audience engaged than in quality vocals. Snowman may be a bit more precise in their dance steps than a WEST but the genre is unmistakable and very, very J-Idol.

Over twenty years ago, [STARTO group] V6’s Inohara wrote an essay about his experience performing in Seoul at the 2002 Dream Concert and his thoughts on Korean idols. I translated the essay (which you can read in full here):

Keeping a good image is very important for us as well, but the line is much, much stricter in Korea. However recently it seems like Japanese-style idols, who are less stiff, are also becoming popular.

But those warrior idols are also now gradually making their way to Japan. Even we might need to watch our backs. Therefore, we’ll need to use all our abilities to the utmost. That’s probably dancing, performance, and other fields. But relying on an air headed act that makes fans yell out, “CUTE!!!!!” just won’t cut it. From here on out, we’ll need to be aware of how “Japanese idols” are seen from outside and use our power to survive.

Ironically, I’ve noticed that K-Pop idols have begun relying more and more on making fans yell, “CUTE!” while J-Idols have caught up—and some cases surpassed—K-Pop idols in performance. Personally, I’d rank Snowman’s dance skills or Psychic Fever’s singing and rapping over most current era K-Pop boy groups. (In my opinion, the credit for the decline in performance lies partially in the K-Pop market dominance of vulture capital firm Hybe, currently under government investigation for financial shenanigans, which does not prioritize musical or performance skills.)

Most of the comments I saw below the Snowman M Countdown video were in Japanese. What little reaction I saw in English was from existing STARTO fans, although there was an attempt at a hit piece in Koreaboo which translated some negative comments from Korean netizens, focusing on their looks (Japanese idols have much more variety in their facial features) and what appears to be some confusion over the playful dance performance. The post generated almost no engagement. Was it an attempt at anti-marketing from a Snowman fan? Was it a preemptive attempt to trash Snowman by a social media manager from Hybe or another company? Or was it just a Koreaboo contributor looking for easy clicks? Whatever the motive, the result was crickets. The broader global K-Pop market is not yet ready for the STARTO magic.

Snowman are in Seoul to promote a popup which will run from August 30 through September 14 and I’m sure it will be packed between their Korean fans and Japanese fans willing to travel. But it remains to be seen if Snowman’s crossover to global K-Pop will be a success—or what a success in this market would even look like for them. The tastes of Japan and Korea and of Japanese idol fans and Korean idol fans and global idol fans are all pretty different. The biggest success story in K-Pop in Korea this year was the Allday Project who are about the complete opposite of a group like Snowman and, also, quite unpopular with the global K-Pop market.

For the sake of those of us who are fans of the STARTO performance style, I think the best case scenario would be for the global K-Pop fans to realize on what they’ve been missing out on and learn to appreciate the STARTO world but that may take some time. The realms of J-idols and K-Pop idols are still very siloed but with more performances like Snowman on M Countdown, hopefully we will start to see that change.

Come on in. The water’s just right!