Must be nice to be so iconic that you can write a 104 page thesis on yourself (and BIGBANG)!

Singer. Dancer. K-pop idol. BIGBANG's resident shirtless guy. These are just some of the monikers that Taeyang is known by. Now we can add another big one to his growing list of accolades - academic!



Last year saw the singer receive his Master's degree in Producing Performances and Images at the Daejin University Graduate School of Culture & Arts, for which he wrote a 104 page thesis on the topic of BIGBANG and the Korean wave titled "The Influence of BIGBANG 2015 World Tour [MADE] on the Sustainability of the Korean Wave."

Written under Taeyang's Korean name, Dong Young Bae, the thesis has now been made available online through the National Library of Korea (and can be downloaded right here). Just a heads up, Taeyang's thesis is entirely in Korean bar the abstract, which you can read here:

"This thesis is a report of the 2015 World Tour [MADE] by Korea's representative boy group BIGBANG, taking the world as their stage and standing at the vanguard of the Korean Wave. Based on this I make my discourse on the Korean Wave.

The commonly acknowledged term "Tour Concert" refers to a concert type that travels to various regions with a single performance format. Tour Concerts by Korean artists that had just been nationwide in the past are now expanding their range worldwide. However, the demand across the nation or the world is vital. There is no significance in establishing Tour Concerts without public demand, and Tour Concerts cannot be created in the first place.

In this regard, BIGBANG has received endless love calls from 21 countries worldwide, thereby obtaining justifiability to hold a large-scale world tour concert in 2012 and once again in 2015. Many fans seem to show support for our music and performance through the direct communication that we have with them at overseas performances.

This is because the limitations of the indirect exchange that occurs online through the Internet cannot surpass direct communication. The synergy between a world-class creative team and BIGBANG's impeccable live performance, always presenting a perfect tune for the worldwide music market trend, together with elaborate laser lighting and stage equipment marked another epoch in popular arts, a real experience for fans around the world who had been waiting for BIGBANG's performances.

As a member of BIGBANG, it is always overwhelming to present our music to the world stage. To those that listen to our music in various local regions, each and every song will become an important parameter for determining the overall awareness of K-Pop contents. Therefore BIGBANG and other Korean artists should take high quality contents to communicate with K-Pop fans in foreign countries and aspire for a far reaching expansion of the international demand of our Korean popular arts contents."

Despite all his BIGBANG commitments, it's amazing that Taeyang managed to find the time to write a Master's thesis. A big congrats to him and for all his hard work!



Source: Daejin University Graduate School of Culture & Arts

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