[Exclusive]CEO Koo Bon-young, who is from FNC and RBW, announces the replacement of the generation of K-pop producers.."I'm sad that you're monopolizing all the big companies." [★ Lab interview①]

*This content was translated by AI.

[Editor’s Note] [★Lab] Star News meets people who drive the entertainment industry and delves into their own unique know-how and success strategies. Here are the practical experiences and philosophies of those who silently make their way behind the colorful star.

There is a producer who has launched a new campaign with the ambition of creating a huge wave in the K-pop market. CEO Koo Bon-young, who discovered actor Rowoon from boy group SF9 at FNC Entertainment and spearheaded the debut and growth of boy group ONEUS at RBW, is the main character.

CEO Koo Bon-young is a veteran producer who has personally experienced menstruation in the field while working as a production manager at a large agency called FNC and RBW from 2008 to 2025. He started his own move last year by establishing B-Wave Entertainment under his name.

Koo Bon-young, who recently conducted an interview at the Star News headquarters in Seorin-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, expressed the theory of generational change as a producer, along with the regret that the K-pop market is fixed mainly by large companies.

CEO Koo entered the entertainment industry when he was a college student. It was the beginning when I received a proposal from a small agency run by a school senior, which is now gone. There he was not just an employee. From accounting to rookie development and field managers, he has built up the basic physical strength of the entertainment business by playing multiple roles. Later, he received a proposal from JYP Entertainment CEO Hong Seung-sung, who was taught at the time, to "Let's be together after the establishment of Cube Entertainment," but joined the FNC at the recommendation of Han Seung-hoon, a close friend and brother of FNC CEO Han Sung-ho. It was such a decisive move that I went to work the day after I received the offer.

CEO Koo's most brilliant career at FNC is Ro Woon's casting. CEO Koo Bon-young is the one who discovered Rowoon, who grew up as the mainstay of the FNC, when he was a third grader at Hwimoon Middle School. At that time, Rowoon was a prospect who received hot attention from the industry, as he had already received five to six business cards from the agency at the school festival. Later, CEO Koo found Rowoon, a tall boy who was shining alone among numerous applicants at the FNC audition hall, and immediately summoned him to his room and started a meeting with his mother. Although Ro Woon had never officially learned singing and dancing, CEO Koo told his mother, "You don't have to be bad at singing or dancing. I can make it. Trust me and sign a contract with the FNC," he said, drawing a strong conviction.

In fact, when he was a trainee, Rowoon thanked CEO Koo by giving him a heartfelt handwritten letter saying, "Thanks to the chief, I was able to endure the period of storm and storm." CEO Koo said, "I'm a grateful friend who didn't forget to contact me on Teachers' Day even after quitting the company. Recently, I heard that you went to the army well, and I think, "You are a good friend who will do well everywhere." My parents are also very good people," he said, expressing his pride and affection as a producer.

After leaving FNC in 2015, CEO Koo moved to RBW's production director the following year, and established B-Wave at the same time as leaving RBW in 2025. The decisive reason why he decided to "walk his own way" through B-wave was not to monopolize large companies, but to show a new miracle of small and medium-sized companies.

"I recently met with FNC Chairman Han Sung-ho, and he said, 'Singers or celebrities divide generations, but why don't producers have generations?' Producers should also change generations or young producers appear to compete with each other, but it's a pity that all large companies seem to monopolize the current flow of K-pop. I always thought, "If there is a company that feels different from the mind of a large company someday, I want to try it." Also, since I've been producing for a long time, I can see where to spend the money and where not to spend it. With this as a weapon, I have been preparing for independence for a long time, hoping to create a K-pop group that feels different from the current large companies and wanting to go on the path of a new producer. Of course, it's not as big as a large company, but I found a lot of people for a long time because I thought I should start with a stable capital, and I met someone who fits well with my heart and started."

"My dream is to make BTS (BTS) and BLACKPINK," he said. So what generation is he a producer. "We can't divide it yet, but the first generation continues to produce it, so I think it's the next generation of them. If you ask me to tell you a famous producer, don't you think about five people. "I hope there will be producers who can hear 'They're small and medium-sized, but they're good, too,'" he replied.

The competitiveness that CEO Koo puts forward so that he can stand shoulder to shoulder with large companies is marketing. He coolly analyzed that the market itself has completely changed from the time when Chairman Bang Si-hyuk succeeded in BTS when he was a small and medium-sized agency.

"These days, there are no cases of dragons in the stream. From very small influencer to mega influencer, large corporations install viruses on everyone who consumes content with capital, so it has become a market where you have to listen even if you don't want to. I want to listen to everything, but since there is no market itself where I can listen to it, I've been thinking a lot about 'how I will play the contents to the public if I were to produce it.' In the end, it's 'how will you do marketing?' There are marketing strategies that are different from others that break through the fan base in a marketing market where large corporations invest billions and tens of billions of dollars."

B-Wave's marketing strategy is not just "exposure," but is focusing on building a "hard narrative" that breathes with fans even before its debut. Currently, CEO Koo is implementing a strategy to stimulate curiosity and expectations at the same time by steadily uploading content without disclosing the faces of non-wave trainees. It may be easy to secure initial fandom if you appear in an audition program, but the popularity of audition derivatives is around two years at the most. As a result, CEO Koo has built a story that continues from his trainee days and is creating new content so that fans can consume it by saying, "There is a cover video of his childhood a year or two ago, so take a look."

Another key project that CEO Koo is envisioning is his debut narrative using webtoons. The plan is to draw the immersion of the MZ generation, which is a non-address, by serializing webtoons that dramatically adapt their life story for about six months to a year after trainees are confirmed as the debut group.

-continuing in the interview ②.

<© STARNEWS. All rights reserved. No reproduction or redistribution allowed.>

*This content was translated by AI.