1.
South Korea
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South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The earliest Korean pottery dates to 8000 BC, with three kingdoms flourishing in the 1st century BC and its rich and vibrant culture left 19 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity, the third largest in the world, along with 12 World Heritage Sites. Annexed into Imperial Japan in 1910, Korea was divided after its surrender in 1945, peace has since mostly continued with the two agreeing to work peacefully for reunification and the South solidifying peace as a regional power with the worlds 10th largest defence budget. South Koreas tiger economy soared at an average of 10% for over 30 years in a period of rapid transformation called the Miracle on the Han River. A long legacy of openness and focus on innovation made it successful, today, it is the worlds fifth largest exporter with the G20s largest budget surplus and highest credit rating of any country in East Asia. It has free trade agreements with 75% of the economy and is the only G20 nation trading freely with China, the US. Since 1988, its constitution guarantees a liberal democracy with high government transparency, high personal freedoms led to the rise of a globally influential pop culture such as K-pop and K-drama, a phenomenon called the Korean Wave, known for its distinctive fashionable and trendy style. Home of the UN Green Climate Fund and GGGI, South Korea is a leader in low carbon growth, committed to helping developing countries as a major DAC. It is the third least ignorant country in the Index of Ignorance, ranking eighth highest for peaceful tolerance. It is the worlds largest spender on R&D per GDP, leading the OECD in graduates in science, the name Korea derives from the name Goryeo. The name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After Goryeo was replaced by Joseon in 1392, Joseon became the name for the entire territory. The new official name has its origin in the ancient country of Gojoseon, in 1897, the Joseon dynasty changed the official name of the country from Joseon to Daehan Jeguk. The name Daehan, which means great Han literally, derives from Samhan, however, the name Joseon was still widely used by Koreans to refer to their country, though it was no longer the official name. Under Japanese rule, the two names Han and Joseon coexisted, there were several groups who fought for independence, the most notable being the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the Republic of Korea was adopted as the name for the new country. Since the government only controlled the part of the Korean Peninsula
2.
Compact disc
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Compact disc is a digital optical disc data storage format released in 1982 and co-developed by Philips and Sony. The format was developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data. The first commercially available Audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan, standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MiB of data. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres, they are used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio. At the time of the introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much space as a thousand CDs. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs, by 2007,200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. In 2014, revenues from digital music services matched those from physical format sales for the first time. American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record information on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp. Russells patent application was first filed in 1966, and he was granted a patent in 1970, following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russells patents in the 1980s. The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals. Prototypes were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the late 1970s, although originally dismissed by Philips Research management as a trivial pursuit, the CD became the primary focus for Philips as the LaserDisc format struggled. In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new audio disc. After a year of experimentation and discussion, the Red Book CD-DA standard was published in 1980, after their commercial release in 1982, compact discs and their players were extremely popular. Despite costing up to $1,000, over 400,000 CD players were sold in the United States between 1983 and 1984, by 1988 CD sales in the United States surpassed those of vinyl LPs, and by 1992 CD sales surpassed those of prerecorded music cassette tapes. The success of the disc has been credited to the cooperation between Philips and Sony, who came together to agree upon and develop compatible hardware. The unified design of the disc allowed consumers to purchase any disc or player from any company. In 1974, L. However, due to the performance of the analog format
3.
Singing
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Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist, Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists, Singers may perform as soloists, or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised and it may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice, if practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific genre, such as classical or rock. They typically take voice training provided by teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers. Though these four mechanisms function independently, they are coordinated in the establishment of a vocal technique and are made to interact upon one another. During passive breathing, air is inhaled with the diaphragm while exhalation occurs without any effort, exhalation may be aided by the abdominal, internal intercostal and lower pelvis/pelvic muscles. Inhalation is aided by use of external intercostals, scalenes and sternocleidomastoid muscles, the pitch is altered with the vocal cords. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract. This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa. The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds
4.
Hangul
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The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul in South Korea and as Chosŏngŭl/Chosŏn Muntcha in North Korea is the alphabet that has been used to write the Korean language since the 15th century. It was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443 by King Sejong the Great, in South Korea, Hangul is used primarily to write the Korean language as using Hanja in typical Korean writing had fallen out of common usage during the late 1990s. In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 19 consonant and 21 vowel letters, however, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable. That is, although the syllable 한 han may look like a single character, each syllabic block consists of two to six letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom. Each Korean word consists of one or more syllables, hence one or more blocks, of the 11,172 possible Hangul syllables, the most frequent 256 have a cumulative frequency of 88. 2%, with the top 512, it reaches 99. 9%. The modern name Hangul was coined by Ju Sigyeong in 1912, han meant great in archaic Korean, and geul is the native Korean word for script. Taken together, then, the meaning is great script, as the word han had also become one way of indicating Korea as a whole the name could also potentially be interpreted as Korean script. Korean 한글 is pronounced, and in English as /ˈhɑːn. ɡʊl/ or /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/, when used as an English word, it is often rendered without the diacritics, hangul, and it is often capitalized as Hangul, as it appears in many English dictionaries. Hankul in the Yale romanization, a system recommended for technical linguistic studies, North Koreans call it Chosŏngŭl, after Chosŏn, the North Korean name for Korea. Because of objections to the names Hangeul, Chosŏngŭl, and urigeul by Koreans in China, until the early 20th century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite, who preferred the traditional hanja writing system. They gave it such names as these, Achimgeul, in the original Hanja, it is rendered as 故智者不終朝而會，愚者可浹旬而學。 Gugmun Eonmun Amgeul. Am is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine Ahaetgeul or Ahaegeul Hangul was promulgated by Sejong the Great, the Hall of Worthies, a group of scholars who worked with Sejong to develop and refine the new alphabet, is often credited for the work. The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444, the publication date of the Hunmin Jeong-eum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chosongul Day, is on January 15, various speculations about the creation process were put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446 Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. This document explains the design of the consonant letters according to articulatory phonetics, to assuage this problem, King Sejong created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people. However, it entered popular culture as Sejong had intended, being used especially by women, the late 16th century, however, saw a revival of Hangul, with gasa literature and later sijo flourishing. In the 17th century, Hangul novels became a major genre, by this point spelling had become quite irregular
5.
LOEN Entertainment
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LOEN Entertainment, formerly Seoul Records, is a South Korean entertainment company established by Min Yeong-bin in 1978. It is headquartered in Tehran Boulevard, Gangnam, Seoul, the company operates as a record label, talent agency, music production company, event management and concert production company, and music publishing house. Since January 2016 LOEN has been a subsidiary of Kakao, online music sales account for most of the companys profit, with 93. 9% of revenue coming from online music sales. The label also distributes CDs of some other entertainment agencies in South Korea through its branch LOEN Music, LOEN Entertainment was founded as Seoul Records in 1978 by Min Yeong-bin as a subsidiary of YBM Sisa, a company mainly involved in creating language-learning tapes. The company was registered in 1982, and in 1984 it began to produce. It was registered as a capital company in 1999, when it began to sell albums while operating an online shop. In 2000, the name was changed to YBM Seoul Records. The company joined the IFPI in 2003, Korean conglomerate SK Telecom bought a 60% share of the company in 2005, and YBM Seoul Records subsequently became part of SK Group. As of 2008, the company has been known as LOEN Entertainment, LOEN took charge of SK Telecoms online music distribution service, MelOn, in 2009. MelOn is currently the most used online music site in South Korea. In 2012, the signed a deal with streaming site Viki so that content from their artists would be featured on their site. In August 2012, the artists under LOEN collaborated to release a collaborative EP titled LOEN Tree Summer Story under the collective title LOEN Tree. On July 18,2013, Affinity Equity Partners, through its subsidiary Star Invest Holdings Ltd. bought 52. 56% of LOENs shares, five months later, Star Invest Holdings acquired RealNetworks, Inc. s 8. 83% stake in the company. The company was reorganized to include two labels, LOEN Tree and Collabodadi, on December 18,2013, LOEN acquired 70% of shares in Starship Entertainment, making it as an independent subsidiary of LOEN. On January 11,2016, LOEN was acquired by Kakao Corporation, the name LOEN stands for, Live On Entertainment Networks LOve + ENtertainment The companys first logo was the two small letters s and r combined. At the bottom of the logo was the English name, while the Korean name was at its right corner, as of 2015, LOEN currently uses two types of catalog number codes for its releases, the L10000**** series and the L20000**** series. 2011 LOEN, along with then-parent SK Telecom, was one of the 15 companies fined and sued by the Korean FTC for price rigging in 2011, the company was fined $9.6 million for its role in the scheme. Co-CEO Shin Won-soo, who was the sole CEO at the time being, was sentenced to pay 10 million won
6.
Korean name
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A Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name, as used by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea. In the Korean language, ireum or seongmyeong usually refers to the family name, traditional Korean family names typically consist of only one syllable. There is no name in the English language sense. Many Koreans have their names made of a generational name syllable. The generational name syllable is shared by siblings in North Korea, married men and women usually keep their full personal names, and children inherit the fathers family name. The family names are subdivided into bongwan, i. e. extended families which originate in the system used in previous historical periods. Each clan is identified by a place, and traces its origin to a common patrilineal ancestor. During periods of Mongol influence, the ruling class supplemented their Korean names with Mongolian names, some keep the original order of names, while others reverse the names to match the usual Western pattern. Fewer than 300 Korean family names were in use in 2000, for various reasons, there is a growth in the number of Korean surnames. Each family name is divided into one or more clans, identifying the city of origin. For example, the most populous clan is Gimhae Kim, that is, clans are further subdivided into various pa, or branches stemming from a more recent common ancestor, so that a full identification of a persons family name would be clan-surname-branch. Traditionally, Korean women keep their names after their marriage. In the premodern, patriarchal Korean society, people were extremely conscious of familial values, Korean women keep their surnames after marriage based on traditional reasoning that it is what they inherited from their parents and ancestors, and cannot be changed. According to traditions, each clan publishes a comprehensive genealogy every 30 years, around a dozen two-syllable surnames are used, all of which rank after the 100 most common surnames. The five most common names, which together make up over half of the Korean population, are used by over 20 million people in South Korea. After the 2015 census, it was revealed that family names were becoming more common in South Korea. Between 2000 and 2015, more than 4,800 new surnames were registered, during the census, a total of 5,582 distinct surnames were collected, 73% of which do not have corresponding hanja characters. It was also revealed that despite the surge in the number of surnames, the ratio of top 10 surnames had not changed
7.
Chen (singer)
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Kim Jong-dae, better known by his stage name Chen, is a South Korean singer-songwriter and actor. He is a member of the South Korean-Chinese boy group EXO and its sub-unit EXO-CBX, Chen became a trainee through S. M. Entertainments Casting System in 2011 when he was 18 years old, on December 29,2011, he was formally introduced as the fourth member of Exo. He made his first public appearance as an Exo member alongside Luhan, Tao, the group officially debuted on April 8,2012. In 2014, Chen joined the ballad group S. M. the Ballad, on the groups 2nd album Breath, he sang the Chinese version of the title track Breath with Zhang Liyin. He also sang a duet with fs Krystal titled When I Was, when U Were. and A Day Without You with Shinees Jonghyun. Chen performed his duets with Krystal and Jonghyun live at the S. M, the Ballad Joint Recital on February 12. In July 2014, Chen released his first solo song since debut titled The Best Luck as part of the soundtrack for SBS drama Its Okay, Thats Love, which stars his fellow Exo member D. O. The Best Luck was awarded the Best OST by a Male Artist and Best OST Song at the 5th So-Loved Awards, Chen was also invited as a special performer at the 3rd APAN Star Awards on November 11,2014, where he performed the track live. In June 2015, Chen co-wrote the lyrics for Promise, a song from the edition of Exos fourth studio album Exodus, along with fellow members Chanyeol. In August 2015, he made his theatre debut playing the role of Benny in the SM C&C production In the Heights. He also participated in and became the runner-up in the round of the music television show King of Mask Singer under the alias Legendary Guitar Man. In January 2016, Chen performed John Lennons song Imagine with world-renowned pianist Steve Barakatt at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, in February 2016, Chen and South Korean singer Punch released a duet titled Everytime as a soundtrack for the KBS drama Descendants of the Sun. The song debuted at one on Gaons weekly digital chart. In April 2016, Chen and South Korean rapper Heize released Lil Something, in August 2016, Chen collaborated with fellow Exo members Xiumin and Baekhyun on an original soundtrack titled For You for the SBS drama Moon Lovers, Scarlet Heart Ryeo. In October 2016, he collaborated with DJ Alesso on another song for the Station project titled Years, later in October, together with Baekhyun and Xiumin, Chen became a member of Exos first official sub unit EXO-CBX. The group made their debut with the extended play Hey Mama, in January 2017, Chen collaborated with Dynamic Duo in a song titled Nosedive, becoming the first artist to be featured in the groups collaboration project Mixxxture. The song reached two on the Gaon Digital Chart
8.
Gaon Music Chart
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The Gaon Music Chart tabulates the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in South Korea. It started tracking sales since the beginning of 2010 and it was officially launched in February 2010 with a launching ceremony held on 23 February 2010 at the Westin Chosun hotel in Seoul. The launch also included a small awarding ceremony, which awarded girl group Girls Generation with top artist of January, meanwhile, Hit single We Fell In Love, performed by Jo Kwon of 2AM and Ga-in of Brown Eyed Girls, took the title of best weekly mobile ringtone. There are two charts, Gaon Album Chart and Gaon Digital Chart. The charts lists domestic artists sales, international sales and a combined overall sales in weekly, monthly. The Gaon Album Chart ranks physical album sales, including mini, the Gaon Digital Chart ranks best-selling non-physical, digital music sales, and is an aggregate of downloads, streaming and background music. It excludes radio airplay, and different versions of a song are listed as separate entries and it is compiled from online data provided by web-based music providers such as Olleh Music, genie, Melon, Mnet, Soribada, Naver Music, KakaoMusic and Bugs. There is no digital album chart because each song is a digital download. All charts rank the top 100, before mid-2014, the digital, streaming, download, and noraebang charts ranked the top 200. The Gaon Social Chart is a chart that ranks the top 100 songs according to their popularity on YouTube, Twitter, Weibo. The Gaon Weibo Chart is a chart that ranks the top 10 most popular K-pop groups. This chart started the week of June 29,2014, Gaon Chart K-Pop Awards Gaon chart official homepage KMCIA official homepage
