G-Dragon’s face returns to Chinese billboards as K-pop ban hits 10th year

McDonald’s campaign signals enduring demand for Korean stars in China, though the decade-long K-pop ban remains in place. A McDonald’s advertisement featuring G-Dragon runs on a giant electronic billboard on Beijing’s East Third Ring Road, a rare sight for a Korean singer in China since Beijing’s unofficial ban on Korean pop culture took hold in 2016. SCREEN CAPTURE G-Dragon towers over Beijing’s East Third Ring Road from a giant electronic billboard, while posters of the singer and the daisy that serves as his emblem have gone up at the 798 Art District in Beijing and at McDonald’s restaurants across the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Korean singers are once again decorating commercial spaces in China’s big cities, even as China’s unofficial ban on Korean pop culture enters its 10th year. The ban took hold in 2016 amid a dispute over the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antimissile system in Korea. The question now is whether Chinese billboards could become a new route back to cultural exchange between the two countries. The billboards are part of McDonald’s Asia-wide marketing campaign with G-Dragon. McDonald’s China rolled out eight new items made with the singer at more than 8,000 stores on the Chinese mainland last Thursday. They include a chicken burger topped with a gochujang butter sauce developed in Korea, one of several items that work in Korean flavors. More than 700 stores nationwide have been decorated with G-Dragon's face, Chinese advertising trade outlet Adquan reported. Sixteen stores in cities including Beijing and Shenzhen have been turned into flagship stores with special experience spaces. The Changhongqiao store in Beijing even installed a phone booth where visitors can take a virtual call from G-Dragon. Fans have flooded the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu with photos of themselves posing in front of G-Dragon posters at McDonald’s restaurants. Under a range of hashtags, they have celebrated the campaign. What sets the campaign apart is not simply that a Korean star is fronting a global brand. McDonald’s China itself is running a large-scale campaign built on a Korean singer’s name and image. It is also selling Chinese consumers merchandise made with Peaceminusone, the fashion brand G-Dragon founded. The response suggests that Korean pop culture remains commercially competitive in China. Photos of fans posing with G-Dragon’s McDonald’s advertisements flood the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. SCREEN CAPTURE G-Dragon is not alone. Jang Won-young of the girl group IVE appeared in August as a body care model for Lux, Unilever’s personal care brand. Lux’s official Weibo account promoted large outdoor advertisements featuring her face as well as events for consumers, and stores decorated with her photos opened in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu and elsewhere. BTS member Jin has also shown up in major Chinese commercial spaces through advertisements for luxury brand Gucci. In January, chicken franchise BBQ chose actor Lee Min-ho as its model for the Chinese market, a sign that Korean companies, not only global ones, are using Korean stars to win over Chinese consumers. The ban was never written into law, and Beijing has never announced that it is over. Instead, it refers to a series of informal restrictions on Korean pop culture in broadcast scheduling, performance permits and content distribution. The bar remains particularly high for large-scale concerts by Korean singers on the mainland and for the official distribution of Korean broadcast content. Jang Won-young of the girl group IVE appears online in China as a body care model for Lux, Unilever’s personal care brand. SCREEN CAPTURE Even so, the shift is not a small one. Korean entertainers in China have long been both symbols of pop culture and hostages to diplomatic relations. Global consumer brands now tapping Korean stars’ recognition and fan bases to reach Chinese consumers shows that cultural demand and commercial exchange are still alive. Cultural exchange may widen through consumption and marketing before it does through official concerts or broadcast programs. Whether the trend spreads to Korea-China cultural and artistic cooperation as a whole remains to be seen. Hiring a star for an advertisement is a different matter from getting concerts and broadcast content officially into the country. Several K-pop concerts planned in China were called off last year, some only weeks before they were due to take place. They included boy band EPEX’s show in Fuzhou, which would have been the first K-pop concert by Korean acts on the mainland in nine years. Exchange need not start on a stage or a screen, however. Fashion, design, food and beverages and digital content are areas where companies and creators in both countries can find common ground relatively easily. The McDonald’s campaign, which combines G-Dragon’s music and fashion, shows what is possible. A genuine end to the ban would have to show up in concrete steps. Those include the return of Korean singers’ concerts to China, the official distribution of Korean films and dramas and more joint projects between production companies in the two countries. Turning the momentum in advertising into that kind of cooperation will take institutional support for cultural and artistic exchange. Restoring exchanges cut off by diplomatic conflict depends on voluntary cooperation in the private sector as well as talks between the two governments. The faces of Korean stars appearing across Chinese streets for the first time in a decade do not declare the ban over. But they can be read as a knock on the door to Korea-China cultural exchange that has long been shut. BY JIN MEI-HUA [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr] This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom. 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