HORI7ON and the P-Pop Moment: When the K-Pop System Goes Southeast Asian
- May 29
- 4 min read
The Architecture of an Idol Group
HORI7ON (stylized in all caps, pronounced "horizon") was formed in 2023 through Dream Maker, a survival reality competition jointly produced by South Korean talent management company MLD Entertainment, Filipino broadcast network ABS-CBN, and performance company KAMP Global. The format drew closely on the Produce 101 franchise — one of the most influential entertainment formats in contemporary East Asian pop culture — with Korean mentors, production standards, and a Korean debut pathway.
All seven members — Vinci, Kim, Kyler, Reyster, Winston, Jeromy, and Marcus — are Filipino. After the competition, they trained in Seoul under the K-pop idol system: structured routines covering vocal technique, dance, media presentation, and collective discipline. They debuted in Seoul in July 2023 with the album Friend-SHIP. Korean publications including The Korea Herald and The Korea Times identified them as the first all-Filipino boy band to officially debut in South Korea.
MLD Entertainment CEO Lee Hyoungjin described the group as a "collaboration of K-pop and P-pop" — a hybrid in which the production system is Korean but the cultural coloring is distinctly Filipino. "When we talk about music, the color changes depending on who sings it," he told The Philippine Star. "For HORI7ON, being a group that's a collaboration of K-pop and P-pop, they for sure are going to have their own color."
What Transfer Looks Like in Practice
The HORI7ON model is a specific kind of creative industry transfer — not the licensing of content, but the adoption of a production methodology. Korea's idol system is a vertically integrated pipeline covering talent discovery, pre-debut training, debut management, and fan engagement through structured membership and physical album formats.
What HORI7ON illustrates is that this pipeline can be relocated. Talent discovery happened in the Philippines; training happened in Seoul; debut happened in Korea. Their fanbase — called Anchors — now spans both markets. This shifts from typical Korean Wave consumption: Southeast Asian artists entering the Korean production system to reach a global audience complicates the traditional center-to-periphery flow of cultural products.
The Meaning of "Sumayaw Sumunod"
The choice to perform "Sumayaw Sumunod" at the ROUND 2026 Festival in Manila offers a compelling case for cultural reclamation. Originally a 1978 hit by Boyfriends, the song exists in the Filipino popular music archive as a pre-Hallyu artifact. HORI7ON released their own version in August 2024 — a main mix blending Tagalog and Korean lyrics alongside a full Tagalog rendition — but its performance on the Araneta stage during the Philippines' ASEAN Chairmanship felt like a loop closing.
It is a strategic inversion of localization. In standard K-pop logic, localization involves a Korean group adopting host-market traits. For HORI7ON, the "host market" is their country of origin. The OPM cover is not outreach; it is a homecoming — K-pop production logic adapted to serve national cultural pride rather than external market penetration.
Policy Dimensions
From a creative economy perspective, the HORI7ON case raises questions that current frameworks are only beginning to address.
Value Capture and IP: K-pop training is an investment Korean agencies make with the expectation of recouping revenue through international IP rights. When the talent is Filipino but the training and management are Korean, where does the economic value actually accrue? As the region moves toward the ASEAN Community Vision 2045, the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) for cross-border talent remains a critical economic pillar (Naguna, 2026).
Knowledge Transfer: The Dream Maker format provided a publicly documented case study in idol production. Whether this knowledge benefits the domestic sector depends on active engagement from the Philippine Creative Industries Development Council (PCIDC). Under the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act (RA 11904), the goal is to establish the country as a leading creative hub by 2030 (The Manila Times, 2026).
The ASEAN Agenda: The ASEAN Center of Excellence for Creative Industries (ACE-CI), a flagship proposal of the Philippines’ 2026 Chairmanship, aims to harmonize the "Orange Economy" with the "Digital Economy." Expected to be hosted at the CCP Complex, the ACE-CI serves as a potential research hub for cases like HORI7ON—where cross-border cooperation manifests at the level of individual careers and commercial hybridity (The Manila Times, 2026).
Neither K-Pop Nor P-Pop, Exactly
"We want to be artists that other artists and other people look up to," HORI7ON member Vinci noted in an early interview. Their existence at the intersection of two cultural industries answers a question the regional creative economy has circled for years: can "K-pop technology" be borrowed without losing local soul? HORI7ON suggests that when borrowed by Southeast Asian artists for Southeast Asian audiences, it produces something entirely new — a hybrid form whose economic and cultural implications are still being defined.
References
ASEAN-BAC. (2025). The Philippines' 2026 ASEAN Chairmanship. https://asean-bac.org/news
Billboard Philippines. (2024, August 13). HORI7ON release new single "Sumayaw Sumunod." https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/hori7on-sumayaw-sumunod-release-2024/
Naguna, J. L. (2026, January 13). Why the $2 trillion global creative economy is ASEAN's new center of gravity. Philippine Information Agency. https://pia.gov.ph/features/2026/01/13/creative-economy-asean
The Manila Times. (2026, April 12). The Cultural Center of the Philippines as ASEAN's creative hub. https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/04/12/sunday-times/arts-awake/creative-hub
