The ASEAN·Korea Music Festival has fostered cross-border solidarity and harmony through the universal language of music. Beginning as a virtual stage during the 2020 pandemic, ROUND’s journey has since evolved into a massive cultural network that connects Asia’s diverse local music scenes and propels them onto the global stage.

Going beyond a mere collaborative concert, it is establishing a new music ecosystem where K-music and ASEAN pop interact on equal terms, serving as a pivotal platform for talented ASEAN artists to deeply connect with global audiences. This presentation reviews the dynamic growth trajectory of ASEAN-Korea popular music driven by ROUND over the past years, while exploring key challenges and strategic directions for its sustainable future during this crucial period of transition.

The 2026 ROUND in the Philippines demonstrated the festival’s potential to generate lasting cultural, industry, and institutional impact across ASEAN and Korea. This presentation examines the festival’s impact beyond audience and media reach, highlighting Cultural Exchange, Audience Development, Industry Collaboration, Institutional Cooperation, and Long-term Legacy as key dimensions of its success.

Through artist collaborations, support for emerging P-POP artists, international networking, and partnerships across media, local government, and industry, ROUND created new opportunities for artists and audiences to connect across borders. The presentation further explores how these outcomes can be developed into a sustainable regional music platform supporting ongoing artist exchange, touring networks, co-production, and digital distribution across ASEAN and Korea.

As the world's largest archipelagic state with over 17,500 islands and 718 regional languages, Indonesia has fostered a thriving musical ecosystem rooted in its unparalleled cultural diversity. Within this context, music festivals have transcended mere entertainment to become powerful platforms driving regional tourism, local economies, and creative industries.

This presentation traces the rise of these festivals and examines how they leverage 'Local Creativity' to address the 'Shifting Needs' of audiences and the music industry. Furthermore, it explores 'Future Trends & Challenges' ahead, offering strategic directions for music festivals to serve as sustainable platforms that seamlessly connect culture, tourism, and local communities.

Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival has grown over more than two decades into one of Korea’s leading music festivals and a major global platform connecting artists, audiences, and the music industry. Leveraging Incheon’s strategic location and strong accessibility from Seoul and major cities across Asia, the festival has expanded its audience while balancing public support with a successful paid-ticket model, developing artist discovery, global exchange, and safe festival experiences as its core values.

This presentation examines the History, Discovery, Global Hub, and Youth & Safety of Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival, while addressing key challenges including urban noise concerns, public funding structures, and financial sustainability. It further explores the vision of positioning Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival as a global gateway for K-BAND, and proposes stronger collaboration with ASEAN through artist exchanges, lineup partnerships, shared stage-production expertise, and joint ticketing and promotional initiatives to foster a more connected and sustainable global music ecosystem.

K-pop has become global, Southeast Asian music industries continue to grow, and Korea-ASEAN music festivals are expanding. Yet it remains difficult to identify songs that are truly shared across Asia—not simply streamed by fandoms, but remembered, hummed, translated, rearranged, and sung across linguistic and national borders. This presentation asks a simple question: Can Asia produce another shared song?

Rather than celebrating success, I focus on the bottlenecks between local production and transnational circulation. The platform era has transformed audiences into fandoms, sing-alongs into organized fanchants, and songs into modular performances. These developments have strengthened the music industry, but they do not necessarily create songs that become part of everyday memory.

I revisit three Southeast Asian songs that circulated in Korea: Freddie Aguilar's 'Anak,' the Indonesian melody 'Dayung Sampan' (later known through 'Tian Mi Mi'), and Phum Viphurit's 'Lover Boy.' Their histories suggest a simple point: listeners do not need to understand every lyric. Singers sing; audiences hum. Songs cross borders when people begin humming them.

Such circulation requires more than promotion. Like scoring a goal in football, it depends on build-up: technology, language, arrangement, production, markets, and memory. Festivals gather people, while platforms circulate recordings. Neither automatically creates shared songs.

I compare existing festival models and argue that Korea-ASEAN collaborations should develop a niche between K-pop spectacle and the display of 'World Music.' The goal is not to imitate K-pop or J-pop, but to create songs that travel through dramas, films, live performance, karaoke, and everyday life. Good music is not enough. People have to hum it.