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Who’s up, who’s down: Farewell to Asia 2019

Who was up and who was down in the Info-Pacific region in 2019?

Curtis S. Chin and Jose B. Collazo (The Jakarta Post)
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Washington
Fri, January 3, 2020

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Who’s up, who’s down: Farewell to Asia 2019 Who was up and who was down in the Info-Pacific region in 2019? (Shutterstock/yavyav)

A

s 2020 begins, we take one last look at the year that was. At year’s end, the United States-China trade war had sent US equity markets on a volatile ride to record levels. If on nothing else, President Donald Trump has united partisan Washington on the need to rebalance the US-China economic relationship. How that relationship evolves in the year ahead will surely impact all ASEAN as well as Main Street America and the 2020 US presidential elections.

So, who was up and who was down in the Info-Pacific region in 2019?

Best year: BTS — beyond politics, a K-pop band rules

Amid slowing economies and political divisions, good news was hard to find in much of Asia in 2019. A clear exception was the K-pop sensation BTS that has also made its presence felt across the US. The Korean boy band was firmly established as a dominant social media presence and worldwide phenomenon in 2019.

The group’s Jan. 19, 2019 concert at the National Stadium in Singapore drew an audience of 45,000, making BTS the first K-pop act to sell out the arena.

BTS’s wildly successful Love Yourself World Tour also sold-out stadiums elsewhere in Asia, and across the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, including in London’s Wembley Stadium. BTS also became the first group since the Beatles to earn three No. 1 albums in less than a year, according to Billboard.

With the group contributing more than US$4.65 billion to South Korea’s gross domestic product according to the Hollywood Reporter, little wonder BTS earned a Time cover story and a place on the magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people for 2019. Trump might well have met rival boy band EXO on his own trip to Seoul in 2019, but it is BTS that wins our Best Year in Asia 2019.

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