Online Knowledge Bases and Cultural Technology: Analyzing Production Networks in Korean Popular Music Peter M. Broadwell 1 *, Timothy R. Tangherlini 2 **, Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang 3 *** Abstract Te meticulously internetworked structures of prominent K-pop groups and companies are a key aspect of “cultural technology,” the successful and sometimes controversial system for developing internationally appealing entertainment products pioneered by S.M. Entertainment, a K-pop frm, under the direction of its founder, Lee Soo-man. To examine the formation of “production networks” within Korean popular music over time, we applied network analysis techniques to records in online data archives describing ~4,800 individuals, groups, and companies associated with recent Korean popular music, especially K-pop. Network analyses focusing on specifc time intervals can reveal prominent individuals, groups, and larger sub-networks in the Korean music scene during the global rise of K-pop over the past 20 years, shedding light on the comparative structures and scales of these production networks and their changes over time, as well as enabling comparisons between K-pop and more “independent” sub-felds of Korean popular music. Tis study drew its data from large-scale public, moderated knowledge bases, specifcally MusicBrainz, DBpedia, and Freebase. Automated methods for data extraction, rectifcation, and analysis were necessary given the expansive nature of the available information about K-pop. Records of specifc artists, groups, and companies were extracted via queries to public REST APIs and SPARQL endpoints, and semantic relations as defined in the archives’ Resource Description Framework (RDF) ontologies were mined to build inter-entity connections such as group memberships, artist collaborations, distribution agreements, and recording contracts, as well as to assign date ranges and to restrict the network from growing beyond the immediate realm of Korean popular music. The existence of unique identifiers for entities in the * Digital Library Program, UCLA. ** Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA. *** Ewha Music Research Institute, Ewha Womans University.