About Zutter

Zutter is a London publication about Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Filipino pop culture, and about the industry that produces it.

We write for people who already follow this. There is no paragraph explaining who BTS are, no glossary, no squealing. What there is instead is reporting on how the machine works: who owns the labels, what a stadium tour actually costs, why a group plays Manila but not Manchester, what changed in the standard trainee contract in January and who failed to notice.

The records, the clothes, the films, the skincare and the food get the same treatment. Taken seriously, reported properly, by two people who go to the shows.

The name

쩔어 — jjeoreo — is Korean slang for dope, and the title of a 2015 GD & T.O.P single. Anyone who was nineteen when it came out is in their thirties now, with a job and an opinion. That is who we write for.

What's here

Read is the journalism: Music, Style, Beauty, Food, TV&Film and The Business. The Business is the one we would point you to first: label economics, contracts and labour, touring margins, platform take rates, and the object economy that funds all of it.

Watch is the weekly show.

What's On is a maintained guide to East and Southeast Asian music, film and culture events in London.

Skin is Zutter SkinAI, a skincare routine builder.

The Green Room is a membership, the first-person half of what we do, for people who want it.

The archive

Zutter has been publishing since 2016. Some of that work is still on the site, and we've left the dates on it. An interview with an artist before anyone outside Seoul was writing about them is a useful document; a 2017 shopping list is a period piece. Both are here. Neither has been quietly updated to look cleverer than it was.

How we work

We read the filing before we read the article about the filing. Korean disclosures come from DART, Japanese from JPX and EDINET, UK company information from Companies House. Most English-language coverage of this industry never opens the primary document, and that gap is most of our job.

If a claim exists only in English, only on aggregators, and traces back to no named Korean, Japanese or Chinese outlet, agency statement or filing, we don't run it. We don't source from anonymous forums, and "fans are speculating" is not sourcing. Contested claims need two independent sources.

How this is paid for

The journalism is free and always will be. Nothing in Read sits behind a payment.

Zutter makes money from membership, from brand partnerships that are labelled as such, and from affiliate commission when you buy something through a link provided by. us. Anything carrying an affiliate link is marked Ad at the top of the page. We do not accept payment in exchange for editorial coverage or for a favourable review, and no advertiser sees a piece before publication.

Corrections

We get things wrong and we fix them in public. Corrections are dated and sit on the piece itself rather than being edited away. If you've spotted one, contact@zutter.co.uk.