The world of K-pop just got a bit more prestigious.

South Korean pop powerhouse record label S.M. Entertainment announced on Wednesday that they have plans to open a museum in the Los Angeles neighborhood known as Koreatown.

The SMTOWN Museum will be located on 6th Street and Oxford Avenue, according to the publication eNEWS.

"We've been planning for a long time to create a place where residents in Hollywood could experience hallyu, but we decided that it was more meaningful to bring US residents and tourists who were interested in hallyu to LA's Koreatown," S.M. Entertainment executives wrote in an official company statement.

And although the S.M. Entertainment statement failed to offer a projected completion date for the proposed K-pop museum, the company executives claim it is an important step in the future of the genre.

"You can say that this construction of the SMTOWN Museum and its entertainment spaces is the first step for the new future of hallyu," the label's statement added.

In addition to the museum space, S.M. Entertainment, whose artist roster includes Girls' Generation, Super Junior and EXO, plans to build a Korean restaurant and a performance area complete with hologram technology.

August Brown of the L.A. Times music blog Pop & Hiss is intrigued.

"The museum will be just a few blocks from SM's L.A. offices on Wilshire Boulevard, and it could be a new beachhead in K-Pop's adventures in America's entertainment establishment," Brown wrote on Thursday.

SM Entertainment received more mainstream news coverage last week when Forbes Magazine profiled the organization.

The piece offers a dizzying array of company statistics.

"For spots in its groups, [SM Entertainment] receives 300,000 applicants in nine countries every year," the article reads.

"Its training facility in Gangnam is 2,550 square meters. It collaborates with 400 songwriters worldwide and samples some 12,000 songs a year. From 2010 through last year its artists played to a total audience of 2.5 million. Its YouTube page gets 1,000 views a second."

But Daniel Tudor, author of "Korea: The Impossible Country," is doubtful that K-pop will ever truly break into the Western pop charts.

"K-pop can be a niche, but I don't think it will break through in the West," Tudor said. "They try too hard, they are too rigid."

He adds that before jumping on the S.M. Entertainment bandwagon, K-poppers should consider the company's history of lawsuits from artists claiming they got an unfair deal.

"S.M. is very secretive at the top; they don't talk much," Tudor said. "Their business practices in the past have been questionable--contracts for young people who perhaps don't know what they are getting into."