The Name in Transmedia Storytelling

Seo Taiji and Boys’ single “Nan arayo” (I know), released in 1992, may have not been the first rap song recorded in Korea, but it is still remembered by many Koreans, after close to three decades since its release, as the first Korean rap song they ever heard. Seo Taiji was undoubtedly an icon of the youth culture in the Korean popular music scene of the 1990s, and it was not coincidental that he found hip hop to be the music genre most appealing to the emerging youth in the era of postmilitary dictatorship, eager for cosmopolitan style and sensibility. Ever since Seo Taiji and Boys, hip hop has sustained its popularity in the Korean popular music scene, and most K-pop idol groups today include at least one member who can rap. BTS, arguably the world’s most popular group active today, features three members who rap. When the group, initially known for its underdog spirit, first started out in 2013, it identified hip hop as its most influential music genre.

Ever since Elvis Presley and the Beatles emerged as global superstars in the 1950s and 1960s, respectively, pop music has actively exploited various transmedia formats in order to commercialize stardom and sell more albums. Well before Henry Jenkins coined the term “transmedia storytelling,”¹ and in the days before user-generated content (UGC) on the internet – on sites such as YouTube and Facebook – allowed consumers and fans to express their own creative views through fan fiction, the idol musicians of the twentieth century were marketed not only through their music played on radio and vinyl but also through fantasy tales. Many pop artists, such as David Bowie, conceptualized fantasy story lines that would blur the lines between real-life performances and stage personae, such as Ziggy Stardust. Before Bowie, Elvis played larger-than-life characters in movies, ranging from a convicted murderer (Jailhouse Rock, 1957) to a biracial cowboy caught in a racial conflict in a Western (Flaming Star, 1960) to a boxer (Kid Galahad, 1962), and a Hawaiian GI returning from a tour of duty (Blue Hawaii, 1961). Not to be outdone, John, Paul, George, and Ringo packaged themselves into Sergeant Pepper animation characters, rode a yellow submarine, and donned enormous walrus and other costumes, all in order to create better points of convergence with their fans. These dreamlike fantasy characters stoked the imaginations of young consumers beyond their enjoyment of the music of their idols. Although the fantasy tales featured less-than-real scenarios, they became central visual images of cool America and mod Britain and worked their way into millions of homes in the postwar “free world.” This transmedia storytelling was every bit as important as the musical tunes themselves, as film, television, radio, publishing, and tabloid culture, and even toy and stationery merchandisers, collaborated with the music industry in fueling the fantasies of consumers who sought to tell their own stories around the stars they adored.

During the 1980s and 1990s fantasy based on transmedia storytelling continued to play an important role in films, and then in music videos; it became popular in the age of MTV, even becoming bigger than the music itself. Music giants such as Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna all crossed over various media of motion picture, music videos, television, fashion, and even amusement park rides to appeal to their fans. Albums that were explosively popular with fans, such as Thriller (1982), Purple Rain (1984), and Like a Virgin (1984), were not only supported by music videos and theme park–like stadium tours but also heavily promoted by feature or concept films in which the artists starred (Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, Purple Rain starring Prince, and Desperately Seeking Susan starring Madonna, among others). Music was just one element among a confluence of other star-making ingredients that were equally if not more powerful in the world of fandom that craved ever more fantasy stories, fashion trends, and viral dance moves.

However, starting around the 2000s, fantasy stories began to wane in the music industry. There are two reasons for this. First, popular television music audition programs, such as American Idol, which began in 2002, groomed their new musical talents into stardom by touting autobiographical stories rather than fantasies. After being nearly destroyed by Napster and other free music-sharing services, the music studios needed to regroup, and did so by forging alliances with television and its growing demand for reality content to rebound from its own ratings crisis. Second, the hip-hop industry, which was hitting its stride after several decades of ascent, had likewise taken an autobiographical turn, focusing on rappers’ real-life stories steeped in Black urban ghettos, and this emphasis on authenticity became far more important than selling stories based on fantasy re-creations of zombies, virgin myths, and cartoon characters. Although, ironically, the genre of hip hop put into practice a postmodern blurring of distinction between the “authentic” and the “copy” – by narrowing the gap between production and consumption via empowering DJs who endlessly looped, sampled, and appropriated original R&B songs on their turntables – hip hop also prioritized what Achille Mbembe has referred to as the “becoming black of the world,” that is, the postured rearticulation of an authenticated “I” rooted in social hardship and street culture and known for its fights against the establishment.² My explanation of “becoming black” here is deliberately complicated, because from N.W.A.’s West Coast gangsta rap to Jay-Z’s East Coast hustler rap, the “keep it real” image of hip hop, as marketed throughout the past several decades, is mediated by blurring the line between dramatization and street reality.

Complete debunking of the authenticity argument of hip hop, which stresses the importance of Blackness at its origin, as a bankrupt essentialist enterprise, can often exempt egregious and offensive misappropriation of African American cultural practices from being critiqued. Hip hop became a vehicle for a public art forum on sensitive topics about racism and police brutality around many global urban centers one or two decades after the genre was born in the streets of Bronx during the 1970s. As Andy Bennett notes in his research on hip hop in Frankfurt, Germany, and Newcastle, United Kingdom, what began as experimental street music in New York City in the 1970s successfully expanded to both racialized minority and white youths in Europe. However, even though the global mobility of hip hop has proven to be expedient, popular, and effective, many cases of non-Black localization and appropriation have to be cautiously approached and theorized. Even Bennett argues, after having studied hip hop in Newcastle, a predominantly white, working-class city in the 1990s, that the “use of black music and style on the part of the white working-class youth [in the UK] becomes a particular form of lived sensibility; a reflexive lifestyle ‘strategy.’”³ In other words, without the recognition of affinity with African Americans’ struggles, hip hop performed by non-Blacks and minority groups can reinscribe the danger of foreclosing the dialogue with the African Americans who innovated and continue to innovate this novel cultural experience.

Cynthia Fuchs argues in discussing Jay-Z’s music video “Hard Knock Life” that the ’hood depicted in the hustler-cum-rapper’s video is “a specific and imaginative construction … simultaneously diurnal and sensational, depressed and sanguine, a dramatization of the dreams ignited by such an environment.”⁴ Although the representation of the ’hood in rap songs is inevitably overdramatized, the emergence of hip hop suddenly allowed the American public to see real, unfiltered images of Black ghettos for the first time. Just as the early rock stars mentioned above carved fantasy alter egos from the concept images of their albums or films, many rappers had to shuffle between two identities: an illegitimate street identity and a second identity unencumbered by street reputation. Both Dr. Dre and Jay-Z play with their real names in songs (Andre Young and Shawn Carter, respectively) as if they possessed multiple subjectivities. These rappers’ dual identities are not only self-mocking, playful acts put on by the performers themselves but also punctuated by the historical oppression of African Americans that made renaming a necessity.

Not unlike these American rap stars, about half of the members of the Korean idol septet BTS, which started as a rap group, feature double identities. For instance, RM (previously Rap Monster) also uses his birth name (Kim Nam-joon) when he reverts to his everyday “normal” persona. However, this is where the comparison between Korean and African American rapper self-naming conventions ends. Unlike Black rappers, whose nicknames, dual identities, and near obsession with reclaiming a new sense of self are due to their illegitimate street identities from the ’hood, the dual identities of Korean rappers lack political depths of nomenclature. The self-effacing fogginess, legal caginess, and complexity of birth origin embedded in the naming of American rappers could be traced back to the beginnings of African American history and slavery in the United States, none of which can be applied to the background of the names given to Korean artists. Korean rappers can at best approximate the kind of political manifestation sought by Black rappers’ name shuffling, which also subverts numerous binaries, including home versus exile, sobriety versus addiction, and freedom versus incarceration. In American rapper names, what began as a recognition of power enfranchisement and disenfranchisement – materialized in legal troubles, bouts with alcohol and drug addiction, incarcerations, and police harassment – can only be mimicked in the Korean pop world, where the experience and concept of the ethnic ’hood is largely absent. The names of BTS’s rappers, such as RM and Suga, provoke swag and cuteness with little underlying substance. Only the rapper members of BTS have adopted stage names that bear no resemblance to their original names (RM, Suga, and J-Hope), whereas the group’s vocalists (Jin, Jimin, and Jungkook) have retained at least part of their birth names. The seventh and second-youngest member of the group, V, remains the only outlier, but once again, his name simply stands for a common and trite term, “victory.”

The purpose of this chapter is not to raise the specter of the debate over authenticity in relation to race and Blackness. Every ethnic community around the globe is producing its own rap culture and has created its own version of the “Black man.” In major cosmopolitan sectors, not only Korean but also Puerto Rican, Indian, and Arabic youth communities, for instance, distinguish themselves from the mainstream corporate industry by producing their own hip-hop music and culture. As I have stated above, the debate about authenticity and the appropriation of the African American origin of hip hop continues to unravel not only outside but also still in the United States. For instance, during the mid-2010s, pioneering rapper Q-Tip’s public outburst of displeasure with the white rapper Iggy Azalea and her ignorance of the historical origins of hip hop exhibited the difficulty of resolving the debate well into the twenty-first century. Also, during a hip-hop panel I moderated in October 2019, when asked how he feels about the strong connection between hip hop and the “criminalized Black body,” the legendary Korean rapper Tiger JK refrained from directly engaging with the question, only to show frustration privately, for the question implied that his hip hop was less than legitimate because he does not possess a “Black body.” But even he lamented that today’s rappers in Korea know very little about the African American origin of hip hop. I wish to ask how K-pop, and more specifically BTS, makes or unmakes its own ethnic identity in a way that becomes emblematic of its hard work on self-cultivation and that may then approximate a connection to Blackness. To rephrase this question, in what specific ways does K-pop propose the sense of “home” (gohyang) that African American musicians have used in portraying the complexity of the ’hood that is so deeply entrenched in the visual landscapes of hip-hop expression? If hip-hop sound not only gave rise to the style and music of African Americans but also served to reimagine the ’hood for Black musicians who found their way to the global mainstream, where can K-pop’s reclamation of its own ’hood be? Given that transmedia storytelling strategies have paid enormous dividends for BTS, what kind of shared spatial identification has this K-pop group been able to conjecture for both itself and its fans? What interests me is the question of how BTS’s transmedia storytelling campaign enables the group’s members to solidly link their identities with their fans in order to forge a sense of collective spatial belonging that serves as a postethnic, postnational, and postlinguistic home. What comes into play in these music videos is a manufactured sense of place, ranging from encounters on harsh streets to an alternate-reality universe existing only in cyberspace, all of which is designed to appeal to global fans.⁵ In 2015, for instance, Big Hit Entertainment scored big with an image of fictive blue flowers that was featured on a music video by BTS. When these flowers provoked curiosity, Big Hit gave them the name “smeraldo” and opened a blog on the Korean portal site Naver.com called “Flower Smeraldo,” which posts random newsletters on the manufactured history of the flowers and, to a larger extent, a sense of cyber habitat for the invented flora.

BTS was the first and only K-pop idol group to “train” in one of the bontos (homelands) of hip hop, the African American neighborhood of Los Angeles, for the Mnet reality-television program American Hustle Life (AHL). The program aired weekly and had been specifically designed for BTS. In watching AHL, I am fascinated by BTS’s self-deprecation and how its members engage almost in self-mockery to project themselves as underdog heroes struggling in the land of hip hop. As they attempt to impress rap mentors from the ’hood, such as Coolio and Warren G, their efforts to earn legitimacy in K-pop history by making a pilgrimage to the bonto of hip hop actually expose the impossibility of bridging the gap between K-pop and Black hip hop. After initial attempts to launch BTS as a hip-hop idol group failed, largely because of the different genealogies of the two music genres, the septet moved away from hip hop and took a step toward a more mainstream pop sound. It was around the same time that the group also created Bangtan Universe (BU), a multimedia fictional realm of music videos and short films, books, a game app, and a webtoon. After my discussion of AHL, I propose a reading of the images of BU, productively drawing on Kay Dickinson’s theory of synesthetic possibility, which refers to the effects of music videos that appeal to the senses of both sight and sound. The sense of visual space that BTS promotes through BU is a kind of neither-here-nor-there fluidity, which can both strongly invoke visual significations open to creative reinterpretation on the part of fans and overwhelm viewers with the force of neoliberal globalization, where every space unfortunately becomes gentrified for the sake of promoting universality. BU, the fictive space of BTS – not unlike its fictive “smeraldo” flower shop – ends up restoring a sense of universal belonging, but in the process it also denies a sense of material belonging that could potentially tap into a Korean idea of the ’hood. Music in the era of social media has become a metamusical enterprise, appealing to a young global audience less preoccupied with a shared sense of history, language, and racial bonding raised in melody and lyrics. Instead of the actual offline ’hood affinity and lived sensibility that have been critical in building bonds around African American cultural history, BTS through BU offers an identifiable spirit of “telling stories of underdog experience” that is deeply felt by its fans through the social media space. Whether or not online spaces such as BU could actually rearticulate a lived, affective experience of either bonto or gohyang, which may sound old-school, they nevertheless firmly carve out an emotional space from a material and historical sense of place.

Bangtan Universe as a Sense of Home

BTS has one mighty ambassador: the ARMY, which may be the most significant fan club that has ever existed in the history of pop music. One might even claim that this fandom, which is actually more forcefully articulated in territories outside Korea than within the country, serves as BTS’s real home. If the sense of belonging that rappers Coolio and Warren G sought within their creative space was located within the parameters of the African American neighborhood of Compton – just as the declining mills along the Midwestern riverfront cities of Minneapolis and Detroit served for Prince and Madonna, respectively – online fandom is where BTS would claim its home. The group lives and breathes through its fans, as members tweet, post updates, and maintain their own active social network channel on V Live, a live streaming service operated by Naver.com that provides frequent opportunities to interact with their fans. V Live is also where BTS releases special promotional videos, such as concert documentaries and reality television content for paid consumers.

Having no actual physical home base has allowed BTS to go further and cultivate the online space as its asylum. The group was ambitious in its launch of Bangtan Universe (BU), a shared fictional cyber universe that helped it acquire a hard-edged identity and served as a useful tool for building the superstardom that the group would eventually achieve in the mid-2010s. The internet is the base from which BU – a fictive yet nonetheless unique entity for the group itself and its fandom – has been created. In many ways, the internet offers both a reverie and a concrete home for artists like BTS, who are definitely from a specific country called Korea. But in the context of the American-dominated Western pop world they are essentially without a home insofar as Korea is mapped as a nondescript place lacking hip-hop roots and tradition. It was probably not coincidental that BTS’s mainstream success came only after it began to drop its official affiliation with hip hop. Although RM and Suga continue to serve as the group’s rappers and many of BTS’s songs continue to be rooted in rap, the boy band ensemble has become undeniably more pop since its albums in The Most Beautiful Moment in Life series became global hits in 2015 and 2016 and subsequently served as the launching pad for BU. Unlike even bands such as Backstreet Boys, whose members were recruited from the Orlando, Florida, area, K-pop largely lacks the distinction of place. Though fans may be able to remember the hometowns of members of, for instance, BTS or TWICE, these groups can hardly be claimed as “home-brewed.” Members are individually selected through various auditions held by an entertainment company that combs through the Korean countryside and even abroad in search of young new talent. BTS was no exception, as every member of the group was recruited from near and far corners of Korea by Big Hit Entertainment in the early 2010s. This meant that the members’ identities would be homogeneously Korean yet lack a strong centripetal force that would allow them to claim a singularly common home in the sense of the Bronx or Compton – in a nation full of possible such homes, whether the Gangnam neighborhood in Seoul, well known for its nouveaux riches; Hongdae, on the other side of the nation’s capital, known for its underground culture and arts; or even various rural areas in Korea known for the pristine beauty of their paddy farms, mountains, or scenic beaches. It could be argued that many places featured in BU or the travel reality show called Bon Voyage that the BTS members themselves make instantaneously become what Youngmin Choe has defined as “affective sites” that blur boundaries between history, memory, and consumerism in Hallyu cinema (Choe Reference Choe2016). These sites, however, offer at best a fleeting sense of affinities. In other words, they may become tourist attractions for BTS fans but can never assume a sense of a home (gohyang) or an African American–style ’hood (bonto), which is deeply entrenched in the sociopolitical landscape of Korea that has yet to recover from its traumas of the twentieth century. Because BTS lacked both a musical genre home and a physical home, it may have been easier to craft what essentially became a cyber home called BU.

A dizzying array of reality television programs, podcasts, music videos, webtoons, and vignette story inserts for their CD albums (since The Beautiful Moment in Life in 2015) have given BTS’s fans opportunities to interactively participate in creating narratives for BU. With the release of “I Need U” – the first single from The Beautiful Moment in Life, which would eventually become one of the group’s biggest hits and change its direction toward a more pop sound – BTS also produced a music video that spearheaded a departure from its early aesthetic. Videos for their songs prior to “I Need U” featured visuals that almost exactly mirrored the templates of other K-pop groups (band members lip-synching and executing perfectly choreographed dance moves to upbeat songs in excessively colorful sets), but BTS found a new aesthetic that would accompany several music videos and even short films, unaffiliated with any of the songs on the album, that would later be constituted as BU.

Because there are so many accessible interpretations of BU, and particularly with the final summary of the narrative becoming available through the 2019 webtoon Save Me, perhaps only a brief summary of “I Need U” suffices here. In this music video, all the BTS members are seen, mostly apart from each other, as they roam or struggle through spaces including dark alleys, foggy bathrooms, and abandoned train tracks. Jungkook gets beaten up by a group of thugs; J-Hope collapses in broad daylight crossing the bridge over the River Han; Jimin shivers alone in the bathroom next to a tub filled to the brim; RM pumps gas at a gas station; and V ends up stabbing an older man who appears to be his father, after the latter has violently beaten up V’s sister. Along with these disturbing images, fire is seen being set in an anonymous location. Interspersed with flashback clips of the seven members collectively having a good time on an otherwise empty, desolate beach, this music video, like twenty or so other BU music videos and short films equally somber in tone, definitely veers away from the sense of heung (excitement or playful energy, or liveness) that Suk-Young Kim has defined as the force “forged around K-pop performances.”⁸ With neither dance nor singing performances, “I Need U” conveys a message of “hurt”: a manufactured, desperate sense of collective longing to be with friends or loved ones with whom one may never be able to reunite.

If the ’hood that is projected in rap videos stands as a strong metaphor for the economic hardship and systemic racism that continually strike at the heart of the universal popular imagination, the images featured in BU open up postmetaphoric and metonymic significations that facilitate anational, postethnic, and post-traumatic figurations that have a greater degree of malleable, mentally illogical, and unmappable locations. Just like the fictive “smeraldo” flower of Italian origin (and a fiction narrative about an “international smeraldo federation” that putatively hosts a meeting every year), with its Naver.com blog site on which fake unrequited love stories are posted and announced, no real sense of history or place can be substantiated through these images on BU. Now, to rant that an image or sound from a K-pop video completely exceeds any particular historical and linguistic domain is perhaps not all that novel. BU is capable of becoming a positive, open-ended text. I am particularly drawn here to Kay Dickinson’s notion that music videos strongly invoke a synesthetic response in which the aural and the visual “inform each other, cross each other’s tracks, and most importantly, embody both a singularity and the potential to merge.”⁹ BU respects no linguistic fixity where the mouths of the singers are synched to the lyrics; no corporeal movement in which the idol’s bodies are synchronized to the beats of the songs; and no history behind the geographical locations of the sets featured in the music videos. The abstraction and flatness of the images allow fans across many national and linguistic identities to creatively reassemble the signs being rendered. In so doing, BU’s images and music open up what I call a “synesthetic liminality” that realigns metaphors in order to rezone them in what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari once termed “deterritorialized assemblages” that might block the trappings of metaphors and instead inspire viewers to rewrite the meanings of these images and music with more authority. Indeed, a quick search for “BTS Universe” on the internet will generate endless blogs and video channels by BTS fans who have voluntarily reordered, rewritten, and reauthorized the narratives of BU in a parallel, alternative universe separately engineered by fan fiction.¹⁰

BU does take a definitive step toward conceptualizing a sensorial framework that fully extends the utopian belief in the synesthetic metaphor that builds on the potential irreconcilable cross between music and visuals. Many of the visuals from the “certified 22 BTS videos” (some are music videos, others are short films with no songs) that officially constitute BU feature BTS members playing with each other in an alternate, somber reality. Alcohol abuse, violent fathers, drug addiction, suicidal anxiety, and depression are strong themes with which each and every member of BTS is associated. These traumatic themes raised in BU can benefit teenager fans struggling with mental anguish by encouraging them to share their stories in a more fluid manner, reconstructing them to blend narratives of both idols and fans. Imagining stories and sharing them with people who have undergone similar experiences can, of course, be therapeutic and productive.

However, this is not to suggest that BU operates outside the promotional machinery of the global capitalist enterprise. BU is no different from the many documentary short films, online fan meetings, and even the serialized travel show Bon Voyage, all featuring BTS members, that are craftily produced and distributed by Big Hit Entertainment and yield streams of revenue and profit. Particularly with regard to the mobile game BTS World released in fall 2020 – which piggybacks on BU by allowing players to construct their own stories loosely based on the BU setting and share them with other players – the entire enterprise can be seen as a shrewd consumer marketing strategy that is capable of packaging and commercializing even a subject of hurt. BU is similar to other streaming content and kitsch commercial products released by media empires such as Marvel Cinematic Universe or the Star Wars franchise or even Hello Kitty products, which even before BU also had success with their transmedia storytelling platforms for consumers in the age of social media.

Conclusion: Can K-Pop Rap?

It is astounding that a K-pop group consisting of young men who appear neither white nor Black has achieved a popularity level equal to, if not greater than, that of Elvis or the Beatles, largely thanks to the fact that the internet has a broader reach than television did a little more than half a century ago. Given that their ethnic identities continue to be aligned with anational and posthistorical ones, it is perhaps not surprising that BTS’s “universe” also still remains largely nondescript or hazy. Although obviously shot in Korea, most of the videos use settings that carefully avoid referencing any specific locations in Korea. Their abstraction of space expands the capacity of the various metaphors they employ, such as flowers, a bathtub, mirrors, and abandoned buildings and alleyways, into an open-ended signification that allows worldwide fans to reinterpret them. Yet in this process of reauthoring, what is lost are linguistic origins and ethnic historiographies that metaphors and poetic significations usually undergird.

Like it or not, we live in a world where ethnic violence, national strife, and gender wars continue to rage. The immense popularity that African American artists have enjoyed in the music world – much more so than in any other popular art form – was probably not coincidental. It is a lot more difficult to censor and ban what cannot be seen. Despite the ongoing discrimination that Black artists in the United States have had to face over the past century and earlier, they have almost certainly achieved greater representation in the music industry than in film and television. Their success, especially during the 1990s when music videos and hip hop were both in their heyday, meant that African American ’hoods, like it or not, acquired a greater force of expression. Exciting synesthetic figurations between sound and image continue to be achieved by Black artists today. Videos for Jay-Z’s “4:44” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” challenge viewers to sensually feel the music through powerful spatial metaphors and the tension caught between them. By breaking down the barriers between image and sound, between language and music, and between images of the present and those from the past, the virtuosity of these artists is reconfirmed and the history of the people they represent can be rediscovered. K-pop’s problem, despite the increasing visibility of groups like BTS in US social media, celebrity news, and talk shows, is that the visual counterparts of its music continue to foreground an unrecognizable and almost unidentifiable sense of physical and historical belonging, and this lost sense of place may eventually undercut the music’s “universal” appeal. Though the places featured in BU may become popular tourist sites (see Chapter 14 in this book for more on K-pop tourism), the music content deliberately erases people, historical landmarks, and other mnemonic references that could allow viewers access to the sites’ localization. In music, abstraction alone does not make great art. For true musical ingenuity to be recognized – and particularly for a song to claim authority in hip hop, or in any other genre of music – it must, despite the rise of EDM or DJ music that deliberately features no sense of linguistic or national origin, orchestrate a sense of cultural roots, spatial belonging, and linguistic locality. It remains to be seen whether the idealistic, abstract projection of a group such as BTS – remaining ahistorical, aspatial, and, in particular, color-blind – can continue to inspire an asignifying metaphorical assemblage that welcomes “everyone.” Unlike superheroes in Marvel comic books, R2-D2 of Star Wars, or Mario Brothers in video games, BTS members are real humans who will soon outgrow their youth and advance into a midlife where they may be required to look back on their own roots and history. Can K-pop rap? Of course it can. But can it rap songs in videos that synesthetically reference a historically dense space called Korea and its underlying real traumas? The jury is still out on that question.

Igniting the hearts of global fans with their chimeric personas – angelic, mournful, intellectual, mischievous, suave, approachable, and tempestuous all at once – the seven members of BTS have become some of the most sensational figures in millennial pop culture. Since they debuted as up-and-coming underdogs to the K-pop establishment in 2013, BTS has not only become the most successful group in the history of K-pop but also emerged as a major force to be reckoned with on the global music scene. With every release of their songs and albums, BTS has started a new chapter in the K-pop history book: They were sought-after guests attracting an army of cheering fans at major music award ceremonies in recent years, and in 2021, they reached a new height by becoming the first K-pop group nominated for a Grammy Award. That year was also notable for the group because they topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for ten consecutive weeks with their single “Butter.” How did the band step into such unprecedented prominence for K-pop idols while defying the conventional rules of the K-pop industry?

Of the multitude of elements that drive BTS’s phenomenal success, authentic storytelling may be the most crucial. Before the rise of BTS, the pursuit of authenticity for idols was not regarded as the usual pathway to success. Since Korean popular music was introduced to the global music market under the banner of “K-pop,” the conventional strategy widely deployed by K-pop groups was to “localize” their production and marketing approach to adapt to foreign markets with distinctive cultural specificity and sensibility. BTS’s route to success had nothing to do with this model. The absence of the localization strategy resulted in the ironic situation of the reception and consumption of BTS appearing rather uniform and streamlined across the diverse nations and cultural blocs where their music circulated. BTS’s case proves that success in pop music is not simply attained by carefully calculated commercial strategy; rather, it shows that we need to look into more profound emotional rapport and relatability between the band and their fandom to understand the BTS phenomenon.

Authenticity is a concept that often evades close scrutiny and critical assessment, but on a basic level, it is closely related to the notion of the “real” (as opposed to “fake”). In the world of popular music in the West, the term has been specially associated with the genre of rock in the post–World War II era. As music historian Elija Wald has noted,

Wald’s comparison between technically polished musicians and the rugged but sincere-sounding Elvis Presley – or to paraphrase it in terms of acting, between suave actors and sincere method actors – resonates closely with Richard Middleton’s idea that “what distinguished authenticity in rock music was its emphasis on spontaneity and improvisation.”² It is also quite akin to John Lennon’s often-cited 1971 Rolling Stone interview:

The legendary figure’s definition of rock authenticity of the 1950s West was in large part owned by the postwar generation, whose existential crisis in the popular cultural realm championed rugged and real heroes as champions of the time.

This dichotomy between authentic and manufactured pop may be analogous to the distinction between the ingenuous quality of BTS and supremely polished K-pop idols. Many fans find BTS’s lyrics to be authentic, as they are imbued with philosophical depth that allows for contemplation of the precarities of life – the quality for which the band was dubbed “the voice of the millennial reality.”

In the world of classical music, authenticity may be gauged by how closely the given performance actualizes the canonical performance style, whereas in folk music, the local flavor of folklore and the rootedness of the people who inhabit that culture endow the genre with authenticity. The claim to musical authenticity can be made by aligning a new emergent genre with the preexisting one regarded as authentic. According to Wald, such was the case in rock ’n’ roll’s association with folk: “By the mid-1960s, folk music was overtaking classical music as the favored listening for serious young intellectuals, so when rock ’n’ roll was described as a folk style (by Belz, among others), that was a claim of roots and authenticity, not an invitation to transform it into something more elevated.”⁴

Pop music, on the other hand, has different ways of cultivating an authentic aura, namely along the lines of whether the reality in which the artist resides is well communicated or not. Unlike the popular perception of BTS as a grassroots band that naturally emerged, the conventional wisdom surrounding most K-pop groups’ origin is distanced from the notion of authenticity. The usual debut process for K-pop idols begins with their discovery by talent scouts, followed by rigorous training and performance production facilitated by entertainment companies. Such meticulously planned debuts create an impression that K-pop idols are not authentic artists. Especially in the United States, where the authenticity of rock, hip hop, and folk music comprises the absolute core value of popular music, K-pop idols inevitably face challenges when attempting to win the hearts and minds of the audience.

To be clear, BTS is not entirely an outlier to the K-pop industry standards; they share much with other successful K-pop groups in that they emphasize singing skills, visual presentation of their music, and captivating performances. Nonetheless, they managed to expand the parameters of K-pop. What sets BTS apart in particular is their lyrics. As writers of their own lyrics, the members of BTS sincerely express their struggle as students, celebrities, and Korean youth while exposing societal failures that hinder the younger generation from succeeding. Without any pretense, in a highly personal voice, they share who they are and where they come from. BTS may be the first K-pop group to have become a mainstream sensation in the world, and their relentless pursuit of authenticity has made them the most globally successful K-pop band.

In further exploring BTS’s authenticity, their use of locally specific dialect revealing the place of their origin is noteworthy. Invoking an association with a genuine place is essential for grounding the band in realness, as musicologists Chris Gibson and John Connell once proclaimed.

BTS trace their roots mostly through their adoption of “regional dialect rap (saturi raep).” A case in point, “Paldo Gangsan” (2013) – directly translated as “Rivers and Mountains of Eight Provinces,” a well-known poetic moniker for Korea – is their representative song relying on the distinctive charm of “regional dialect rap.”

The distinctive dialect of Gyeongsang Province, from which four members of BTS (Jimin, V, Suga, and Jeongguk) hail, is not easily translatable, as the pungent flavor of locality will inevitably be lost in the process. For Seoulites whose local dialect provides the notion of a standard Korean language, the original lyrics in Gyeongsang dialect exude humorous as well as exotic provinciality. In Korean hip-hop tradition, closely aligned with urbanity rather than distinctive regional characteristics, it is rare to come across regional dialects as in “Paldo Gangsan.” In this regard, BTS’s refreshing play with regional dialect simulates the “long-term historical continuity of performance as involved in folk and country music” or even the strategies of “the most commercial performers such as Bruce Springsteen, [who] cherished continuity with earlier popular music and evoked a sense of place.”⁷ It intensifies the notion of their rootedness.

Much like Korean hip hop, mainstream K-pop music driven by idols shuns regional dialects, which are regarded as antithetical to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated image the K-pop industry strives to cultivate. But in the global tradition of hip hop, introducing the place of origin is an indispensable aspect of establishing the artists’ authenticity, as they become crucial vectors for addressing the central questions of identity. BTS’s deployment of regional dialect means that they are not shy about revealing their place of origin (Gyeongsang Province in this case) and their identity as Koreans. Much as with global hip-hop artists, various identitarian markers, including regional identity, anchor the foundation of BTS’s music, which in turn closely resonates with their central themes of “Love Yourself” and “The Map of the Soul.”

Hardly the only point of BTS’s relatability, the linguistic charm embedded in the rich use of dialect is augmented by their storytelling ability. The magnetic power of BTS lies in how they present relatable stories of their journey as underdogs rising to the top through their sheer talent, hard work, camaraderie, and fan support. The construction of a powerful narrative and storytelling is not just an age-old device harking back to the age of oral tradition but a significant technique and asset needed in the age of digital communication.

The centrality of narrative power has been explored by economist Robert J. Shiller, whose thesis sheds light on how media contagion can take place on digital and social networks through influential storytelling. In Narrative Economics, Shiller advanced the notion that such storytelling is central to economic success. To ignore economic viability would be a disingenuous denial of the K-pop industry’s main concerns, and in this regard, Shiller’s work on the economic power of effective narratives presents notable insights for gauging BTS’s success. Shiller posits that effective economic narratives defined by viral and contagious stories can alter people’s economic planning. He elaborates further, emphasizing the significance of successful storytelling by (1) offering a story the audience can retell, (2) including a vivid visual image to tease out the main ideas of a story so that it sticks with the listeners, and (3) valuing what the audience values.⁸

BTS’s storytelling technique embodies these various aspects of creating a relatable and unforgettable narrative. To be more precise, the inclusion of vivid images is a widely shared practice in the K-pop industry, where much energy is directed toward the creation of high-quality music videos and stage performances aided by spectacular choreography, fancy makeup, and fashion statements. Prioritization of vivid images is also symptomatic of the broader digital culture and not a particular practice of BTS, but the band’s qualitatively different strength lies in their ability to offer stories the audience can retell while valuing what the audience values.

BTS’s famous epithet, “the voice of millennial reality,”⁹ indicates the band’s empathetic ability to provide audiences with stories. Their voicing of the anxieties of youth living in an uncertain world scarred by depression, suicidal thoughts, and bleak visions of the future while finding beauty, hope, and the courage to love oneself reflects widely shared sentiments among the younger generation. BTS’s critically accepted music video “Spring Day” (2017) is a case in point.

The lyrics may at first present romantic longing for the other, but “Spring Day” is hardly an ordinary love croon. Its narrative is steeped in grave tragedy, which provides a context for plumbing the depth of its lyrics. As Suk-Young Kim has previously commented,

Indeed, the majority of BTS fans are of similar age as the students who perished, and the narrative of “Spring Day” is an elegy dedicated to a friend who has crossed the boundary of life and death. BTS represents the pain and loss of the young generation by offering sublimated narratives that will be retold by those whom the group represents. This circular echoing and fusing are at the heart of valuing what the audience values. The documentarian truth of their lyrics and the poetic sublimation of the tragedy anchor the authenticity of BTS.

From Idols to Artists

In a 2012 article on the reasons behind the meteoric rise of K-pop around the globe, journalist Jonathan Seabrook offered one of the most memorable monikers of K-pop idols: “factory girls.” Lurking behind the term was the idea that K-pop idols are highly manufactured products quite similar to factory-made items: artificial and lacking in authenticity. Although manufactured stardom is also a hallmark of the Motown music scene and therefore it is problematic to bracket only Korean pop as manufactured music, Seabrook’s judgment is fair to a certain degree, given that the K-pop industry has a substantial track record of suppressing the diverse talents of individual performers as it has evolved around the prioritization of fantastic visual spectacles central to establishing each band’s identity.

BTS’s success is in large part due to their defiance of such industry standards. The authenticity of the group’s music stems primarily from the fact that, since their debut, the members have been deeply involved in songwriting, composing lyrics, arranging, and producing. Self-producing in the pop music industry often serves as a litmus test for the authenticity of artists – a quality not always easy to come by in the K-pop world. Although BTS was made to be idols, due to their self-production, they are perceived differently because they are seen as artists with creative autonomy. Such is the vision cultivated by BTS producer Bang Si-hyuk, who intended to create hip-hop idols – in part due to the mainstream commercial success of hip hop music in the 2010s, but more due to his belief that the hip-hop genre would allow idols to reveal their true selves as artists. Whether Bang’s choice was based on commercial or artistic reasons, it proved highly successful. BTS embraced a direct and undecorated storytelling technique, which created the new model of idols as artists.

The hybridity of idol and artist is fully embraced in the 2018 song “IDOL.” Rather than coyly alluding to their double identity, they confront it with full-on honesty in the song’s lyrics.

Their self-proclaimed identity as both artist and idol is shared without any sense of sarcasm or irony. BTS in effect is creating a narrative archetype of uninhibited youth who can go on to love and be proud of themselves.

BTS on the World Stage

One defining difference between BTS and most other K-pop groups can be found in where their careers first took off. Unlike other K-pop groups who became popular in Asia first and then went to Europe and America, BTS first became popular in the United States, which attracted the attention of the Korean audience. As a so-called reverse import to Korea, BTS is unique in that they made it in the US music market, arguably the most challenging to penetrate. From the late 1990s, Korean popular music started to take the world stage under the banner of “K-pop.” The primary target at that time was Japan and East Asia, which shared many cultural similarities with Korea. K-pop overcame the insularity of the Japanese popular music market catering to mostly domestic audiences and became successful through its localization strategy. It remained successful in Japan by either recruiting artists already fluent in Japanese or training artists to be fluent in Japanese as well as casting Japanese members. In this regard, it would be no exaggeration to state that K-pop has become an integral part of Japanese popular culture.

Nonetheless, the barrier to entering the market in the United States and European countries remained high. As the epicenter of contemporary popular music, the mainstream US music market is not an easy place for foreign artists to land. More than anything else, K-pop artists had to rise above their anonymous status. Individual artists were unknown in the United States; moreover, the West did not know that South Korea had a thriving pop music industry. For instance, in the early 2000s in the United States, one had to be a hardcore music aficionado to know of BoA, then the leading female solo artist in the K-pop world. Around 2006 the popularization of YouTube became a significant game changer; nonetheless, K-pop artists were much less known than American indie artists. Rain, who was the leading Asian pop star in the 2000s, was invited by reputable American record companies to have a showcase in the United States, only to be met with harsh criticism that his music was outdated. Wonder Girls, then the top K-pop girl group, was relegated to opening for the Jonas Brothers and toured around the United States under challenging circumstances. But the power dynamics between the K-pop industry and the US music industry was so lopsided that K-pop idols had to be grateful for these opportunities. When their songs occasionally made the Billboard chart, it was a result of a targeted marketing strategy focusing on Korean American and Asian American communities. But the situation gradually started to shift at the end of the 2000s, with SM idols performing at New York’s Madison Square Garden and bands such as Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, BIGBANG, and 2NE1 garnering major success on world stages. This expansive outreach of K-pop culminated in the truly global success of BTS.

The path to the present moment, however, has not been a smooth one. The United States has a more than 200-year history of popular music with three tracks: (1) Eurocentric music, which constitutes the mainstream; (2) equally influential African American music; and (3) Latinx music. Youngdae Kim noted that “these trends fused throughout history to create the U.S. music culture that has come to dominate the global pop scene.”¹¹ Even in this melting pot of cultural influences, Asian artists had difficulty entering the mainstream music scene. Asians in the United States in particular were faced with the added challenge of having to confront negative images. While jazz and classical music place much emphasis on performance technique and artistic virtuosity, ethnic music places much emphasis on the authenticity of the ethnically specific experience. Different from these genres, popular music often appeals through the attractiveness – including sexual attractiveness – of the artists. Such tendencies presented particularly challenging conditions for Asian artists, since Asian men were stereotypically projected as asexual by the US media.

The current K-pop industry led by BTS is directly challenging the stereotypical notions surrounding Asian male artists. BTS could be successful in the US market because they defied such Asian male stereotypes and presented themselves as attractive and sophisticated youths, which appealed to the mainstream audience. In this regard, the success of BTS presents a different model than PSY’s breakout song, “Gangnam Style.” While both artists have benefited tremendously from their presence on social media, there is a foundational gulf between the two: PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was a typical viral video made with comical dance at an entertaining cadence that stood as a one-time hit. PSY’s success model bears no resemblance to those of either BTS or other K-pop idols who have been present on the world stage since the 2000s. Neither did it come from K-pop’s training or production system; rather, it had everything to do with his personality and the song’s individual appeal. PSY in a way appealed to a Western audience by reaffirming the preexisting stereotypes about Asians, very similar to how Asian American comedians have operated on the US media circuit. BTS’s approach is different in that they do not rely on any stereotypes or fantasies about Koreans, Asians, or exotic foreigners but operate much the same way that mainstream artists in the West do.

Another way BTS’s success differs from that of PSY or other Asian pop stars is that their power stems from robust fandom rather than virality on social media or systematic promotion in the mainstream music industry. In the past, foreign pop artists’ success was based on their viral hits, as was the case with PSY. In other words, success depended on several songs going viral; therefore, the artists enjoyed only temporary popularity rather than enduring fame supported by their loyal fans. From the early stage of BTS’s career, a small group of extremely loyal fans organized themselves and led a grassroots movement to shepherd the group to stardom. Once BTS became top artists, their fan base grew exponentially into the most visible and phenomenal fandom in the world of pop music. Historically, global-scale fandom used to exist only for Euro-American pop or rock stars, but BTS is writing history as the first Asian pop stars to command a global audience.

Awards are by no means the only yardstick to measure the success of artists, but they are significant indicators of visibility on the world stage. On May 23, 2021, Billboard Music Awards announced that BTS had been nominated in four categories: top duo/group, social artists, top-selling song, and song sales artists, all of which they eventually won. This was by no means the first time BTS appeared on Billboard’s award roster; they had previously won the top social artist (2017–2020) award and top duo/group artist award (2019–2020). Regardless of the results, BTS’s high-flying streak as Asian artists at the Billboard Awards carries particular significance. Since the 2000s, K-pop has attempted to become successful in the United States, but for the most part, it has remained a subcultural fascination. BTS’s presence in the music award ceremonies marked a turning point: K-pop is now regarded as mainstream in the United States. BTS’s proven success is the reason behind major US record labels’ willingness to collaborate with Korean companies to produce or distribute K-pop. The fact that BTS released a globally circulated English-language hit song like “Dynamite” and consistently win major music awards is creating a new global cultural phenomenon where Asian artists are reaching unprecedented stature.

The 2021 Billboard Music Awards proved to be special in this regard. Out of five groups nominated in the top social artist category, three were K-pop groups: in addition to BTS, widely popular K-pop girl group BLACKPINK and another popular boyband, Seventeen, made the list. Also noteworthy is the Filipino boyband SB19. What does it mean to have so many Asian nominees for mainstream awards like the Billboard Music Awards? How much weight does the top social artist award carry when it is based on online voting and given to the group whose fans have the largest social media presence? These are questions that do not yield simple answers, but obviously the system of judging popularity is changing. In the past, the popularity of artists was generally measured by album sales and the frequency of TV and radio appearances, making high-selling music and frequently visible artists popular. But nowadays, “music enjoyed by everyone” no longer carries the same weight; significant changes in popularity came with changes in the way music is shared and how the fandom coheres around their shared agenda. Popular music no longer is propagated via traditional media such as radio or broadcast TV networks. Listeners now use streaming services to access the music of their favorite artists and tend to listen to their favorites repeatedly – a trend that prioritizes interpersonal social media communication more than broadcasting systems. Social media platforms are where users reveal their personal tastes and share their interests with like-minded people. Social media also serve as a forum to freely express fandom affiliations. It is a place for high-frequency users with intense emotional involvement, “serving as the space to showcase the popularity of artists in the most primal sense.”¹²

Popularity in the age of social media networks differs significantly from conventional notions. The social index is not just a casual sign of fleeting curiosity; more likely, it is a reflection of conscious fan engagement in an attempt to promote their favorite artists. While the vast majority of listeners stream their favorite songs several times at most, hardcore fans actively engage in promoting their favorite artists’ songs via hashtag bombardments. One might have difficulties accepting the buzz created by such activities, akin to a political campaign, as genuine popularity, and it is still debatable which makes a broader statement about the artist’s popularity: a large number of silent and passive fans or a smaller number of hyperactive and visible fans.

To be clear, the top social artist award was not created in anticipation of K-pop’s rise and global prominence. Rather, it was established in 2011 to reflect the rapidly changing patterns of pop music consumption. Since its inception, pop idol Justin Bieber won the top social artist award for six consecutive years, but in 2017, the winning streak came to a halt when BTS won. The year 2021 marked the fourth consecutive year BTS was chosen. As a group with a hyperactive fandom on social media, BTS is changing the concept of popularity against the backdrop of the rapidly shifting media landscape.

In contrast to Billboard’s top social artist award, which reflects the latest popular trend, BTS’s Grammy nomination in 2021 registers the band’s significance in a different manner. In this regard, BTS marks a new chapter in Grammy history with their presence in the popular music category – a category that is not defined by a particular music genre but rather signals “the nominees’ popularity and recognizability in the popular music arena.”¹³

This was the first time Asian pop artists had been nominated in the category. Before BTS’s nomination, Asian nominees or winners of the Grammy had been either classical musicians or technical engineers. Therefore, BTS’s entry marked a tidal shift in not only the K-pop/Asian pop industry but also US popular culture. Having worked outside the US music industry and reached the height of global prominence on their own, BTS is enjoying success not simply as an individual band but as a symbol that started to create cracks in the existing order in the US-centric music business. Despite the announcement in June 2022 that the group’s activities will be temporarily halted, BTS will continue to cast a long shadow in the times to come.

A Shift in the K-Pop Music Industry

The year 2021 saw a paradigm shift in the globalization of the K-pop industry. As if it had been previously agreed upon, the top three representatives of K-pop companies announced projects that appeared different on the surface but in essence shared much in common. In February, HYBE Corporation (formerly Big Hit Entertainment) announced that it would create a joint label and groom new K-pop groups based in North America in collaboration with Geffen Records, a subsidiary of the largest record label, Universal Music Group. According to Carolina Malis, a K-pop journalist, “Both Big Hit and Universal have something to add to the mix, and it makes sense that they’re partnering up for this new challenge instead of trying to make it happen separately.” Malis added that Big Hit had expertise in artist development and engaging fans, while Geffen and UMG could take care of marketing, production, and distribution.¹⁴

It is likely that this joint label will follow the time-honored idol recruiting system: hosting a reality audition show to discover future stars, who will be produced and promoted by the joint label. Although there has been a case in the past where SM Entertainment collaborated with Capitol Records to launch SuperM, an all-star boy band comprising the shiniest stars of SM Entertainment, the HYBE-UMG joint venture presents a unique opportunity for the K-pop industry in that a major US label will entrust a Korean partner with total control over producing a new K-pop group for the US audience.

Three months after the announcement, CJ ENM and SM Entertainment announced similar plans. CJ ENM will collaborate with HBO Max to produce a Latin American K-pop band, while SM Entertainment will work with MGM Television to audition members for NCT Hollywood, a North American unit of the group NCT. All three projects share a common objective of creating a “localized” group based in North America. Although such developments would have been simply unimaginable just a few years ago, localization projects are nothing new to the K-pop industry. Since K-pop’s early attempts at globalization, producers’ ultimate aim was to make it in the West, especially in the United States. But only a few believed that it would be realistic to set such a goal. Many believed that the success of K-pop would be restricted to Asia due to linguistic and cultural differences between Korea and other countries outside the region. Current developments in the music industry belie such a prognosis, since not only is the K-pop industry striving to reach a broader global audience, but also Euro-American music markets are actively courting K-pop acts.

To date, efforts to globalize K-pop have evolved in the following steps. Often known as “cultural technology,” the conventional production and marketing strategy developed sequentially around (1) Korean musicians’ debut in the foreign music market after mastering foreign languages and customs, (2) the formation of global groups by incorporating foreign or overseas Korean members, and (3) establishing a joint venture with foreign companies or debuting a group consisting entirely of foreign members in a foreign market. The previous two stages garnered a degree of success, but they were also faced with risks and limitations. For this reason, only the third stage was regarded as the solid model to realize the K-pop industry’s ultimate dream.

The third stage has already had its trial in Japan and China, respectively, with JYP Entertainment’s Japan-based group Nizhu and SM Entertainment’s China-based WayV. The big question is whether this model will work in North and South America. Time will tell, but the present industry consensus points to an optimistic outlook that now is the right time to launch such projects. The fact that three similar projects were announced almost simultaneously by HYBE, CJ ENM, and SM Entertainment proves the point.

BTS’s success must be one of the reasons for the optimistic attitude. Especially for producers with financial means, BTS’s surpassing of native artists must have been a motivator to invest in fostering new groups. It is noteworthy that the US music industry started to pay attention to the commercial potential of the Korean-style system of producing idols; for instance, the audition reality show that CJ ENM and HBO Max prepared was but another rendition of Produce 101, the most popular idol audition show that CJ ENM previously produced. The NCT Hollywood project by SM Entertainment would not have been realized had it not been for their American partner’s trust in SM’s “culture technology” – a term coined by SM’s chief producer in reference to the systematic recruitment, training, and promotion of idols.

As many cultural critics note, the future of the music industry depends on how successfully it can build fandom. In this regard, K-pop has an unparalleled culture of catering to fans. When it comes to communicating with fandom and understanding the fans’ desire, it has long surpassed the teen pop industry in the United States. Korea has dominated the teen pop genre – mainly idol music geared to young fans – across the globe by the sheer visibility of their fandom in social media spaces, providing an incentive for US labels to forge partnerships with K-pop companies.

Another notable event of 2021 was the news that HYBE Corporation planned to merge with Ithaca Holdings. Ithaca Holdings was founded by Scooter Braun, who, with subsidiary artist management companies such as SB Project, discovered and produced teen idols such as Justin Bieber and secured contracts with top stars such as Ariana Grande. The fact that Braun sold his shares to HYBE is an indication of how this major player in the US pop industry intended to become a player in the future of K-pop. The merger signaled HYBE’s ambition to go beyond the status of K-pop entertainment company and transform itself into a multi-entertainment company on a global stage.

K-pop today is perceived as the only viable music industry to measure up to the dominance of the Euro-American pop music industry, but there remains something unique about the path BTS has taken thus far. BTS is larger than the K-pop industry itself, and without their phenomenal success and visibility, major media outlets in the United States would not have launched collaborative projects with K-pop bands. From the US perspective, rather than approaching K-pop in abstract terms, it is much more attractive to create a “post-BTS” phenomenon.

Into the Storm: Racial Prejudice, Racial Solidarity

With the K-pop industry’s global reach, the world in which K-pop idols dwell has and will continue to become ever more multiracial and diverse in cultural sensibilities. Both bright and dark moments of K-pop will inevitably become more visible with the genre’s growing global presence.

In February 2021, Bayern 3 Radio host Matthias Matuschik’s racialized remarks on BTS proved the point. Early in 2021, BTS covered the British rock band Coldplay’s hit song “Fix You” for MTV Unplugged. This performance ignited a vitriolic response from the German host of Bayern 3 Radio, who used “blasphemy” to express his discontent with the performance. Comparing BTS to a virus, Matuschik invoked North Korea as well as South Korea–manufactured cars out of context, exposing a long-standing prejudice Westerners hold against Asians. Only when confronted with a protest by the BTS fanclub ARMY from all over the world, including ARMY members based in Germany, did the station make an apology and set out to alleviate the situation. But the incident exposed a deep-seated prejudice against Asian performers.

To be sure, racial insults against BTS take a slightly different tone compared to, say, widespread racism against Blacks in the United States or widespread antiforeign sentiment in the West. The Bayern 3 Radio host’s remarks were more akin to the sentiment against the shifting order in popular culture. More precisely, they came as a snappy response to the rising influence of what is considered a threat to the preexisting order in the music industry. Underlying such a sentiment are the belief in rock superiority, pop imperialism, and derision of Asian popular music. This is by no means an isolated case. Ever since BTS claimed the top band position on global charts and in awards, innate conflict percolating for a long time below the surface has been erupting in full force.

The German radio host could not stomach the fact that, as he saw it, rock authenticity was being tarnished by BTS, an Asian boy band hailing from the margins of the music industry. In the minds of this host and many others in the Western audience, these Asian pop stars thrive on saccharine melodies and childish tunes, to the adulation of girl fans who are hardly music connoisseurs. Rock music represents artistic authenticity, intellectual force, and machismo, which prioritizes agency of artists over popularity of idols. It must have been difficult to accept that MTV Unplugged, where rock legends such as Eric Clapton and Nirvana performed, gave its stage to a Korean boy band. The case with the German radio host is just one realization of such sentiments, which still saturate the industry, ready to resurface at any moment.

It is highly possible that BTS as well as K-pop at large will enter the pages of history as a curious cultural phenomenon of social media–obsessed GenZ or Gen Alpha. But BTS is breaking the conventions of the pop imperialism that thrived under the notions of cosmopolitanism or modernity. What makes the group a formidable counterforce to the previous order is their engaged fandom, ARMY, which is making inroads into political activism, voicing their concerns about racism, gender equality, and advocacy for youth. The most striking incident to date came during the 2020 presidential campaign, when K-pop fans, many of whom were members of ARMY, sabotaged Donald Trump’s political rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They deployed their social media skills to reserve a large number of tickets to the rally with no intention of participating, leaving gaping holes in the seating area to ruin Trump’s photo op.

Following the eruption of racist violence with the murder of George Floyd and other people of color, the online and offline activism involving #BlackLivesMatter in 2020 was ripe with a broader stream of people willing to participate in the movement against long-standing racial violence in the United States. K-pop fans, as seen in the Tulsa rally, were one such group, as analyzed by Suk-Young Kim:

The online presence of K-pop fans, most prominently illustrated by ARMY, is creating a substantial voice in social activism, presenting themselves as a force to be reckoned with. Pop stars of today are more influential social organizers than simple entertainers, and an Asian group such as BTS has become a rallying point where traditionally marginalized people can voice their concerns in the world. This, too, is a crucial aspect of BTS’s authenticity.

It is almost impossible to mention the name of any Korean pop group or idol without acknowledging their fandoms: BTS has ARMY, TXT has MOA, TWICE has ONCE, and BLACKPINK has BLINK. Although these groups and their fandoms might be recognizable to many, stereotypes abound about the relationships between fandoms and artists, fandom activities, and the individuals who make up fandom communities. Fans and fandoms play a significant role in bringing success and attention to the artists and, arguably, the music industry. However, there is a delicate relationship between fandoms and artists. Some perspectives in popular media might lead one to believe that fans are mindless consumers who will do anything to promote their “faves.” These broad strokes miss (or completely ignore) that many fans are driven by the deep connection felt with the music and other fans. Additionally, if we fail to account for the role of fans, we risk continuing the tradition of “seeing fans as ‘other,’ non-intellectuals drawn to mindless entertainment.”¹ Understanding popular music must include the importance of fans and fandoms.²

Fandoms can wield a great deal of power and influence, but there can also be a great deal of mystery surrounding how they operate and their motives for particular actions. It can be challenging for those not part of fandoms or operating with their own biases to recognize them as complex networks made up of individuals who bring a host of interests, beliefs, and experiences and want to support a group of artists. For many fans of Korean popular music, the stereotypes and assumptions – often rooted in misogynistic and xenophobic ideologies – do not represent their lived fandom experiences. Further, because most accounts of Korean popular music focus on the collective fandom identity, it can be challenging to understand that fandoms and fan experiences are as personal and individual as they are public and collective expressions.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role fandom plays for Korean popular music through an exemplary example of BTS’s fandom, ARMY. This transcultural fandom has worked to support BTS, the fandom community, and communities not even related to the fandom. There are many fandoms, each with their unique histories, stories, and practices, but, arguably, ARMY has risen to the top as one of the most visible for their online and offline presence.³ Fans who identify as part of ARMY may differ in nationality and span a wide age demographic, along with other identity markers, but what connects them is their appreciation and enjoyment of BTS. For many BTS fans, being part of ARMY is more than purchasing music or merchandise; it is about supporting the band and the ARMY community. Furthermore, fandoms are continuously changing in response to historical and material conditions.⁴

This chapter begins with a brief history of fandom as understood within the context of fandom histories at large and Korean popular music. Certainly, it would be impossible to offer one history that encompasses all fandoms. This chapter shows fandoms’ role for both artists and the industry by looking at practices that are most readily identifiable across Korean popular music fandoms: fan support for music, fandom philanthropy efforts, education, social justice, and community uplift. How fans carry out these practices varies widely given the social and material conditions of artists and fans. These practices remain some of the most recognizable (and possibly misunderstood) by those not familiar with Korean popular music. This chapter uses ARMY as an illustrative example of these characteristics.

To understand Korean popular music fandoms, we must put their history within the larger context of both fandom and K-pop history. While fandom communities vary widely, scholars have identified shared characteristics that often shape fandom spaces. Fandoms consist of people who are passionate about their object of fandom; there is a shared cohesion not only with the object of fandom but also among others in the community, and these spaces share their own cultures and traditions.⁵ The same characteristics are reflected across K-pop fandom communities.⁶ The history of the very term “fan” gives us some perspective into why this term and phenomenon often signals people to think negatively. Media studies and cultural studies scholar Mark Duffett traces the etymology of the word “fan” back to “fanatic,” first used in the seventeenth century in England; it was associated with a person considered to be a “religious zealot.”⁷ Similarly, Henry Jenkins describes how the term “fan” not only carried a religious connotation but also came to be used to describe those with “political zealotry, false beliefs, orgiastic excess, possession, and madness.”⁸ The term continued to develop new associations regarding enthusiasm for sports teams and other cultural phenomena, but the negative connotations often remained. Early fan studies research sought to counter the negative stereotypes and offer a more robust understanding of how these communities function as active, engaged, and creative spaces where people develop their own culture in conversation with popular cultural objects.

While research in fan and fandom studies has moved away from continually defending fans, negative stereotypes associated with particular types of fandoms and fans, such as those with large numbers of women, girls, or members of BIPOC communities, continue. Concerning popular music in particular, there is a long history of reducing female fans to being obsessive, shallow, and hysterical. These stereotypes point to a long legacy of dismissing things that women enjoy.⁹ K-pop fandoms especially have faced negative branding from popular media, where they are often described as being full of “hysterical teenagers” or women with “excessive obsessions.”¹⁰ The significant demographic of women and BIPOC present in these fandoms, alongside the xenophobia around Korean idols and idol groups, have continued misconceptions and a lack of critical engagement about these communities’ practices and traditions.¹¹ The stereotypes and misconceptions fail to notice that K-pop fans and fandoms are often highly organized, multifaceted communities that not only act in response to their desire to support the artists but also show their frequent commitments to helping the fandom community in ways that are not readily connected back to the artists or K-pop at all. This is not to suggest that fandoms are without their own issues. Fans can bring their own biases into these spaces, and, unfortunately, negative expressions, like bullying, can be part of the fandom experience.

Where Are the Fans? The Globalization of K-Pop Fandom

Research has demonstrated that K-pop fandoms are pretty diverse across demographics such as race, gender, location, and age (Anderson Reference Anderson2013; J. Lee Reference Lee2019). K-pop fandom research continues to document the growth of these fandoms around the world, in Asia (Siriyuvasak and Shin Reference Siriyuvasak and Shin2007; Jung and Shim Reference Jung and Shim2014), Latin America (Han Reference Han2017; Min, Jin, and Han Reference Min, Jin and Han2019), the Middle East (Otmazgin and Lyan Reference Otmazgin and Lyan2014; E. Lee Reference Lee, Yoon and Jin2017), and North America (Yoon Reference Yoon2017; McLaren and Jin Reference McLaren and Jin2020). While much research points to diversity in terms of nationality and ethnicity, K-pop fandoms can also be understood as both transnational and transcultural spaces. Media and fan studies scholars Bertha Chin and Lori Morimoto posit that using the term transcultural helps in examining “border-crossing fandoms” where “the nation is but one in a constellation of contexts that inflect and influence their rise and spread.”¹² Even among similar regions, the fandom community’s experiences and expectations may vary widely because of each fan’s social and cultural background.

In part, understanding K-pop fans must be done with attention to the general spread of Korean popular culture globally through the Korean cultural wave, or Hallyu. The export of Korean popular culture is not relegated solely to music but also includes film, drama, food, clothing, beauty products, games, and other products. While there is often debate over exact dates, scholars most often demarcate the Korean Wave by phases or generations.¹³ Seo Taeji and Boys are heralded as the group that marked the beginning of K-pop and K-pop fandom as we know it. Blending hip hop and choreography with traditional Korean music, they ushered in a new music sound and style in Korea in the early 1990s. Notably, concerning fandom, one of the marks of this group is that their fans stressed the importance of performance and visuals through music videos.¹⁴ In the first phase of Hallyu, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, K-pop was aimed at countries throughout Asia. During this time, first-generation idol groups like H.O.T., Shinhwa, and Baby V.O.X. saw popularity (and fandom growth) in China and Japan.¹⁵ From the mid-2000s through the early 2010s, the second phase of Hallyu saw increased attention to Korean boy and girl groups, with stars such as BIGBANG and Girls’ Generation popular with fans in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. With the rise of the internet, entertainment companies increasingly turned to digital technologies and social media to spread their music and messages and engage with global audiences. Third-generation groups continued to build upon these practices, utilizing Twitter, YouTube, and apps that allow for artist-fan communication and multimedia content. Like BTS, BLACKPINK and Seventeen have maintained global fandoms. While recognizing these artists’ trajectories as managed by their entertainment companies and the technological forces that influenced the spread of Korean popular music is important, studying the music and messages of these artists is equally important for understanding their fandom.

K-Pop Fandom Structure and Design

K-pop fandoms have existed since the industry’s inception, and entertainment companies have long invested in developing and sustaining them.¹⁶ In most instances, the concept for the fandom begins with the artists’ label. Companies may name the fandom and give it a representative color and associated logos that appear on merchandise. Companies do extensive market research to inform the decisions made about creating experiences for fans to enjoy the music and artists, such as concerts and fan meets, and designing spaces for fans to interact with each other and the artists online. These platforms can shape the ways fans interact and experience the music, the artist, and being in a community with other fans. For example, V Live is a South Korean streaming service used explicitly by celebrities to communicate with their fans. In addition to acting as a streaming service for videos, it provides celebrities with the ability to go “live” via video feed and allows fans to view and comment during these sessions. The entertainment companies certainly play a role in creating a fandom brand and experience; fans and idols have crucial roles in developing and sustaining the community.

The artists’ music is often the first point of entry or interest for fans. Whether recommended by a friend or an algorithm on a streaming service, listening to a song is how fans come to feel invited to learn more about a group. While the mainstream media have often claimed that K-pop produces manufactured music and performances, this is not a truth for all artists. In the case of BTS, fans often comment on the authenticity present in the music and messages.¹⁷ This authenticity is connected to the observation that BTS writes many of their own songs, allowing them to address topics in their lyrics that reflect their own experiences. Opportunities to communicate with and see the artists offstage often shape the kind of connections fans think they can have with the artist, which influences the fandom community. This suggests that social media does not have the sole role in developing the relationship between a fan and artists and complicates claims that seem to fixate on social media as the sole reason for an artists’ popularity. Fans can learn more about the artists’ personalities through social media such as V Live, social media posts, interviews, and vlogs. These are ways for fans to learn more about the dynamics between members of the group and the artists’ personalities. The encounters may shape how fans then feel connected to the artists, but ultimately the music and content are what keep fans engaged. For those who may have experienced these groups only via YouTube or shared media recordings of performances, such encounters are often the only “live” experiences they will have to get to know who these idols are offstage.¹⁸

Entertainment companies often establish official fan clubs that carry annual membership fees and offer incentives such as raffles, unique concert ticket sale offerings, or access to the artists themselves through fan meets. For some fans, membership may be an important marker of belonging to the fandom community. However, one does not have to be part of an official club to participate in all fandom activities. Fandoms have coalesced online without the necessity of official membership because of the global popularity of K-pop. Access to official K-pop fandom communities was difficult for those who neither speak Korean nor reside in Korea. Fan cafés, digital clubs that allowed for artist-fan connection through message boards, forums, and other content, were most often all in Korean. The internet enabled fans to organize themselves and connect with others without fan clubs organized by entertainment companies, which was especially useful for those outside Korea. These unofficial sites are often housed or run through Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr. They are integral to providing resources, such as translation content into other languages, fan meetup opportunities, and other community-building activities.¹⁹

Many K-pop fandoms are diffuse in terms of structure and organization, without designated or official leaders. Still, most are highly organized, with the ability to share news, resources, and goals for supporting their respective pop artists through social media. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook allow fandoms to quickly organize and share information.²⁰ Some scholars have noted that for Korean popular music fandoms outside Korea, this diffuse structure is different from Korean fandom experiences, which tend to be more hierarchical.

Fandoms often have regional bases for each country (and also regions within a country). Additionally, social media accounts often monitor music charting, track fan voting efforts for fan-driven awards and philanthropy efforts, monitor and share news about the artists, and provide translations across languages. While companies may create and initially provide fandom identity markers such as names, colors, and even online spaces for fans to connect, once fans start to interact with the artists, content, and other fans, how these fandoms take shape and evolve is unique to each.

Fandom Practices: Supporting One’s Faves and One’s Fandom

A core value of many K-pop fandoms is the desire to support the performers and enjoy music and content with other fans. If there is a central shared characteristic, it is that most in these communities see their primary mission as supporting the work of the artists. How this manifests can look different for each fan. For some, participating in voting for fan-driven awards and streaming music for charting purposes takes precedence. For others, it may be participating in offline fan events such as meetups or celebrations in honor of a group’s anniversary or artist’s birthday. Still, for others, the work of doing online PR through actions such as trending hashtags, vlogging reaction videos to music or performances, writing reviews, or providing a translation of content from Korea to other languages is essential. All of this fan labor is a means to provide positive attention and support to the artists.

There are many ways that fans may show support and increase visibility for artists. Perhaps the most recognized and talked about is streaming and purchasing music to help artists succeed on music charts and break records. While some awards, charts, and radio play might be region-specific in that they are limited to participation from fans from a specific area, fans work together to support one another through sharing resources about goals, metrics, and details on what the process looks like for specific charts. For example, music charts, such as the Billboard Hot 100, are ranked according to radio play, streaming across music platforms, and sales in the United States. Social network spaces provide ground for fans to organize efforts around charting, streaming, and voting to promote the music and artists. Although practices such as streaming may seem to suggest an uncritical engagement with the music, these actions often reflect fans’ desire to be more engaged listeners who want not only to support the artist but also to exercise control over their music choices on these platforms. They may use streaming (and charting music) as a means to respond to what some fans perceive as bias toward music from groups like BTS.²¹

Fandoms can also create and sustain visibility and attention to a group or performer in other ways. Fans make and trend hashtags to bring attention to a new song or album, in some instances creating their own digital content to boost awareness of a group. On YouTube, fans upload reaction videos to reflect on a performance or music video, expressing that they are watching the content for the first time to capture an alive and honest response. These videos often show “excessive delight, a structure of feeling that might characterize fandom.”²² For example, a YouTube channel with over 210,000 subscribers, “WhatchaGot2Say,” offers BTS reaction video content. Three creators watch BTS content and provide commentary and reviews. Their reaction videos, which range from reactions to BTS performances to music videos, often include laughter, joy, and commentary that expresses excitement. These videos, as Cho argues, also build community among fans and viewers online, drawing attention to the artists and offering a shared sense of community as fans can watch others experience the same thing they enjoy.²³ Many of this channel’s reaction videos see over 200,000 views with comments that range from agreeing with what the creators make to fans sharing their own reflections on the video or content being reviewed. Another YouTube creator, xCeleste, with a channel that has over 313,000 subscribers, creates and posts videos with a range of BTS content, from introduction videos aimed at newcomers to the group and their fandom to reaction videos of performances. xCeleste’s “This Is BTS: Introduction,” posted on August 19, 2020, has just over 398,000 views as of this writing. The 15:37 video presents a montage of video clips that give a history of BTS’s career trajectory, highlighting both their success and their hardships.²⁴ Videos such as these also serve as a way to document history for fans.

Fans are aware of the bias often present against K-pop in mainstream media and what had been a lack of coverage until 2018.²⁵ It is perhaps from this awareness and a desire to communicate within the community that fan-driven publications can be spaces for fandom news, band news, and other types of content. Sometimes these publications focus on more news-oriented content about the artist, such as reporting on milestones or achievements like awards and new music. In contrast, others provide creative writing, essays, fan art, and scholarly articles. Before the rise of social media, fandoms circulated information via fliers or within local community meetups through word of mouth.²⁶ Now, internet spaces allow fans to create blogs, vlogs, and even extended Twitter threads to circulate news and creative responses.

In addition to providing publicity for the artists, perhaps one of the most recognized and appreciated acts of labor by fans in K-pop fandom is translators’ work. While there may be subtitles provided for some K-pop music videos and interviews, this is not always the case. Translation accounts abound on Twitter, where many fans post real-time translations when artists share tweets or livestreams in Korean. Most translators operate for a specific artist, and accounts can be managed by one person or an entire team.²⁷ It is often because of the work of fan translators that fans have access to K-pop song lyrics in other languages. Some translators also share news related to Korea and Korean entertainment that affects the focal artists.²⁸ K-pop’s global spread means that there are often articles and interviews written about artists across languages. While translations from Korean to other languages are necessary, so is translation of content from other languages into Korean for Korean-speaking fans.²⁹ Translators act as a bridge for the community. HYBE Corporation (the Korean entertainment company that manages BTS) created an education division, HYBE EDU, in which part of the focus has been to develop Korean-language books and materials to help fans learn Korean.³⁰ Even with these resources and subtitles on official content, the role of translators remains integral for sharing information.

Activism and philanthropic efforts have long been part of K-pop fandom communities, from fan groups organizing to support specific charities or causes to speaking out about policies in the entertainment industry that affect artists and communities outside the artist-fandom relationship. At times activism has meant fans organizing and calling attention to mistreatment by the entertainment companies on behalf of the artists. In some instances, fans have managed to bring attention to perceived issues with idols or other unfair treatment contracts. In 2009, the members of the fandom for JYJ (a former K-pop group) organized to show support for the members who filed a lawsuit against an unfair contract through petitions and boycotts of SM Entertainment, the management group.³¹ Such actions have changed industry practices.³² While there are positive aspects to this kind of fan involvement, it has been examined and critiqued for the problems it can cause when fans try to intervene on behalf of artists but lack understanding of the full context for the issue they are trying to address.³³

Artists can sometimes spur or encourage fan activity around social and humanitarian causes. For example, a K-pop group or its members might use social media to promote a fundraising cause, spurring fandom to provide their support. BTS’s anti-violence campaign, Love MYSELF, began in 2017 in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This campaign has raised 4.5B KRW as of December 2021.³⁴ As will be discussed, it also served as the impetus for a group of ARMY to establish One in an ARMY (OIAA), a fan-driven philanthropic organization. K-pop artist IU donated to the Korean Foundation for Support of the Senior Citizen in both her name and the fandom’s name, who provided gifts and inspirations to her philanthropy project.³⁵

Other actions are more grassroots, coming directly from fans who organize initiatives and give to a charity of their own choice in the name of a group or an artist. One of the earliest mentions of fandom philanthropy is from Shinhwa fans who sent rice donations to a charity to mark Shin Hye-sung’s first solo concert.³⁶ In 2012 fans of Seo Taiji and Boys helped celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the group’s debut by raising enough money to create the “Seo Taiji Forest” in Brazil.³⁷ An artist’s birthday or landmark group anniversary may be the occasion for such actions and result in donations to support the building of schools, scholarships, and a variety of charitable organizations. As will be discussed later in this chapter, some fandoms have dedicated charity fanbases that run campaigns.

The political and racial protests in the United States during the summer of 2020 saw a great deal of media attention given to K-pop fandom activism. From donations raised in support of the Black Lives Matter movement (#BLM) by ARMY that totaled $1 million to spamming a police scanner app for Dallas, Texas, with fancams (a short video clip of an artist or group) to jam the app, media coverage began a narrative about K-pop fandoms that shifted from the stereotypes of “screaming teenagers” to question to what extent they could influence politics.³⁸ While it is true that activism has long been part of K-pop communities, for some fans, these actions stem not from their identity as fans of K-pop but rather from the commitments and beliefs they bring with them into these spaces. As one K-pop fan said in response to her online activism during the summer 2020 #BLM protests: “I’m Black before I’m a K-pop stan … the main point of why we were fighting was for the Black Lives Matter cause, not to get recognized [as K-pop fans].”³⁹

A Case Study in Fandom: The Presence and Growth of the BTS ARMY Fandom

BTS is one of the most successful international K-pop groups of the twenty-first century, with one of the world’s largest fandoms. As of October 2021, BTS had 40.5 million followers on Twitter and just over 13 million subscribers on the Weverse app. Sales for touring also demonstrate their popularity and fandom size; BTS was the first Asian act to sell out Wembley Stadium in London twice and touted viewership of 775,000 during one of their pandemic online concerts, “Bang Bang Con: The Live.”⁴⁰ Since debuting with Big Hit Entertainment (now under HYBE) in June 2013, they have seen steady success across multiple fronts: breaking records on the music charts, earning music awards globally, selling out worldwide stadium tours, and serving as invited speakers for international organizations such as the United Nations General Assembly. While BTS has garnered steady attention for their artistry and ability to break records, their fandom has received attention for their creativity and innovation in supporting BTS. Scholars and music critics have cited many factors that have led to their success and massive global fanbase: their music, authenticity, history, and a wide variety of engaging content.⁴¹

The acronym ARMY stands for Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth. The fandom receives attention for their ability to sell out stadiums, help BTS chart their way to a Billboard #1 hit for both English and Korean songs, and consistently place BTS as winners for the Billboard Top Social Artist award (as of October 2021 they have won every year since 2017). While those achievements directly impact the group, the synergistic relationship between BTS and ARMY must be put into context with BTS’s history and music. Korean media did not give BTS as much attention as other groups because Big Hit was not a significant entertainment company when BTS debuted. Accordingly, Big Hit did not have the same resources as more established entertainment companies to garner access to media and invitations for idol groups to appear on variety shows or engage in circuits that would have helped build their reputation. Members of BTS used social media to connect with fans, telling their own stories to build relationships. Early vlogs described their struggles as trainees preparing for debut and scenes from their daily lives (cooking, practicing their music and dance, and simply spending time with one another). These more personal interactions would help fans feel more connected to the members. Rather than feel as if they were getting to know BTS members onstage or through performances only, viewers came to know them in more personal and intimate settings.

Jeeheng Lee posits that BTS coming from a small company influenced the way their fandom formed: “Unlike idols from large agencies – who gain exposure and grow a fan base via TV appearances – BTS barely benefited from broadcasting opportunities and compensated by diligently uploading behind-the-scenes footage and their daily lives online.”⁴² The disadvantages BTS encountered made the relationship between BTS and ARMY stronger. Members of the fandom saw themselves as BTS’s only allies, which motivated them to give them the support and recognition they believed the band deserved. BTS’s unique history among K-pop groups has relied on this strong relationship in particular ways. Most groups’ popularity and fandom grew in Korea before gaining attention abroad, but BTS’s initial stronghold with fans began in the United States. Music critic Youngdae Kim describes the reason behind this: “In the early 2010s, none of the Korean media paid attention to this group of unknown boys as the ‘next big thing’ in the middle of the cutthroat competition among idol groups. Instead, American fans and the media that harbored less prejudice against BTS recognized their potential first. They were not large in number, but their existence was nonetheless critical.”⁴³ It is important to acknowledge that even with these early challenges and steady rise of fandom outside Korea, BTS had a dedicated Korean fanbase that was supportive as well.

In addition to the initial conditions that laid the groundwork for BTS and Big Hit to develop their fanbase, the strategies that sustain a dedicated fanbase are also essential to understand. Big Hit has cultivated countless opportunities for fans to enjoy BTS’s music and content and become part of the group’s story. While BTS’s core way of connecting with fans has been through their music (much of which they write themselves), there are other avenues, such as V Lives, in which the members spend time with fans, sometimes after important events like concerts or awards shows. For example, after the 2021 Grammy Awards show (in which they were nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance), BTS had a live event in which they reassured fans that while disappointed about their loss, they were grateful for the opportunity and would continue to work hard. It is also not uncommon for members to respond to viewer comments during these livestreams. They might wish a fan happy birthday, offer advice, or pass on kind words in general.

Scholars have talked at length about celebrity-fan relations through the framework of parasocial relationships.⁴⁴ The connections established between artists and fans often emerge from a collective experience, such as BTS fans enjoying content together. This can take many forms, from celebrating countdowns on Twitter in anticipation of new music releases to fans creating games or other nonofficial content as a way to connect. Most fans do not have an illusive perception that they actually “know” the artists. Instead, fans may feel that they know the message and philosophy of the group well enough to recognize the parts of the personalities that artists do show. Social media also offer fans a way to feel connected. The BTS members’ joint Twitter feed and individual Instagram accounts provide fans with photos, music clips, recommendations, and other messages. Similarly, Weverse allows members to post messages and pictures to fans, and through these encounters, fans may come to feel that they do get to learn about a member’s personality. For example, RM (Kim Nam-joon) frequently posts pictures of his museum visits. An avid art collector, he has inspired many fans to visit the same galleries.⁴⁵ On Weverse, members will often respond to fan posts, further establishing the connection fans feel. In addition to these traditional K-pop ways of establishing a relationship between fans and artists, Big Hit has taken on more innovative means. In 2020, as part of BTS’s Map of the Soul: 7 album, the company hosted an international global art show, Connect, BTS. Although hindered in some ways by the COVID-19 pandemic, this program spanned five cities and featured over twenty artists. It invited both fans and the general public to experience art exhibitions that resonated with BTS’s philosophy of making art and music accessible to all. Big Hit has also used transmedia storytelling across platforms that encourage fans to theorize and build connections across content. This began with BTS’s 2015 album, The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1. A narrative began to construct the Bangtan Universe – a complex conglomerate of fictional stories centering around the members’ characters and woven across albums, music videos, and a webtoon. Bangtan Universe does not reflect the members’ actual lives, but some ARMY followed the experience by theorizing the fictional narrative arc. Some fans also created YouTube videos that analyzed and mapped out theories for understanding the fictional stories. This content not only builds fan connections as they work together to understand and unpack the story but also offers another route for fans to enter and experience the range of content.

ARMY performs many of the fan practices mentioned in this chapter: organizing for streaming and charting, circulating news and content created by fans, and connecting with BTS over social media. But this fandom is also recognized for its social and humanitarian projects, inspired by BTS’s messages. These range from reflections on the love, fear, and angst around growing up and adulthood to critiques of social injustice and encouraging people to find their passion. These messages have universal power because they appeal to many shared experiences regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. While some start from a South Korean context or perspective, these issues are not limited by borders and languages.⁴⁶ BTS invites ARMY and other listeners to consider issues rather than setting out to advocate for one particular outcome or follow one particular directive. No outcome or response is privileged over another. The fan base’s strength is its desire to reflect the joy and connection they have experienced due to BTS’s music.

Although organizing around social issues is not unique to ARMY, what distinguishes ARMY’s philanthropic work from the rest is the scale, effort, and diversity in the range of causes. Perhaps one of the most recognized BTS messages has come from their aforementioned Love Yourself album series and their work with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). In November 2017, BTS and Big Hit partnered with the Korean Committee for UNICEF to join the #ENDviolence campaign. The focus was on preventing violence against young people. The group’s participation and support of this campaign, described as an extension of BTS’s lyrics and music videos, attested to the importance of self-love. It was part of the overarching concept for the Love Yourself albums – to echo the importance of loving oneself as a first step toward fostering self-respect and awareness of one’s place in the world.⁴⁷ One of the ARMY responses to this message created One in an ARMY (OIAA), a fan-driven organization that helps raise funds and awareness about various human rights and social issues, composed of ARMY volunteers worldwide. For each BTS member’s birthday, they will run a campaign in their name and honor. These volunteers receive input from other ARMY members regarding which nonprofit organizations they will support, and they use Twitter to organize calls for microdonations. They have done campaigns for various nonprofits, from those that support literacy for incarcerated teens to support for the elderly to COVID-19 relief. Their reach and impact for the birthday projects are extensive, raising just over a total of $49,000 in 2019 in honor of each of the seven BTS members’ birthdays alone.⁴⁸ This amount didn’t include additional projects, such as flash fundraisers and ongoing projects that celebrate acts of kindness that may not be attached to monetary donations. A September 2020 Weverse magazine article, “BTS & ARMY, We Walk Together,” highlights the philanthropy of ARMY and notes that its donation history totaled $2,018,020,000 won, roughly US$1,713,802.⁴⁹

ARMY’s response to these efforts is impressive because of the money raised and the opportunities it provides for people to learn about issues they otherwise might be unaware of. OIAA stresses the importance of projects that reflect the messages found in BTS: “The vision behind OIAA is driven by our belief that the comfort we get from BTS can be given back to the world in abundance. It also aligns with our objective, as individuals, to work in making this world a better place.”⁵⁰ This desire to reflect the gratitude for BTS through efforts to help communities who may not even be aware of the group or its fandom has been quite effective for the fundraising efforts. However, more crucial than the amount raised is that these activities provide opportunities to educate about social issues. For example, an October 2020 birthday campaign in honor of a BTS member, Jimin, raised money for Free the Girls, an organization that helps girls rescued from sex trafficking. Using Twitter threads to spur conversation throughout the month of the campaign, OIAA posted links for donations and a series of questions about the issue to encourage discussion and share knowledge about the subject. The questions encouraged readers to move between local and global contexts and see connections between issues often related to more significant structural inequalities: “FTG, through their programs have emerged as great entrepreneurs who are adapting to the needs of the time by trying to expand to an online model, like an online marketplace. How do you think online channels and the global reach of the internet help them in their endeavors?”⁵¹ They also ask ARMY to think about how sex trafficking connects to other issues about the kinds of social support and infrastructure needed to help victims: “How do you think our structures and institutions contribute to creating the divide and what in your opinion can one do on their end to bridge the gap?”⁵² These are opportunities for critical conversation and learning, which are just as crucial for social change as donations.

Similarly, an examination of how some ARMY members responded to the #BLM movement in 2020 sheds light on the fandom’s ability to mobilize with impressive donations and educate from within around issues of race, racism, and violence. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing and ensuing protests of racial violence against Black people, there were concerted efforts within the fandom to raise money and awareness for BLM. These efforts, many of which started before BTS announced in support of BLM and made public that they had donated $1 million to support the movement, were driven by fans. The magnitude of ARMY’s response to BLM resulted in the #MatchAMillion campaign. Although fans started this outside OIAA, the organization helped track logistics for the campaign to match funds. Before the announcement that BTS had donated $1 million, OIAA found that ARMY had raised approximately $50,000. Again, the ability to organize and the amount raised are undoubtedly crucial, but the attempts to educate the public deserve attention. Before BTS’s announcement, fans tweeted resources that helped explain the history of anti-Black racism in both American and global contexts. In particular, there were efforts to help Korean fans understand the importance of this movement and moment. The #BLM hashtag was circulating within the ARMY community before BTS tweeted their message of support on June 4, 2020; on June 1, 2020, another hashtag appeared in the ARMY community: #WeLoveBlackARMY. This was created by Dr. Jiyoung Lee, a Korean-ARMY academic who used the hashtag in conjunction with #BlackLivesMatter to show support and draw attention to the issue. Dr. Lee’s tweet directed toward K-ARMY, first written in Korean and later translated into English, reads:

Under the hashtag, a range of conversations ensued from people asking to learn more about the incident to links to blog posts that articulated Korean-ARMY’s own attempts to understand race and racism in this context. The hashtag functioned to call attention to the issue, offer support, and provide a space to exchange resources and educate one another about the problems. This moment also represented a potential opportunity for learning and activism that transcended BTS.

ARMY takes finding ways to support one another just as seriously as supporting BTS. In addition to organizing to help with philanthropic efforts, fans have developed several subgroups that provide communal support, such as Korean-language-learning opportunities, tutoring services for a variety of subjects, book clubs, mental health support, cooking lessons, and sharing of employment resources. The Bangtan Academy is an ARMY-sponsored free language-learning program operated through a Discord server that supports students who are learning Korean using several different curricula. Self-paced classes utilize YouTube Korean language channels supplemented with homework assignments designed by Bangtan Academy teachers; all this is augmented by support and encouragement from teachers and other students through chats. There are also language courses taught by volunteers who design their own curricula and provide materials for students. In addition, there are opportunities for learning and discussion around Korean history and culture.⁵⁴ ARMY Academics provide free tutoring across a host of subjects taught by ARMY volunteers. Those seeking help complete a form and partner with a tutor. ARMY Academics also sponsors free programs to help students navigate the process of applying to college, choosing majors, and transitioning from high school to college (ARMY Academy).

Another example of this intracommunity support is the BTS ARMY Job Board, coordinated by ARMY volunteers who circulate job advertisements worldwide. They describe the impetus for their establishment as wanting to provide help for ARMY as inspiration from “the examples of kindness and compassion shown by BTS through their words and their actions” (ARMY Job Board “History”). On Twitter, they share a range of potential job opportunities. This group also supports other fans around issues of career-related concerns.

These fan-driven efforts are not directly related to BTS’s success but rather exemplify fans’ willingness and desire to support the community formed around this group. ARMY’s desire to support BTS has manifested into a desire to help one another in ways inspired by but not limited to music.

Conclusion

Korean popular music fandoms are vibrant communities comprising unique individuals. While the records these fandoms help their artists to reach are impressive, equally impressive is how fandom communities are helping their local and global communities find meaningful ways to impact the world. Broadly, fandoms support artists through purchasing music and content, creating original content inspired by the artists, and taking up volunteer efforts promoting social good. The mechanics of this work change over time given social and material conditions, the artists, and the fans who make up these communities. Attention is often given to fandom for its ability to support its artists. Perhaps we can also learn how the joy and comfort expressed in the music inspire ripples of action throughout communities, some of whom may have never even listened to Korean popular music. The ARMY fandom, similar to BTS, demonstrates possibilities in uncharted territory.