Picture this: you’re a pre-teen on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Iowa, you’re the only Asian kid for miles and you haven’t found an idol that looks like you since Michelle Kwan. To cope, you spend hours in front of the computer, mindlessly watching videos from the golden age of Asian YouTube. Then, out of nowhere, you're served the brand new music video for “Oh!” by Girls’ Generation (which happens to feature a cameo from an Iowa Hawkeyes football helmet!).
Your video algorithm changes more, and you watch new music video after new music video. After one evening of sugary bubblegum pop, presented by a huge gaggle of virtually flawless Korean girls, you’re hooked. You finally see yourself in pop culture, and you also feel special. After all, no one else around you has heard of anything you're listening to or watching. You become a die-hard fan of what we now call second-generation K-pop, filled with groups like 2NE1 and BIGBANG.
Then, two years later, "Gangnam Style” by Psy drops. It spreads like wildfire and quickly takes over the world. Suddenly it's not just you. By your freshman homecoming dance everyone is dancing to K-pop.
Asian culture is having its moment
Americans have a long tradition of being cruel to Asians, and it wasn't very long ago that Asian representation in the US was mostly limited to racist tropes and caricatures. Internationally, Asians still suffer from world leaders calling COVID-19 the “kung flu.” But while politicians (and society) regularly like to treat Asians as punching bags, Asian culture is pretty in right now.
Personally, I have been living for it. Hollywood has seen a 500% increase in Asian roles over the past fifteen years, and in just the last three years we've seen great Asian representation — and wins — at the Oscars. On social media, fans on TikTok love to proclaim they’re in a “very Chinese time in their lives right now.” It’s even cool to be Asian (or Wasian), like Alysa Liu, Beabadoobee — and me. What's made Asian culture so present and so cool? To me, it goes back to K-pop. After all, its existence paved the way for the Demon Hunters.
The soaring popularity of South Korean pop music, or K-pop, can be broken down into five (often disputed) generations. First Gen runs from the nineties to early 2000s and established the “idol” system. Second Gen runs from the 2000s to 2011 and is when I (and many others) got sucked in. Third Gen runs 2011-2018, and is identified as the post-“Gangnam Style” global breakthrough period that birthed superstar acts like BTS and BLACKPINK. Fourth Gen covers 2018-2022 and features high production quality digital media that overcame the pandemic and cemented K-pop as an ever-present global digital presence. That puts us squarely in the Fifth Gen, which is still being defined but wants to appear more egalitarian in how unknown musicians are discovered.
However, the blockbuster hit KPop Demon Hunters as well as new music from storied phenoms BTS and BLACKPINK have sparked heated debate over whether we're actually in a Fifth Gen or are just returning to the larger-than-life global sensation days of the pre-pandemic Third Gen, when cultivated idols reigned supreme.
K-pop origins and the idol structure
The South Korean music industry functions very differently than in the US. An aspiring K-pop singer can't be discovered at a mall like they once could be here (at least per US record label advertising). Instead, "idols" are trained from a young age for stardom. These idols, and idol culture, are the core of K-pop’s history.
Idol culture began in Japan in the '70s and '80s, where talent agencies carefully trained potential pop stars to ensure they'd be a marketable and profitable product. Not only was their music developed by an agency to permeate pop culture and sell well, idols needed to have a flawless image — both morally and aesthetically. Once an agency had crafted their perfect "product," the idol would debut, often to instant success from passionate fanbases. The launch of First Gen K-pop was deliberately planned and executed following the Japanese model, which had seen massive returns on their idol investments (J-pop still thrives today too).
In the mid-'90s, Korean agencies began to recruit young talent to undergo rigorous idol training, which was meant to perfect the individual or group's singing, dancing and image. The independent debut of Seo Taiji and Boys in 1992 marked a new era in Korean music, and introduced Western hip-hop, rap and dance to Eastern audiences. The group's unprecedented success prompted Lee Soo-man’s Japanese-inspired SM Entertainment to develop the sound of the first big Korean idol group, H.O.T., in 1996.
H.O.T. not only solidified the K-pop genre sonically, it also established many of the conventions still present in K-pop groups and fandoms today. Each member of H.O.T. had a specific role and personality, from leader Moon Hee-joon to dancer Jang Woo-hyuk to rapper Tony An. The band's marketers targeted teenage fans and gave them a purpose by developing official fan clubs and creating fan chants for shows. Fans were also encouraged to develop “bias” culture, where they would choose their favorite member of the band and swear allegiance to that member emotionally and then through merchandising. They would often then rep their “bias” by collecting and carrying around their personal idol's photocards.
The making and marketing of K-pop idols feels affirmative, but there's also a very dark underbelly to the industry. Idol training has a history of being downright inhumane, and has included forced cosmetic surgeries, starvation diets and punishments for gaining weight. Trainees have suffered sleep deprivation from endless practicing and have been known to receive harsh discipline for making simple mistakes. They're under constant judgment and pressure from agency executives, and often experience contractual exploitation, where very young trainees are subjected to decades-long contracts with low quality of life and low to no pay. Multiple trainees and idols have attempted or committed suicide, including Sulli from f(x) in late 2019 and Goo Hara from KARA soon after. While they're made to appear glamorous, being an idol can be anything but.
Fans and societal pressure, especially after the deaths of Sulli and Goo Hara, have led to reforms to protect idols’ mental and physical health, but the system continues to be quite exploitative and dangerous. This doesn’t make K-pop any less of an important fixture in national and global culture though, and no one knows that better than Ejae from KPop Demon Hunters.
Moving beyond idols
Ejae was an idol trainee for SM Entertainment for over ten years, starting in 2003 when she was 11. Ejae endured the intense training regimen, but she never got to debut as a soloist or group member because she was deemed “too old” for new girl groups and didn’t have the “clean” vocal style SM Entertainment was looking for. Heartbroken, she found a different path in the music industry as a songwriter, writing hits for Red Velvet and æspa.
Then, a few years ago Ejae wrote and sang the demos for multiple songs for a new film in development called KPop Demon Hunters. Director Maggie Kang credited Ejae’s songwriting as one of the main reasons Demon Hunters was greenlit, and asked her to provide the singing voice for the main character, Rumi.
As we all now know, KPop Demon Hunters is a smash hit. Its soundtrack charted at number two on the Billboard 200, “Golden” topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the movie won a multitude of awards, including the Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Picture and the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Ejae’s composition “Golden” won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song, the Oscar for Best Original Song, Best Song at the Critics’ Choice Awards and Best Song Written for Visual Media at the Grammys. Those are all historic first-ever wins for the K-pop genre.
Now, Ejae has finally kicked off her own solo music career, outside of the idol mold.
“I can confidently say rejection is redirection,” Ejae said in her Grammys acceptance speech. “So never give up and it’s never too late to shine like you’re born to be.”
Yes, I cried watching her acceptance, and I’ve cried every time rewatching it, too. Long gone are the days where the only Asian idols we little Asian American girls had were Michelle Kwan and Kristi Yamaguchi. Coming out of this awards season, K-pop has officially made it on the global scene, and it's here to stay.
Midwestern K-pop stans
Here in Iowa, it’s not uncommon to see people carrying around a photocard of their bias on their keychain. Photocard trading events have been held at locations like Zenko Tea in West Des Moines and the Des Moines Public Library. K-pop dance parties have been held in venues including xBk in Des Moines and Gabe’s in Iowa City. And in West Des Moines, Mins Studios, Iowa’s first-ever K-pop store, opened last year.
From the stadium-filling, mainstream sounds of TWICE or BTS to the hip-hop inspired tracks of Stray Kids or BIGBANG and the smooth ballads of BAEKHYUN or Taemin — or even the cutesy bubblegum pop that first drew me in sixteen years ago, there's something in the genre for everybody. If you're concerned about not knowing the language, events like this year’s Super Bowl have proven that you don't need to understand the lyrics of a song to enjoy it, as long as it sounds good to you. And even if you need some English to ease you into the genre, try the Twin Version of FIFTY FIFTY’s “Cupid,” the JENNIE verse in Tame Impala’s “Dracula” remix or, of course, the beloved KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack.
Worldwide, K-pop artists generate over 90 billion on-demand streams annually, 9.2 billion of which come from the United States. You ought to hear what all the hype’s about.
