‘KPop Demon Hunters’ didn’t simply break information — it sealed Ok-pop’s reign in America

It is Netflix’s largest film of all time, with 314 million views and counting. Its soundtrack hit No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart and is the primary to ever have 4 songs hit the highest 10 of the Billboard Sizzling 100 concurrently. It was the No. 1 on the field workplace and made $18 million in a single weekend, though it was nonetheless out there to observe at house. Children are rewatching it and re-creating its hottest appears. Dad and mom are watching it out of curiosity and loving it.

Hardly ever has an unique film infiltrated popular culture like KPop Demon Hunters. It’s arduous to overstate simply how large this film is. However nobody ought to be shocked.

The sugary bubble gum pop music, vibrant visuals and infectious choreography that permeate the film are all fairly typical of Ok-pop, a style made up of largely South Korean boy and woman teams with tens of millions of notoriously intense followers throughout the globe.

Earlier than the Netflix movie’s success, it appeared Ok-pop was simply ready for a mainstream streaming service to take an opportunity and promote it to a broader viewers of individuals hesitant to strive one thing new. Now, it’s clear that it’s a powerhouse style that’s nestled its manner into popular culture simply as a lot as nation, rap or Latin music.

Followers made Ok-pop mainstream

Ok-pop is what persons are hungry for, and the executives raking in money proper now have its followers, who’ve lengthy evangelized for the style, to thank for that.

Rochelle Kelly is certainly one of them.

“Ok-pop going mainstream from my expertise actually was due to how engaged fandoms had been on-line,” Kelly, a 27-year-old from New Jersey, tells Yahoo. “It is a large international group with a ardour not like the rest.”

Although Psy’s 2012 international hit “Gangnam Model” was the primary predominately non-English Ok-pop tune to turn into a cultural drive, he wasn’t in a position to mobilize lasting followers as a lot as swoonworthy Ok-pop boy and woman bands had been. Stacy Jones, CEO of influencer advertising and marketing firm Hollywood Branded, tells Yahoo that BTS pioneered the “infrastructure” of fan help that many teams copy now. The seven-member boy band was the primary Ok-pop group to interrupt out within the U.S., shortly and assuredly incomes the widespread enthusiasm of worldwide younger girls identical to the Beatles.

Kelly has been a superfan of the style since she was in highschool in 2011, when she used a number of gadgets to offer BTS music movies as many streams as attainable and improve her probability of getting live performance tickets. She stayed up till 2 a.m. to observe livestreams and was a part of a gaggle on Tumblr that mobilized to win her favourite teams awards and improve their acclaim and identify recognition within the U.S.

This pattern amongst followers continues to at the present time: They proceed to voluntarily mobilize on X and Reddit to forcefully launch their favourite artists into the mainstream.

In keeping with Luminate’s 2025 midyear music trade report, Ok-pop followers overindex in on-line group areas like Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp and Twitch, which all “allow deeper fan engagement.”

That group is, in itself, compelling to individuals like Kelly — however it’s the high-quality visuals that maintain her and so many different followers coming again for extra. It’s all a part of a machine, engineered by firms to emulate perfection to churn out vigorous choreography, trendsetting vogue and beautiful idols.

Bands want followers

The connection between Ok-pop bands and their fandoms is symbiotic. Bands create content material for followers, then followers create content material for them, making their work much more fashionable. That’s mandatory for Ok-pop teams to make the essential pivot out of Korean popular culture and firmly into the U.S., the place there are merely extra individuals out there to turn into followers and maintain their careers.

A cultural shift within the U.S. got here first for BTS in 2017, when the group’s followers, referred to as Military, efficiently infiltrated the net voting system for the Billboard Music Awards to earn the band the Prime Social Artist award. Serona Elton, interim vice dean and chair of the music trade program on the Frost Faculty of Music on the College of Miami, tells Yahoo that the feat earned BTS on the spot credibility on social media, which led to collaborations with English-speaking artists like Halsey, Steve Aoki and Coldplay, additional introducing them to the mainstream. Since then, the band has solely been on an upward trajectory.

Six of their albums have hit No. 1 and eight of their music movies have exceeded one billion views on YouTube.

BTS disbanded briefly on the top of their fame to finish South Korea’s obligatory navy service requirement and work on solo initiatives, however is now poised for a large comeback. Jones says BTS’ reunion in 2026 “will seemingly be one of many largest cultural reset moments in latest reminiscence.”

Loads of extremely proficient and visually gorgeous teams by no means ascend to the success of BTS. Nonetheless, members of these teams are known as idols. Ok. Kim, CEO of a PR agency that works with Ok-pop teams within the U.S. and South Korea, tells Yahoo that Individuals nonetheless miss out on the “numerous idol teams that debut in Korea,” solely getting a extremely curated collection of the best-of-the-best performers. That will increase the strain for each current idols and people hoping to turn into them.

Idols and evangelism within the Ok-pop machine

Huntr/x from KPop Demon Hunters is a fictional woman group, however is comprised of real-life singers with expertise in Ok-pop. Even singing as animated characters, the group has efficiently damaged out like different present chart mainstays like Twice, Katseye, Stray Children, TXT and New Denims — to not point out all of the bands who’ve a number of members with profitable solo careers, together with Blackpink’s Rosé, whose collaboration with Bruno Mars grew to become the primary Ok-pop tune to dominate Prime 40 radio by main Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart. “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters is nearing the highest of the chart as nicely.

Although followers of the fictional, animated band have an intense fandom, the actors and singers who gave them an onscreen voice had been in a position to keep away from a few of the depth that real-life woman group performers endure.

In Ok-pop, “artists are usually ‘employed’ quite than found, after which skilled over years to behave just like the idols the style wants them to be,” Elton says. “They turn into characters that followers are drawn to. This paradigm of idol worship aligns very nicely with behaviors that happen on social media platforms between celebrities (idols) and their followers (worshipers) – it’s a match made in heaven.”

It mirrors faith. “Followers turn into evangelists for his or her favourite Ok-pop artist amongst their associates, serving to increase the artist’s fan base exponentially,” Elton continues.

A Ok-pop fan since 2019, 27-year-old content material creator Christel tells Yahoo that she’s felt the style turn into extra westernized on the whole because it began going mainstream. Teams are releasing extra songs in English, and though they’re abandoning a few of their Korean tradition, they’re additionally being free of the extraordinary guidelines and wonder conventions that maintain them to a regular of near-holiness.

“They’re in a position to be edgier and extra self-expressive … it’s 100% drastically totally different from what Ok-pop was,” she says. That innovation retains followers coming again for extra, rising its recognition within the U.S.

Fandom past borders and screens

The followers behind screens and glued to streaming providers have efficiently made Ok-pop right into a real-life, mainstream style. Angel Vicioso, chief of playlists at TouchTunes, a contemporary jukebox app that permits followers to pay to play sure songs aloud in public, tells Yahoo that BTS and Blackpink are taking off on TouchTunes alongside main artists like Morgan Wallen and Beyoncé.

“[K-pop’s] success displays a mixture of catchy tunes and a web-based group that’s extra engaged and international than ever,” Vicioso says.

Followers aren’t simply streaming music, both — they’re shopping for bodily albums, merch and live performance tickets.

The starvation for extra Ok-pop content material has turned these bands into extra than simply teams of performers — they’re trendsetters throughout magnificence, way of life and vogue. In keeping with Google Developments, KPop Demon Hunters impressed the top-trending nail design, coiffure tutorial and cosplay in July. Michele Y. Smith, CEO of Seattle’s Museum of Pop Tradition, tells Yahoo that idols “affect from a number of entry factors … they usually’re simply getting began.”

The style’s largest idols have begun transcending musical efficiency and merch gross sales to dabble in careers exterior of music, reserving modeling gigs and large roles on exhibits like The White Lotus and Squid Sport.

This isn’t simply the story of how Ok-pop grew to become mainstream. It’s seemingly a playbook on how different worldwide genres can transcend borders sooner or later utilizing high-quality visuals and engaged fandoms. Ok-pop artists are usually not simply setting music tendencies, they’re shaping the way forward for the entire leisure trade.