K-pop is Not Korean

The genre is becoming less about Korean culture and more about a certain production style.

One of the most popular movies of this summer was about K-pop. KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s latest animated film, is a smash hit worldwide: 33 million views in its first two weeks, with a chart-topping soundtrack to match. “Golden,” the movie’s lead single, is number one on Spotify’s Global Top 50, even two months after the movie’s release. Other songs like “Your Idol,” “Soda Pop,” and “How It’s Done” also land the top 10.

You can literally read the film’s title and guess what the movie’s about. In KPop Demon Hunters, HUNTR/X, a K-pop girl group, sings K-pop songs and fights demons to protect humanity. It’s a standard narrative of good versus evil, culminating in a face-off against the Saja Boys, a rival boy band who are (unbeknownst to the public) secretly demons. The film imagines Seoul as the world’s cultural mecca—where everyone is listening and dancing and singing along to K-pop, where K-pop concerts attract millions of attendees, and where K-pop singers live in Tony Stark-like skyscrapers overlooking the city.

But in this animated version of Seoul, everyone speaks English. You have gimbaps and ramyeons and Hangul sprinkled in the background, but all the characters—except two—talk in American accents. Besides a select few one-liners and a prechorus here and there, all the songs in KPop Demon Hunters’ OST are in English. There are a few nods to Korean shamanism throughout, but the story’s premise of hunting demons to balance the forces of good and evil could’ve also been pulled from Japanese Shintoism or Chinese Daoism.

Seoul is practically a non-place here. Remove the Korean grandmas or the Korean streetwear from the movie, and it could be any East Asian city—or a highly urbanized Korea/China/Japan-town in the West. All the voice actors except Lee Byung-hun—who plays the front man in Squid Game—are Korean American. Even one singer is Filipino.

All this to say, there’s nothing essentially Korean about KPop Demon Hunters. But can something be “K-pop” if it’s no longer about being Korean?

To be clear, this is not a particularly new debate. In the last few years, K-pop singles like BTS’ “Dynamite” (2020), Blackpink’s “Pink Venom” and “Typa Girl” (2022), and FIFTY FIFTY’s “Cupid” (2023), show the industry pivoting towards a new direction: English is becoming the language of Korean pop.

It ruptured traditional preconceptions of the genre, especially for fans who enjoyed K-pop because it wasn’t in English: In 2024, the music magazine Paste asked “If a K-pop song is performed in English, is it still a K-pop song?” At the time, the answer was still yes. Songs like BTS’ “Butter” or Blackpink’s “Typa Girl” were still produced by Korean singers, in Korean studios, and by Korean producers and songwriters and companies.

There was, however, a rising movement of “K-pop” (notice the air quotes) music emerging outside of South Korea. In 2018, boy group SB19 debuted in the Philippines. Their styling and dance routines were pulled directly from a BTS moodboard, and while they sang in Tagalog, the cadence sounded suspiciously Korean. Six years later, KATSEYE, an all-girl group, debuted in the United States. They were structured just as a K-pop group would be, categorizing members by function: “Leader,” “Dancer,” “Singer,” “Visual,” etc. And their April single, “GNARLY” could’ve appeared on a Blackpink EP: The lyrics have the same cringe-inducing and incorrectly-used African American Vernacular English (“... this song’s so lit, congratulations / … Gang, gang, gang, gang, gang,”) as in singles like “As If It’s Your Last” (“I’ma fall in love baby / You can finna catch me”).

Neither of these groups officially describe themselves as K-pop, but besides the sonic and lyrical similarities, both SB19 and KATSEYE went through K-pop industry-standard training programs and were launched by subsidiaries of Korean entertainment companies. It’s K-pop in another country.

Where K-pop markets are unusually large—think Southeast Asia, where Korean culture is viewed as aspirational to an increasingly regionally-focused youth—groups like SB19 and KATSEYE are just as common. TRINITY, a boyband based in Thailand, releases the songs with the same high-production music videos and hooks with heavy bass-drops and repeating lyrics—exactly like BTS’ “Fire.” Mirror, a Hong Kong-based boy group, doesn’t sound as K-pop-y, but what it lacks in sound it makes up for in identical merchandise, selling lightsticks to fans, much like EXO or TWICE.

Now back to KPop Demon Hunters’ soundtrack: “Soda Pop” by the Saja Boys sounds a lot like BTS’ “Butter.” Both songs are primarily sung in English and fixate on a single food or beverage as a motif for swagger. Both songs’ choruses are repetitive, optimized for catchiness, and accompanied by a dance number that is easy to mimic and share on social media. HUNTR/X’s “Takedown” has the same whisper-y one-liners that you’d find in Blackpink’s “Pink Venom,” with verses that babble on with late 2010s-era feminism “bad girl empowerment” lyrics. The song appeals perfectly to aging girlbosses, Asian gays, and pre-teen girls still in search of identity—or the exact demographics most often targeted by marketing campaigns. The songs stick, but that’s by design. They’re optimized for mass appeal.

Some music genres are defined less by how they sound, and more by what they’re trying to achieve. For example, pop music doesn’t name a coherent set of sounds as much as it describes music that is, well, popular. K-pop is similar: “[It] is not simply Korean music,” Yamamoto Joho, a K-pop scholar at Ritsumeikan University, told the Korea Times in May. “It’s a mode of cultural production rooted in Korea, defined by a rigorous training system and shared aesthetic values.” K-pop is making genre conventions not from Korean language or identity, but instead from something more fundamental to itself: its assembly line-like mode of production.

K-pop artists, known also as “idols,” are trained over several years by studios and intensely promoted prior to debut. During their careers, they’ll appear in high production music videos whenever they release a song, meticulously directed photoshoots, and rigorous dance practice, all of which culminate in an intellectual property goldrush. Brand managers convert visual content into photo cards for sale. Listeners turn song dances into TikTok videos for free marketing. An idol’s face and body are transformed into toys for crazed fans to purchase. K-pop is a “highly efficient production line,” describes one McMaster University paper, and the metaphor fitting and familiar to anyone attuned to the industry.

This is only one glimpse of the K-pop production line that maximizes efficiency and profit, but these dynamics are one explanation of the genre’s common tropes. It’s why songs are named after a memorable food or drink and lyrics center marketable themes like empty girlboss feminism. It’s also why, as one KAIST study argues, K-pop songs have a shorter shelf life on music charts and a song’s success is impacted more by company marketing than by musical quality. Why? They’re maximizing profit and IP at any cost.

By these standards, Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters is following the exact same playbook, ensuring their such successful IP doesn’t go to waste: “The fact that people are in love with this film and in love with the music from this film, that will keep it going for a long time. So we’re really thrilled,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a recent earnings call. “And now the next beat is, where does it go from here?”

That next beat is a sequel, a live action remake, and production of KPop Demon Hunters merchandise for Netflix’s official store, according to reporting from The Wrap. The film’s songs might be sung in English; culturally or linguistically, it might not be all that Korean. But in its blind pursuit of profit, KPop Demon Hunters is essentially a work of K-pop.