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Race in K-pop: the influence of Black culture and the Korean perspective

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Race in K-pop: the influence of Black culture and the Korean perspective

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Content RACE IN K-POP:
THE INFLUENCE OF BLACK CULTURE AND THE KOREAN PERSPECTIVE
by
Sangmin Kim
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
May 2024
Copyright 2024 Sangmin Kim

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Diane Winston, my thesis committee chair, for
encouraging me to keep pushing for the best final outcome of this thesis. I learned a lot in terms
of how I should think and write about this complex topic that I have always wanted to delve into
as a Korean person growing up in the United States.
I also want to thank my committee members Professor Hye Jin Lee and Dr. Allissa
Richardson for all their time and helpful feedback throughout the school year. Thank you to the
USC Annenberg faculty as well as everyone in my cohort, I was able to complete this thesis with
your words of encouragement. Thank you to all the industry scholars and K-pop fans who shared
with me their honest thoughts about this topic.
Finally, I want to thank my family, especially my parents, for sincerely cheering me on
from across the country. I couldn’t have finished this program without your unconditional love
and support.
ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………...ii
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iv
Chapter Outline……………………………………………………………………………………1
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..7
Chapter 1: “Asian Invasion”: How K-pop broke through in the West…………………………...12
Chapter 2: Increasing collaborations and tensions: Explaining the conflict……………………..22
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..53
iii

Abstract
“We’re the yellow race, but I got Black soul,” Jiho Woo, better known by the Korean
population by his stage name Zico, rapped in a verse of his song “Bermuda Triangle.”
Zico, who originally performed in the underground hip-hop scene in South Korea, made
his debut as a K-pop idol first. He was the leader, songwriter, producer and main rapper of the
seven-member boy group Block B that made their first appearance in 2011. After falling in love
with Black music while attending an art school as a middle school student in Japan, Zico
dedicated much of his free time to writing and recording his own rap verses. Now, 13 years after
his debut as an idol star, Zico is recognized as one of the best rappers in Korea.
Despite his love for hip-hop music, Black fans of K-pop are largely hostile against Zico.
Black K-pop fans criticize him heavily for his long history of culturally appropriating Black
popular culture to build up his own career as a hip-hop musician. Zico himself has never
acknowledged these accusations, though he has worn Black hair on several occasions and rapped
the racial slur referring to Black people in a couple of his old mixtape recordings.
Zico isn’t the first or only Korean music artist to attract the anger of the American
audience for appropriating Black culture.
One of the industries that is leading the global spread of Korean popular culture is K-pop,
a genre characterized by striking visuals, music, performance and a distinct training system as
well as promotion habits. In recent years, there have been growing tensions between Koreans and
Black Americans who feel that K-pop engages in racially insensitive acts such as cultural
appropriation and colorism with minimal acknowledgment of these problematic behaviors or the
strong influence of Black culture on K-pop.
iv

This divide is intensified by the fact that K-pop labels and artists’ response to Black fans
have been minimal, usually resulting in silence or a vague apology. Incidents of K-pop idols
committing cultural appropriation or colorism persist in the industry This is causing many
American fans to feel like Korea’s entertainment industry is ignoring their requests — and it’s
true that it’s difficult to know the industry’s exact attitude as they tend to be very secretive.
My book will aim to provide the historical background of how K-pop’s origins in South
Korea as well as the reasons behind the lack of change that is happening within the Korean
industry when it comes to problematic attitudes toward people of color. This will be done by
focusing on the Korean perspective rather than relying on the American cultural angle. This is
because much of the discussions surrounding this issue today center around the American
understanding of race-related topics such as cultural appropriation. My intention is to dispel
some of the major misconceptions about the K-pop industry and help foster conversations that
can engage both Koreans and Americans.
Conversations surrounding race are continuing to develop on a global scale along with
the globalization of different cultures. In the 21st century, South Korea’s soft power as a whole
has seen a rapid growth in its dissemination across the globe, which consists of their food,
popular music, technology, film and other elements. Theoretically, better access to another
nation’s culture should lead to improvements among different communities that were unable to
connect with each other in the past.
However, negative sentiments about South Korea are strengthening, particularly online.
And, despite the abundance of discourse, there are very few individuals who engage in them with
the knowledge of both the Korean and American contexts. Even in the academic or journalistic
setting, experts tend to speak on the industry with an emphasis on uplifting American voices over
v

the Korean ones as the authors of these thoughts tend to be American themselves. While this
isn’t necessarily a bad or abnormal thing, it makes the narrative of the conversation heavily skew
one way while disregarding the other reasonings.
Like I mentioned above, I intend on writing this book to explain the more complex issues
that affect race-related discussions in Korean society as they are often harder to comprehend for
those who live outside of that community. However, I want to specify that it is not my aim to
deny the faults of the Korean music industry nor put down Black people who feel hurt by the
K-pop industry’s actions. These are all valuable opinions of a marginalized community. But the
rigidity of thought in the current environment, especially on online spaces, does not allow
anyone to learn new things about another group. The book is meant to represent the honest
thoughts and backgrounds of both sides. Therefore, the information and voices included in this
book will help enrich both the platform and people who wish to hold efficient dialogue with a
greater reach across the globe, transcending cultural divides.
vi

Chapter Outline
● Introduction
○ The introduction will be a more personal piece where I describe my
experience as a 1.5 generation Korean immigrant growing up in the Midwest
while listening to K-pop from 2008 and onwards. I describe how, as a Korean girl
listening to K-pop, I felt very alienated both in terms of my ethnic identity and
interests. None of my American peers listened to K-pop and even the Korean
American children I knew were much more interested in popular American
media, which only seemed to strengthen my stubborn love for the Korean pop
stars. And, while I didn’t know much about the Los Angeles Uprising during my
formative years, I saw photos of “rooftop Koreans” and other troubling depictions
of the violent tensions that existed between the Korean and Black communities at
the time. I then did more research in college. Borrowing from the LA Uprising
and the tensions between Black people and Koreans in the ’90s which led to
heightened violence in Koreatown, LA, I will make the argument that this
dynamic foreshadowed the current divide between Black Americans and Koreans
over the topic of popular culture. The two groups, both of which are racial
minorities and suffer from the systemic discrimination of the U.S. where white
people have more privileges for success, have fought against each other for
decades. This makes the current conflict in the creative spaces more tragic. As
someone who identifies as a Korean American, I think it is crucial to make this
point and call for both parties to understand that Black people and Koreans have
1

more in common than we rarely admit.
● Chapter 1: “Asian Invasion”: How K-pop broke through in the West
○ This first chapter provides the historical background of K-pop as an industry
and how it became the entertainment powerhouse it is today. I describe several
K-pop artists to make sense of the timeline, such as the girl group Wonder Girls
who was a popular national sensation in the 2000s and made significant daring
attempts to branch out to the American music scene. I define K-pop as an industry
rather than a pop music genre because the artists themselves almost never stick to
one genre of music, instead trying out different genres as a form of choosing a
concept for each album. This makes most K-pop labels form their idols as blank
canvases upon debut, picking and adapting whatever genre and style that may fit
the group. As all labels follow this pattern for most of their idol groups, K-pop,
which is made up of idol groups, is better defined as a music industry than a
genre. I explore its similarities and differences with other music industries and
systems, such as Japan’s idol industry or Motown, both of which predate K-pop.
Finally, I discuss the current state of K-pop, both its limits in expanding in the
U.S. due to stigma that follows Korean and Asian cultural products. I also
elaborate on how the growing presence of K-pop (and other Korean cultural
aspects, labeled as hallyu) in American popular culture highlights the Korean
American identity more than ever before.
2

● Chapter 2: Increasing collaborations and tensions: Explaining the racial conflict in
K-pop
○ This chapter focuses on three aspects. First, it talks about the active
participation of Black artists, producers etc. in the production stages of K-pop.
Second, the chapter goes deeper into the complaints made by American fans of
K-pop who see many of these idol stars and their labels’ actions as cultural
appropriation. I do this by bringing in recent examples in which K-pop idols faced
backlash from their Black fans for different reasons, such as making a comeback
with an amapiano song or wearing Black hairstyles. Finally, I describe the
situation of colorism in K-pop, which is very normalized both in the industry and
in Korean society. Colorism is discrimination against people who have darker skin
while giving privileges to those with lighter skin tones. In Korea, pale skin has
become a beauty standard and it is not considered offensive for people to
compliment others’ fair skin or criticize their dark skin. I will take real-life
examples within Korean society that showcase how differently Koreans view both
colorism and cultural appropriation within their own culture. To help the reader
understand why the industry seems like it’s making very slow progress in terms of
diversity, equity and inclusion, I will elaborate on how Korean audiences react to
the same issues by speaking to Korean fans of K-pop (who grew up in Korea) and
analyzing the content of the comments on online forums. I also borrow quotes
from several scholars and fans of K-pop to get a better understanding of the
different opinions that exist when it comes to the question of race-related issues in
the industry. I speak to experts of Black popular culture and/or K-pop, such as
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Richard Cooper or Crystal Anderson, who are both Black people with different
beliefs about whether K-pop takes advantage of or respects Black people as
creators.
● Chapter 3: A clear look into the current industry and its current state
○ Here, I will speak to several industry people like K-pop labels’ A&R, stylists
and producers to get a gauge of what Koreans think about Americans’ discomfort
with them using elements of Black culture. This will be an attempt to converse
with Koreans, specifically the ones who are in charge of producing and presenting
K-pop artists to the global audience, how the race dynamics in American society
affect how Americans perceive certain music and style aspects as problematic. I
will ask them how much they know about the importance of race in the U.S. and
how it differs from Korea. It will be crucial to understand how they handled
race-related controversies in the past and how they intend on dealing with such
conflict if it were to happen again. I also plan to do more research on how K-pop
labels talk to their artists about relevant topics, such as the training and education
the K-pop idols go through, if they even include such a thing in their training
program. I will also ask them if they will make any changes in how they
communicate with their international fans publicly, considering how the K-pop
industry’s reliance on the global market is increasing as time goes on.
● Chapter 4: The future of K-pop and possible improvements
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○ The fourth chapter will serve as a way of suggested practices that will improve
relations between K-pop labels and artists and their fans in the U.S. Because the
book addressed that K-pop does appeal to fans of color due to several reasons
(nostalgia, proximity of culture, status as racial minorities in the context of
America), I will base this chapter off the idea that K-pop labels should start taking
some steps to at least acknowledge their non-Korean fans’ complaints. Finally, I
will ask them whether they believe it is their responsibility to adopt America’s
way of thinking about race, because some of K-pop’s biggest audiences are often
found in the U.S. This is important to touch on because, while Koreans do
acknowledge that popular music in Korea is currently Black music, they don’t
necessarily put emphasis on the Korean music industry taking inspiration from
Black people. Instead, they tend to perceive Koreans pursuing Black music as a
natural and unproblematic process of making a popular genre in another country
more appealing to the general Korean population. The book will take note on how
these Korean companies perceive these criticisms to understand the current state
of awareness in the K-pop industry. This will also help me to potentially
hypothesize certain systemic changes they may incorporate into their business in
the near future.
● Chapter 5: The Korean pride and shame
○ For this final chapter, I will connect back to my personal experiences and
thoughts about K-pop and the Korean soft power, especially how I perceive them
today. My comments in this chapter will center around the pride and, at the same
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time, shame of being a Korean American adult in 2024. Although I feel seen and
acknowledged for my identity for the first time in my life in the U.S., I also
constantly feel guilt upon seeing K-pop artists saying or doing insensitive things
and upsetting people of color who are their fans. I feel disappointed in my home
country’s people, whom I relate to, for refusing to change, but I also have a more
understanding attitude towards their behavior as I understand the social norms of
South Korea. I also get upset when people of color simplify the environment and
historical background of the country to generalize the Korean population as
uneducated and demonic. In return, my affection for my country’s people makes
me feel a heightened sense of guilt when I see non-Koreans being hurt by
Koreans’ ignorance again and again. Returning to the point about being a 1.5
generation immigrant and struggling from a severe identity crisis, I will dive into
the psychology behind my complicated stance balancing between the Korean and
American sides, which is the reason why I thought of writing about this topic in
the first place.
6

Introduction
On April 30, 1992, violence spread throughout Los Angeles’s Koreatown as people
looted and burned down stores owned by Korean immigrants. Koreatown was disproportionately
destroyed by the riots that took place about two months after the Los Angeles police officers
brutally and excessively beat a Black man named Rodney King.
Tensions between Koreans and Black Americans existed prior to the LA Uprising. In
1991, Korean convenience store owner Soonja Du fatally shot Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old
Black girl, in her store after a dispute over the payment of orange juice. Before that, many
Koreans suspected their Black customers of frequent shoplifting while Black people felt
offended at their obsessive surveillance. Because many Korean stores were located near Black
communities in LA and therefore catered to them as well, the interactions were unavoidable. The
lack of proper communication, both in terms of language and culture, did nothing to help bridge
the two closely situated communities together.
Over 30 years later, many of the interactions between Koreans and Black Americans take
place on a new platform. As if to live up to the name of the digital age, Koreans don’t have to
immigrate to LA and start a liquor store to interact with Black Americans and their culture and
vice versa. The only barrier that exists now between Koreans and Black Americans is the
difference in language. But regardless of whether or not they understand each other, the two
communities can still see and hear about the other group from across the globe.
Exposure has gone up, but communication is still lacking because of the language barrier.
While face-to-face communication and altercation defined the two groups’ relationship up until
the 1990s, a bigger pie of the overall interactions have shifted over to online spaces. This makes
up for the geographical distance between the U.S. and Korea.
7

This technological advancement in the 21st century allowed for popular media from any
country to reach people living in other countries much more easily. Naturally, Black Americans
could listen to and watch the content that came from South Korea. Similar to how Black people
felt like local Korean businesses were taking advantage of them while simultaneously
disrespecting them, Black people are taking issue with popular Korean music — and how it
seemingly takes advantage of Black popular culture while refusing to acknowledge Black
people.
In retrospect, the series of tragic events that unfolded in the LA Uprising as a collective
was the perfect precedent that foretold this persisting dynamic between Koreans and Black
Americans.
I began a search for my identity about 16 years after Koreatown burned. As a child who
followed her Korean immigrant parents to the U.S. at a young age, I found the most efficient way
to keep up with the current events of my home nation was to dig through the Internet. This
doesn’t just include skimming through the news page on Naver, the biggest search engine in
South Korea. To truly hear what Korean people are saying about any given subject, I needed to
sift through hundreds of pages of agonizing posts, comments and social media posts. And, that is
exactly what I did since the moment I realized my interest lied in connecting more with
“Korean” Korean people, not the Korean American kids at my Korean-Christian church who
barely read, wrote or spoke a speck of Korean. In this voyeuristic process representative of the
rise of Web 2.0, I was choosing to surround myself with Korean people online.
I was a 1.5 generation immigrant. The term is not used as often as first or
second-generation immigrants, but it refers to first-generation immigrants who moved to a new
country before or during their early teens. I was seven years old and starting in the second grade
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of an American public elementary school in New Berlin, Wisconsin. The school and our new
home were in a middle-class suburban area.
Theoretically, I shouldn’t have felt such a connection with other Koreans. I immigrated to
the United States with my two parents and a brother older than me by nine years, where we lived
in a two-story house in a white suburban neighborhood. As a seven-year-old girl who was short
and quiet, I even struggled to make friends and speak to my peers back in Korea. Over the years,
however, I learned English and my friend group grew exponentially as my grasp of the language
improved.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I was the only fan of K-pop idols at home
and in school. My family was uninterested at best and, at worst, annoyed by my fervor. The
neighborhood kids at the predominantly white American schools had never even heard the term
“K-pop,” and the Korean American kids at the Korean church knew what it was but seemed
ashamed of its existence. This felt odd to me. Why did these Korean kids have such negative
feelings about music from their homeland? My lonely obsession with Korean idol stars soon
turned into an obsession for the more general popular culture in Korea. I was watching Korean
entertainment shows, television series and movies to keep up with the latest trends not just in
music or fashion, but also in humor.
At the same time, the small tides of K-pop were beginning to bubble up on
English-speaking platforms online. There were some viral hits here and there including the
popular Korean rapper Psy’s song “Gangnam Style” and a small group of Asian Americans, and
some Westerners, too, enjoyed K-pop as a niche genre. But Korean popular culture still was
largely unknown in the U.S. Then, towards the end of my high school years, a certain boy group
from my home country exploded onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere. They were getting
9

invitations from every major American music award show and late-night talk shows —
something that never happened before. The sheer volume of attention was overwhelming and,
frankly, unbelievable to Koreans. Many even believed this was a giant media hoax by the group’s
ambitious agency.
In English-speaking spaces online, K-pop is heavily criticized for its oftentimes blatant
and frequent cases of racism towards other people of color. Due to the sensitive nature of
questions surrounding race and ethnicity, it is easy for many people to assume any critic of such
discourse as being disingenuous to minorities. This book is not meant to extinguish one
argument and uplift another. Popular media today is an amalgamation of so many different
cultures with origins that oftentimes are hard to define, but it is crucial to give credit where credit
is due.
K-pop is perhaps an example of popular culture that is most representative of this shift
towards ambiguity in definitive culture, mainly because modern technology of the Internet acted
as the driving force behind its globalization. The Korean Foundation found that there were over
225 million fans of Hallyu in 2023, which is 24 times bigger than the Hallyu fan population they
calculated in 2012 at around 9 million. And because K-pop exploded into a global phenomenon
after the birth of Web 2.0, where online users generated content just as much as they consumed,
this industry is even more unique than other music genres that have ever existed.
I will avoid adding to the outrage over the rampant racism in the K-pop industry as
another American looking into this field. It’s an overdone discussion and contributes very little to
the existing conversations, which are almost entirely shaped through an American lens. Instead, I
will propose a way to perceive this issue from more than just the American perspective. At its
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core, despite all its western influences, K-pop is a music industry founded and cultivated by
Korean people.
Similar to how technology is inherently shaped by human biases, the Korean music scene
functions on cultural and social norms that are prevalent in Korea because the ones driving the
industry forward as a business are, ultimately, Koreans. The biggest flaw of the conversations
around race and ethnicity in K-pop today is the fact that most of those participating — fans,
critics, and journalists alike — have only a minimal understanding of the country where the
industry originates from.
Yes, the American music industry heavily influenced today’s popular Korean music. But
why did this happen? Did Koreans take from the American culture and Black American culture,
or did they flow down naturally? Is the strong normalization and ignorance of colorism truly
stemming from a strictly racial origin or something else? Only when most participants in the
discussions know the answers to these types of questions can we hold meaningful discussions
about how fans and industry people should consider new, realistic solutions as the industry
moves forward.
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Chapter 1: “Asian Invasion”: How K-pop broke through in the West
New York City, 2012. In the dimly lit Apollo Theater, another amateur talent contestant
trudged off the stage as the merciless crowd booed at their tone-deaf attempt at singing.
“I’ve never seen these girls before, so you might get your boos ready,” a man dressed in a
silky blue suit told the sea of faces sitting before him, Then, after letting loose a string of
high-pitched laughs, he shouted, “Give it up for the Asian Invasion!”
One by one, five pretty and petite Korean girls, each gripping a hand-held mic, walked
onto the stage. The crowd blinked blank stares, not knowing who they were or where they were
from.
But the silence quickly transformed into claps, then became a standing ovation. The five
girls — calling themselves the “Asian Invasion” — clearly and confidently sang and danced in
sync to the catchy melody and words, “I want nobody, nobody but you.”
The crowd went wild, smiles stretching wide on impressed faces, cheers filling the large
theater. They clapped on as the young women, aged 19 to 23, finished their performance and
waved as they walked offstage,
This was the Wonder Girls, already a massively popular group in South Korea. In fact,
this whole performance was staged, from the enthusiastic host to the satisfied audience to the
group performing under the alias “Asian Invasion,” which hid their identities as popular stars in
Korea. It was a scene from the 2012 Nickelodeon movie The Wonder Girls, one of the group’s
first official promotions in the United States.
Not only was it a first for them, but also for the nation; Wonder Girls was one of the first
K-pop artists that attempted a full American promotion. Although their attempt was not entirely
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successful, they still broke records as Korean artists. Their song “Nobody” debuted at number 76
on the Billboard Hot 100, which was the first time any Korean act placed in the chart.
Ultimately, they did something that helped spark a new phenomenon in the west: K-pop.
But K-pop wasn’t a new genre for Americans. In fact, when considering the industry’s
core characteristics, western listeners would easily notice similarities between K-pop and
existing music categories, especially those pioneered by Black artists. This led more than a few
Americans to wonder: Are the origins of K-pop grounded in cultural appropriation?
Defining K-pop
K-pop, short for Korean popular music, is more of an industry than a genre despite its
name. It encompasses a wide range of music styles — pop, rock, ballad, hip hop, R&B, jazz,
dance, disco, trot — and artists generally aren’t limited to one or another during their careers.
The only limitation comes from their status as teen stars, which is why Koreans use the word
“idol” to describe them: they are gods that teenagers worship. As such, K-pop technically does
not define all of Korean popular music in Korea, although idols do fall into a subcategory within
popular music.
Korean popular culture has seen mainstream success in other parts of Asia, particularly
neighboring nations in East Asia as well as Southeast Asian countries. However, in the past few
years, the K-pop industry experienced significant growth in popularity and acknowledgment in
the western hemisphere. Circle Chart found that in 2021 and 2022, the export share for the U.S.
market rose to 17%, from 2% in 2012. Though Japan and China were still the biggest foreign
markets for physical album sales, the U.S. has steadily increased to become the third largest
overseas market for the industry.
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Karissa Tarin, the marketing director for K-PLAY! FEST — a festival run “for fans, by
fans” — is also a fan of several popular K-pop groups including BTS, Stray Kids and Ateez.
According to Tarin, K-pop’s appeal comes from the way that it provides fans with entertainment
as well as music.
“Because at the end of the day, K-pop is just pop music. It's made to just be fun and
dance to. And I like the dance aspect as well, because you can tell a lot of different stories with
dance choreographies and stuff like that. So both the visual and musical aspect … kind of won
me over,” Tarin said.
Whether by chance or correlation, six months after the Wonder Girls movie premiered, a
song came out that would pull the entire globe into its storm. South Korean rapper and singer
PSY released “Gangnam Style,” which quickly became a viral hit in the U.S. Besides singing
along, almost everyone danced to the music using a move similar to riding on horseback.
“I think the moment that a lot of people point to is “Gangnam Style” in 2012 as kind of
like the watershed moment, where he really busted open all these doors, and kind of put K-pop
on the map for the average American person,” writer and performer Vivian Yoon said. Yoon is a
Korean American who grew up in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. She was the host of a recent
podcast called “K-Pop Dreaming”, where she revisited her childhood love for K-pop as a way to
explore Korean culture and her Korean American identity.
I was in sixth grade when “Gangnam Style” came out, and I remember watching the
teachers and some students doing a flash-mob-performance at the annual talent show. The song
was the grand finale. Only one of three Korean students in the school, I was confused. Why was
everyone suddenly singing Korean words? Before this, they didn’t even know where Korea was.
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Either way, 2012 was a big year for Koreans. It was the first time that pieces of Korean
popular culture gained access into mainstream western media. It also was the first time
Americans spoke of South Korea other than its association with North Korea or the Korean War.
As a Korean American observing the situation in the U.S., I see that so much has
changed, and yet not much is different. Not only have most Americans now heard of South
Korea, they also recognize the country for more than its name. These days, I meet many fans of
Korean music, films, television shows and food not just online, but also in person. But I found
that after discounting the sequins and blazing spotlight, few non-Koreans have a solid
understanding of what popular Korean culture is, even when it’s about K-pop, the forefront of
the Korean cultural wave.
Similarities and differences to other industries
Some Korean idols start when they’re barely 10 years old. Most are teens but others, a
very small percentage, begin in their adulthood.
Trainees under Korean entertainment labels all go through a strict training system, one
which has been an industry standard since the ‘90s. The first official Korean idol group, which
created the idol archetype as we know it today, was the five-member boy group H.O.T. under SM
Entertainment. Since then, other companies have adopted their process.
Sooman Lee, the founder of SM Entertainment, was studying for his master’s degree in
the U.S. when the American music industry began transitioning to “visual music,” which
emphasized music video productions and more developed dance genres. He founded SM
Entertainment in 1995 and, for the first time in the country’s music history, implemented this
visual music, which derived from fordism.
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Berry Gordy first utilized Fordism in music in 1959 when he established Motown, a
recording company that promoted African American pop musicians. Though Motown’s system
functioned more like a collaboration than a strict regulation of individuals, observers considered
it to be the first music factory and the blueprint for talent producing systems in other parts of the
world — namely, in Japan and South Korea.
“South Korea has best consumed Black music in Asia,” Lee said, as quoted by John Lie
in a journal article. “Just as J-pop was built on rock, we made K-pop based on Black music” (pg.
357).
While rock may be the leading genre in the Japanese music industry, its pop industry
modeled itself after Motown. Johnny Kitagawa, the founder of Johnny & Associates, created the
Japanese idol industry and culture, with young boys performing in all different fields. This was a
defined system in which Kitagawa would put the boys through a training system to develop their
talents in music and entertainment before their debut.
K-pop’s training system mirrors J-pop, but its roots are in Motown’s fordism, and Black
popular culture has been the biggest influence on K-pop’s sound. All of the major Korean
entertainment labels that produce idol groups — SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG
Entertainment and Hybe — have stated or portrayed the inspiration they gained from Black
music.
“In terms of music, Black music is the base,” Sihyuk Bang, the founder and chairperson
of Hybe, said during a press conference on the last day of BTS’ concert tour. “Even when doing
many genres like house, urban, and PBR&B; there’s no change to the fact that it is Black music.
The boundaries of music genres are being broken globally. We are also embracing this and
making it BTS style.”
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According to Korea National University of Arts professor Dongyeon Lee, “JYP pursues
retro Black music represented by soul, disco, and funk.”
“Jinyoung Park wanted to plant the Black soul and funky style of music on the basis of
the Motown record company in the 1970s into not just his own music, but also the music for the
groups under [his company],” Lee wrote in his series of articles titled “Lee Dongyeon’s K-pop
Odyssey.”
One might question whether K-pop is Korean at all, since it emulates many preexisting
genres and practices from other countries. Many K-pop fans and critics outside of Korea say it is
not Korean, claiming that it merely mimics Black music and Japanese culture. But from a
Korean point of view, there are some unique traits within K-pop that are easier to spot.
Han is a sentiment that all native Koreans, and even second-generation Korean
Americans, are believed to harbor, stemming from the country’s long history of repeatedly
getting invaded and abused by external forces. The sorrow, anger, grief, resentment and regret —
and the beauty that blossoms from it all — is all seen as an inevitable part of being Korean.
After Japan’s brutal colonization and the Korean War ended, Koreans were able to
express their han through the arts, more blatantly displayed in traditional performances like
pansori. While han doesn’t characterize all music in Korea, it is a trait not found in other
cultures.
Though it is more muted due to the inherent characteristics of popular music, listeners
could pick up on the hints of the han emotion in many music genres created and performed by
Koreans, regardless of whether it’s pop, ballad, rock or trot. Girl group (G)-IDLE’s song about
feelings of betrayal and abandonment is titled “HANN (Alone).” SHINee’s debut song,
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“Replay,” is an R&B song with a light-hearted sound performed by five happy, smiling boys.
The lyrics bemoan an inevitable breakup.
Yoon said she also thinks of K-pop as its own individual concept rather than an imitation.
In her podcast K-Pop Dreaming, Yoon discussed the element of bbong or bbong-jjak,
which is a specific type of rhythm and melody that is typically found in Korean trot songs. The
distinct bbong-jjak, bbong-jjak, bbong-jja-jjak bbong-jjak sound is familiar to all Koreans who
grew up in Korea, whether they like it or not. This pattern has bled over into other genres
performed by Koreans, including K-pop.
Yoon said she has recently been considering the usage of the English language in K-pop
songs, ones that are written by non-native English speakers. She mentioned the Swedish
songwriters who composed some of the biggest hits from the ‘90s, including songs by the
Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Although they aren’t perfect American
pronunciation or grammar, Yoon said English lyrics written by people whose first language isn’t
English produced the most iconic, innovative lines in pop culture.
According to Yoon, the same thing is happening in K-pop music.
“It makes those phrases have a certain kind of sparkle, or it makes them catchy, because
they're kind of different in a way,” Yoon said. “And I think that's what a lot of K-pop taps into. It
doesn't feel like completely normal American lyrics — there's always something that's a little
different, and that makes it really catchy.”
Crystal Anderson, an affiliate faculty in African and African American Studies at George
Mason University, said K-pop’s willingness to explore so many different music genres without
boundaries is a point of uniqueness in itself.
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“There's no genre that's off limits when it comes to K-pop, and they're not afraid to take
this thing, take that thing, put it together and put it in the song.” “It doesn't matter if they're
hip-hop, or if they're rock, or if they're pop. If you get an album, you're gonna find something
you don't expect to find on that album.
Limits of the industry
Despite all its accolades and controversies, K-pop is currently seeing limits in its quest
for expansion in the west. Tarin said she believes some people aren’t as open to sharing their
passion for K-pop in public.
“There's an inside joke in the K-pop community right now where it's like, we have these
photocard holders where you put a photocard of your favorite idol,” Tarin said. “People always
take it off before they go out somewhere because they don't want to be outed as a K-pop fan.”
This sentiment is not new, and it affected fans of K-pop, specifically Korean American
children, before the industry became known in the U.S. In her podcast, Yoon talked about how
she would hide her love for Korean songs and K-pop artists during her childhood and teenage
years because she didn’t want to be seen as different among her peers.
I, too, had a similar experience. Non-Koreans simply didn’t care and Korean American
peers ridiculed my love for K-pop, not understanding why I preferred Korean groups over
English-speaking heartthrobs.
But even today, K-pop is seen as mediocre, strange and even dangerous. Some view
many of the characteristics of this subculture as being harmful or backwards and emphasize its
differences from American pop culture. This is seen in the multitude of Western media, from
articles to podcasts and video essays, covering the topic of “the dark side of K-pop.”
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Western media has played its own part in spreading this narrative. It constantly reinforces
beliefs that K-pop is a soulless, dystopian factory pumping out unthinking boys and girls for
profit, disregarding the many K-pop idols who make significant contributions to the songwriting,
producing, choreography and concept development for their own music and sometimes others.
When British GQ published an article including G-Dragon (Jiyong Kwon), a member of the
popular boy group Big Bang and one of the most influential figures in K-pop since the 2000s,
they posted on X:
“G-Dragon was selling out Seoul stadiums before BTS was even a Petri dish in a K-pop
factory farm. Coloured hair? Womenswear? Chanel and luxury house campaigns? Nike
Collaborations? G-Dragon did it first and he’s still out there.”
The description, which was included in the article’s list of “most stylish people on the
planet” of 2023, offended both fans of G-Dragon and BTS online. Specifically, fans accused the
phrase “Petri dish in a K-pop factory farm” as an attempt to dehumanize G-Dragon, BTS and all
K-pop artists as artificial products with no free will. Both G-Dragon and BTS write most of their
own music and come up with their own ideas for fashion or concept. Both fandoms quickly
gathered to express their anger towards the publication for labeling their idols with negative
connotations despite what they truly are: talented musicians with passion.
Looking back, the name “Asian Invasion” seems to hint at the lasting remnants of the
Yellow Peril, spurred on by the laws that worked to keep Asians out for decades. Those who are
familiar with it would argue that it’s clearly a reference to the British Invasion, the cultural
phenomenon that marked the significant rise in popularity of British music among Americans.
But taking into consideration the context of the brutally racist laws and institutions that targeted
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Asian Americans throughout U.S. history, the term takes on a new connotation. In the eyes of the
west, we were always the others. To them, we couldn’t join; we could only invade.
However, it is true that the media landscape in the U.S. is changing, and we’re seeing
more Korean faces on television than ever before. I sometimes wonder how different my life in
Wisconsin would have been if popular Korean content shot up in the American population’s
public perception when I was still in my formative years. Perhaps there would have been more
shared topics of interest to initiate conversations with my majority white classmates, or teachers
could have had a better idea of how to pronounce my name upon meeting me. It has more to do
with the sense of inclusion more than anything else, I wonder how other Korean American
children today feel with all these eyes focusing on their Koreanness, whether it’s for better or
worse.
Yoon said she believes this creates a completely different environment for Korean
American kids growing up in the U.S. today.
“I just don't think the concept of being Korean or being interested in Korean things is
foreign in the same way that it was, especially because so many non-Korean people are showing
such passion,” Yoon said with a chuckle. “Like, people's hobbies are making Korean food at
home now. It's totally different. It's a completely different world.”
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Chapter 2: Increasing collaborations and tensions: Explaining the conflict
When Kevin Jackson received an offer to work for Hybe, famously known as the agency
of the globally popular boy group BTS, he didn’t quite know what to expect.
He had no background knowledge of K-pop. He saw himself as a “blank canvas,” and he
was slightly nervous as to what his work would entail, especially since the offer came during the
COVID-19 pandemic. The hesitance was understandable as Jackson, who is active as a rapper
under the moniker “Jackson II,” began his career in the American music scene. He was born and
raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, then moved to Los Angeles where he began his career as a
dancer, traveling with well-known artists like will.i.am to perform hip-hop choreography at the
artists’ concerts.
But his passion always lied with words. Jackson became intrigued with poetry after
watching Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, reciting a poem on the television series “Def
Poetry Jam.” He didn’t fully understand the words as he was still a young child, but Jackson
enjoyed the sound, the flow of the performance. After years of dancing, when he realized that he
hit a dead end in this path, Jackson chose to begin doing what he used to admire as a child: write
poetry and perform rap music.
Still, the thought of jumping into another country’s music scene felt like a completely
new journey for him.
“I guess I was more so intrigued just to see, ‘Okay, how is this gonna go?’” Jackson said.
“So yeah, I didn't have too much of an idea. So I just went in like, well, like we'll just see. And
now I love it, I love working with these artists.”
Hybe Corporation is a multi-label entertainment company based in South Korea
specializing in music production and management. Sihyeok Bang established the company in
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2005, originally under the name Big Hit Entertainment. Jackson assisted with the artist
development aspect for Hybe artists and trainees. According to Jackson, this included cultivating
stage presence, performance skills and even songwriting techniques. They had to learn how to
maintain engagement with the crowd while performing. While he hasn’t written any songs for
Hybe yet, he did show the trainees how to scheme — for instance, he gave them a random object
and taught them how to rap, sing or talk about it. For a K-pop label like Hybe that makes a lot of
investment in training its trainees to ultimately debut as the most appealing star talents, Jackson’s
work in artist development was extremely relevant.
As a collaborating artist and instructor with Hybe, Jackson became part of a big project.
Under the name “The Debut: Dream Academy,” 20 female contestants or “trainees”
competed on a reality television show to gain the biggest support from viewers. The end goal for
all trainees was to secure a place in the lineup of the global girl group that would be produced by
Hybe by the end of the show. “Dream Academy” gained global attention for featuring an
unprecedented number of non-East Asian contestants. The K-pop industry has always been
known for harboring just a small percentage of non-Korean idols, even that percentage mostly
consisting of other East Asians (Japanese or Chinese) and some Southeast Asians.
Jackson worked extensively with the trainees at Hybe, even with those who were not
competing on the reality show. As a rapper himself, Jackson taught them how to rap and write
rap themselves, but his expertise was on artist development.
Approximately 40 years after American music infiltrated the Korean music scene as the
popular trend, the 2000s saw major K-pop labels starting to work with Black artists and
producers. Black Artists like Andrew Grange and Tchaka Diallo participated in writing some
songs for groups like SHINee and TVXQ under SM Entertainment in 2008.
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Richard Cooper, professor and co-coordinator of African American Studies at Widener
University, said humans naturally share and negotiate and copy ideas, styles and technology to
improve as a group. However, it results in consequences that often harm certain groups.
“So it's not surprising, then, to me that, in a world that oppresses brown people, that you
are gonna see some of the stereotypes manifested even amongst people of color,” Cooper said.
Hybe’s interest in American artists like Jackson is indicative of a larger, longer-lasting
trend in the K-pop industry. Hip-hop, rock and R&B mark the beginning of K-pop. Seo Taiji and
the Boys was a music trio in the ’90s centered around Hyuncheol Jeong who is known among the
public as Seo Taiji. The group is widely credited to be the first ever K-pop group in the sense that
they transcended multiple Western music genres, and they performed hip-hop music since their
debut. The group’s debut song “I Know” was a rough yet refreshing attempt at rap. Seo Taiji and
the Boys would proceed to release albums that explored other genres such as rock and metal,
dancing to structured choreography at the same time. This would become the foundation for the
format of K-pop idols’ performances today.
In the mainstream Korean music industry, which mainly consisted of folk, trot, ballad and
some dance music until the ’90s, Seo Taiji and the Boys were an anomaly — and a national
sensation. They were not the first to adapt Black music into a more friendly style for the
mainstream Korean audience, but they were overwhelmingly popular.
In January 1996, when the members held a press conference announcing their sudden
disbandment and Seo Taiji’s retirement after just four years of being active as a group, the nation
fell into a panic. Fans protested this decision in front of their company building as well as Seo
Taiji’s house, some committing vandalism. Newspapers reported daily on the mass hysteria, such
as how fans were threatening to commit mass suicide. Others believed in conspiracy theories
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suggesting that the government forced the trio to halt promotions as many of their song lyrics
tackled social injustice, flaws in the Korean education system and even political issues like
reunification with North Korea.
Other popular artists like Wansun Kim and Jinyoung Hyun performed dance music years
before the trio’s debut. However, Seo Taiji and the Boys’ impact and reach were unrivaled. Their
music appealed strongly to the younger demographic, which influenced the entire music industry
in South Korea to start catering more to the younger audiences who listened more to dance
music. After the success of Seo Taiji and the Boys, more agencies tried their hand in Black
music. A notable example of this was Sooman Lee, who included distinct rap parts and beats in
H.O.T’s album since their debut.
As such, K-pop’s roots could be found in Korean artists’ attempt to stray away from the
more Korean-sounding genres like traditional, folk and trot. Instead, they tried to make sense of
the newer Western sounds and imitate them to the best of their abilities.
The development of Black music, mainly hip-hop, happened rapidly after Seo Taiji and
the Boys. Hip-hop itself became especially dominant in the music scene of the mid-2000s
through rap groups like Leessang, Dynamic Duo and Epik High. Their most popular releases,
while still being reminiscent of American rap, often handled sentimental topics like romance or
sorrow or hope. Other less-traditional hip-hop groups like Turtles utilized the rap structure to
sing about happiness and childhood innocence, as seen in upbeat songs like “Bingo” or
“Airplane.”
As time passed, Korean rappers made a new shift. They began rapping more about
individual wealth and the struggles in their upbringing, which are characteristic of traditional
hip-hop among Black people in the U.S. Survival shows like Show Me the Money, which had
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rappers compete against each other to be selected as the best rapper of that season, rushed in a
new wave of rejuvenated national interest in the genre. Though it was aired on a cable channel,
the series was incredibly popular and ran from 2012 to 2022, producing several original hit songs
that dominated the nation’s music charts.
Black music has become part of mainstream music that the general population in Korea
consumes in the 21st century. At the same time, Black fans began expressing their discomfort at
Korean artists being comfortable with portraying distinct characteristics of Black popular culture.
After years of making complaints to the Korean artists and labels, the patience among
international fans is growing thin.
Action and response
Red lights faded in and shed light on the five young women on stage as they immediately
began dancing. Wearing light, flowy and colorful fabric, their bodies swayed with controlled
strength in synchronization. “I’m smarter baby, smarter,” they sang with a distinct accent that
made the word sound more like “smart-ah.” Much of the choreography consisted of prominent
hip movements, a trait that hasn’t been seen often in K-pop at this point.
LE SSERAFIM, the popular five-member girl group under Source Music, a subsidiary
under Hybe labels, showcased their first attempt at the amapiano genre through their new song
“Smart” during their official comeback showcase of their third mini-album titled “Easy.” People
also mistook the song to be afrobeat, but its official inspiration is rooted in amapiano.
Amapiano is a subgenre of kwaito and Afro house music. Kwaito is a subgenre that is a
mix of different global genres like hip-hop, reggae, U.S. house and African melodies which rose
in the mid-1990s after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Afro house derived from kwaito in
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the 2000s, then a genre of faster-paced electronic dance music called gqom rose to popularity in
the early 2010s. Amapiano, which means “the pianos” in Zulu, is known to be faster than kwaito
and slower than gqom. It became widely listened to in South Africa since 2016.
Afrobeats is a Nigerian music genre mixing characteristics of West African music with
Black American influences. The genre gained popularity in the 2010s and became especially
trendy with young Afrobeat artists like Tyla seeing significant success on a mainstream scale.
The response from fans around the world was massive, in both the positive and negative
direction. Those who liked it said they preferred this B-side song over the title track, also called
“Easy.” Those who disliked it were livid, accusing the group of a blatant case of cultural
appropriation.
On the same day LE SSERAFIM performed “Smart” for the first time, Afropop artist
Tyla Laura Seethal posted a gif of a woman looking around in wary confusion on X, formerly
Twitter. The post gained 31,000 likes, fueling the discourse surrounding the K-pop group’s take
on amapiano music. Tyla’s hit song “Water,” which came out in July 2023, was an amapiano
song with elements of other genres including pop, R&B and Afrobeats. While Afrobeat doesn’t
originate from Americans, Black Americans were especially outspoken about their anger and
disappointment towards the girl group for committing culture theft.
By 2024, it is no secret that Black popular culture heavily influences K-pop as an
industry. K-pop artists often borrow music and fashion created by Black people and many Black
Americans respond with frustration, anger or contempt.
Cooper said the feeling of injustice that arises when K-pop artists perform Black music
comes from a lack of homage and proper recognition of the original creators of the culture.
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Cooper said Black people often get disassociated from “the recognition, the wealth, the
opportunity, the praise, the intellectual and artistic genius.”
“They get separated from being seen as the innovators, and they tend not to get the
rewards, whatever they are that one would expect from being the creators of, in this case, the
rhythm and blues.”
Many K-pop artists are not involved in producing their own music, especially in their
first years. The agency takes all, if not most, of the creative control over not just the music, but
also the artist’s fashion. Therefore, the label is typically responsible for much of how an artist
sounds and appears to the public. The lack of recognition of Black people as the originators of
several popular music genres and fashion in K-pop is a side effect of the artists not having a say
in their production in their earlier years. When the K-pop idols are unable to freely express their
true inspirations for pursuing music or even choose what genres they want to explore, it becomes
more difficult for them to communicate their admiration for Black artists and their legacy.
Idols who contribute more to their sound and production are oftentimes more outspoken
about their musical inspirations. When idols do speak out about their Black role models in the
American music industry, fans often interpret their intentions in two ways: appreciation or
appropriation, sometimes even considered fetishization.
Yongguk Bang is one of the clearest examples in K-pop who exemplifies both
interpretations. Bang is a former member of the boy group B.A.P, in which he was the leader and
rapper. The group made its debut in 2012 and immediately gained a significant following both
among Koreans and non-Koreans for various reasons, but their biggest appeal was their strong
hip-hop sounds and choreography. In their first ever music video for their title song “Warrior,”
B.A.P were rapping and krumping.
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Bang participated in the songwriting process of many of his group’s discography. As of
2024, the Korea Music Copyright Association has 149 songs listed under Bang’s name.
Before debuting as a K-pop idol, Bang was active as an underground rapper with the alias
“Jepp Blackman.” In the group’s hit song “One Shot,” Bang references the civil rights activist
leader Martin Luther King Jr. when he raps, “Shine the light like Martin Luther King” in Korean.
“Right now, we’re a white canvas that we can draw any picture onto,” Bang said in one
of the group’s first ever interviews with the press. “On the other hand, our music is Black. All the
members [of B.A.P] admire Black music and all its soul. If I’m born again, I wish to be reborn as
a Black person and make music.”
Race-related controversies are not new nor rare in the K-pop industry. Idols and their
labels often become the subject of the latest instance of racism and cultural appropriation,
whether it be through individual offensive acts or uncanny replications of Black music, such as
wearing Black hairstyles or singing along to a racial slur in a Black artist’s song.
So why do K-pop labels continue to offend their global fans? Michelle Cho, an assistant
professor of Korean film and media and East Asian popular cultures at the University of Toronto,
said the simple answer is ignorance.
“It's not an excuse. It's not an apology for what's happening,” Cho said. “But I think it's a
really basic explanation, because the people who work in the K-pop industry are most familiar
with their locality, just like all of us are most familiar with our localities.”
Aside from the lack of information about cultural sensitivity outside of Korea, Cho also
said the insufficient communication between global fans and the labels they make complaints to
may be a contributing factor to the continuing conflict.
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For instance, Cho said many K-pop entertainment companies hire freelance stylists to
dress the idols. If cultural appropriation occurs during this temporary collaboration, Black fans
have no way to reach the people who were responsible in an effective manner. The stylists
themselves may not feel like they have responsibility to respond to this issue as they are not part
of the company.
“The company is working with lots and lots of different people. It's a very big industry.
And so you just may have new people come in who, again, don't know. Also because everything
happens so quickly and is very trend based,” Cho said.
Retaliation from Koreans
In June of 2021, former K-pop idol and Korean hip-hop solo artist Jay Park, Korean
name Jaebeom Park, released the music video for “DNA Remix.” The music video was for a
remixed version of a song called “DNA,” which he performed with the teenage contestants of a
rap audition program called High School Rapper, where Park participated as one of the mentors.
The video was instantly hit with massive backlash online — not from the Korean audience, but
Americans. Although the rappers featured in the music video weren’t Black, fans criticized how
some of them sported Black people’s hair such as afros, braids and dreadlocks.
Park addressed the controversy in a lengthy comment under the music video. He said he
recognized that “Black and Latino people created hip-hop,” but that “it’s only natural that
[Korean rappers] want to be like them to a certain extent.”
“Can we relate to the Black struggle? No,” Park wrote in the comment. “But there are
certain elements that we can relate and identify with. Every country, every culture, every person
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has some type of pain or struggle in their life. There is no other genre that portrays that so
honestly other than hip-hop.”
Park then mentioned instances in the past when Black artists dressed up like Asians for
their work, such as Migos in their song “Stir Fry” or Nicki Minaj in “Chun-Li.”
“Why the hell would Jay Park make a DNA Remix claiming that he’s proud of being
Korean when 90% of his career is based on him appropriating Black culture and defending it by
saying he doesn’t see color,” a user on X (formerly Twitter) said. “And appropriating Black
culture IN the music video. Black Twitter, tear him up.”
When his comment only strengthened the uproar against his music video, Park made the
video private.
Two months later on August 15, the National Liberation Day of Korea on which Koreans
commemorate the day when the country achieved freedom from Japan’s brutal 35-year-long
colonial rule, Park uploaded a new music video for “DNA Remix.” The video begins with a
fade-in of white captions on a black screen, the captions being an excerpt from Wikipedia that
defines Gwangbokjeol, the Korean term for the National Liberation Day.
The music video shifts into a montage of headlines that indicate notable moments in
Korean history from 1945 and onwards — the Korean War, the Cold War, the Korean Financial
Crisis of 1997, the opening of the Seoul Tower, the Seoul 1988 Summer Olympics — before
jumping to 2021. Now, the video emphasizes, a South Korean corporation called Samsung ranks
15th
in Fortune’s Global 500 list, a Korean boy group named BTS tops Billboard yet again and a
Korean soccer player called Heung-min Son scores five games in a row in the Premier League.
This time, no one in the video had Black people’s hairstyles. Instead, they flaunted their
Korean historical and cultural roots. Park put on an outer layer of hanbok, which refers to
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traditional clothes worn in Korea, and exited a traditional Korean house. Other featuring rappers
traveled around the country, showing the aspects of the society that many Koreans were familiar
with. Some traveled on the city buses, another rapped in front of the street vendors selling food
and old men playing a game of Go, while others showed off the vivid nightlife of the city.
The Korean public was ecstatic at the aesthetic portrayal of their culture in Park’s music
video. At the same time, they learned of the backlash that he received two months prior from
American fans, mostly Black people, and expressed their irritation towards them online.
On several online community sites that Korean users were most active on, a post came up
describing the context of the music video. It described everything, including the original music
video, the foreign fans’ backlash to Park’s video and comment and the new music video that
better captured the Korean qualities of the rappers. The posts criticized the foreign fans for
blindly hating Park and highlighted how admirable Park was for making a stronger comeback
with a cooler production that enhanced the Korean pride.
The posts soon gained hundreds of comments on each site.
“Black people only lash out at Asian people regarding the hair,” an anonymous Korean
user on an online platform called theqoo commented. “They don’t say anything when people
from Europe or other places have the same hairstyle. And we also had a culture of braiding hair
when we used to braid our hair back in the Joseon era, so I don’t get why we have to listen to
them when they only attack Asian people for these things.”
“Black people often show that they consider their culture to be important while
discriminating against Asians,” another Korean user on a site called FMKorea wrote.
A few common ideas sprung up across the comments. One, many Koreans didn’t seem to
understand what cultural appropriation was or how Park’s music video was culturally
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appropriating Black culture. While a couple comments on theqoo explained why imitating Black
hair was problematic in the context of American history, they largely went unnoticed.
Secondly, the Korean netizens felt wronged by accusations of offending Black people.
According to the comments, some felt that Black people were singling them out while staying
silent on other racial groups when they do the same thing. Others expressed anger at Black
people, claiming that Black people are guilty of harassing or discriminating against Asians just
as much, if not more. The post on FMKorea ended with screenshots from Nicki Minaj’s music
video for “Chun-Li,” where Minaj wore oriental clothes, headpieces and hair; the same example
that Park referenced in his original statement under his first music video.
For the most part, the concept of cultural appropriation falls flat for Koreans who were
born and raised in South Korea.
Gyeongbokgung Palace was the main and largest palace of the Joseon Dynasty which
was built in 1395. According to the Cultural Heritage Administration, all visitors of the palace,
including foreigners, can enter without paying a fee if they choose to wear hanbok. This is a type
of traditional clothing that Koreans wore daily, mainly during the Joseon Dynasty into the
Japanese occupation.
As seen by the government encouraging non-Koreans to wear and apply traditional
Korean in the case of visiting one of the most important historical sites in Korea, Koreans
consider the sharing of culture as a positive activity. If a foreigner wears traditional Korean
clothes and practices a form of traditional Korean music through singing or playing an
instrument, most Korean people express feeling flattered by this.
This sentiment is so widely shared in the country that it has its own term: gukbbong. The
word is a combination of the Korean words for “nation” and the drug “philopon,” widely known
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as “methylamphetamine.” The slang defines the high that Koreans experience over their national
pride whenever foreigners like or even acknowledge a component of Korean culture, both
popular and traditional. The term itself is derogatory towards the Koreans who obsess over
non-Koreans’ — typically the Western society’s — validation over trivial issues. However, the
term has developed to include more notable expansions of Korean culture, including the
country’s soft power and food.
For many Koreans, the global popularity of K-pop itself is also an example of gukbbong.
They are surprised and simultaneously feel a sense of national pride upon seeing Korean
individuals gain recognition abroad (Berbiguier & Cho, 2017). From the Korean perspective, all
forms of culture sharing are deemed a good thing that benefits the country and, as an extension,
their own lives. This contradicts many minority groups who heavily criticize other races
imitating certain aspects of their culture. As a result, this leads to confusion on both ends when
trying to discuss boundaries regarding the usage of others’ cultures.
Joking about skin color
The white light spilled down like a setting fog on the lone figure clad in black, standing at
center stage, a halo reflecting on the crown of his straight black hair. A bustling ocean of people
hidden in the shadows, illuminated only by small uniquely-designed lightsticks and surrounding
the wide platform at all sides, roared upon the sight of the slim man; even after the lights had
dimmed, the heat of the crowd refused to follow.
Moments later, the high-tempo sound of piano playing in a minor key rang throughout the
arena. At the same time, the lights flashed back on, and the collage of screams erupted to a peak
once more. The man, who had been on his knees with his head down while surrounded by eight
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backup dancers also dressed in black, sprang up with a sudden burst of energy and speed, limbs
flowing out rapidly as if to engulf the stage. He seemed like a perfect holograph, immaculately
keeping beat with every one of his moves matching the pace, never flying ahead, never falling
behind. But with his piercing eyes and remarkably stable voice ringing out through the tiny mic
perched near his face, the man reaffirmed his existence to all who were present.
At the center of the arena, Taemin Lee, the popular K-pop idol and member of the boy
group SHINee, commandeered the crowd of 20,000 as he led the final performance of the night
at the annual Korean pop festival, KCON, in Los Angeles.
“It was deafeningly loud,” said Hien Nguyen, a graduate student at the University of
Southern California and fan of K-Pop, as she recalled the performance. “I’ve never heard a
crowd going so crazy.”
About one month after the concert, a new video uploaded to SHINee’s official YouTube
channel drew some attention. Except this time, the response was overwhelmingly negative. It
was one of the videos regularly produced to satiate their fans all over the world by showing the
group members interacting and having fun with each other. The three active members of SHINee
sat together on a large bed, a cozy blanket covering their legs in an attempt to make the scene
look homey, despite their flawlessly styled hair and neat clothes.
“When I see you after you play golf, all I can see are the whites of your eyes and teeth,”
Lee told Minho Choi, one of his bandmates.
“I put on so much sunscreen,” Choi replied.
“Why did you get so tanned?” Kibum Kim, another member who goes by the stage name
Key, exclaimed as Lee laughed. “If Minho closes his eyes and mouth at night, you’ll go,
‘Minho?’” Kim said, eyes suddenly going blank as he acted out a skit in which he pretended to
35

look for Minho in the dark. Lee giggled and agreed as Choi denied this with a smile, shaking his
head lightly.
The 20-second clip quickly sparked an uproar online in K-pop communities, with fans
around the world expressing a mix of strong emotions: anger, frustration, disappointment and
denial. Two of their favorite artists of more than 15 years had just behaved in a colorist manner,
mocking a member’s darker skin tone.
Three days later, Kim, Lee and their management company each posted an apology on
their Instagram accounts. “My sincerest apologies for any discomfort and hurt caused by my
inappropriate remarks in the recent content,” Lee said in the statement, written in both Korean
and English. Simple white text on a black screen. “Thanks to our fans, I fully understand why the
comments I made were disrespectful, and I will make a more diligent effort to be careful with my
behavior and words in the future.” Later, he apologized to fans two more times on a paid
messaging platform.
Regardless of whether their fans thought the apologies were sufficient, the fans
collectively breathed a sigh of relief. This was the first time K-pop idols, especially such popular
and influential ones, had apologized for colorist remarks. Korean society and the K-pop industry
both favor pale, fair skin over darker tones, and did not bother to keep quiet about it for the
longest time. Almost all previous controversies involving racial insensitivities — colorism,
cultural appropriation and racism — were swept under the rug, both artists and labels refusing to
comment. So SHINee’s global fans, while hurt by their idols’ blunt colorism, found new hope
and appreciation for them as human beings — flawed but willing to change.
Many Koreans, on the other hand, were livid — not at the idols, but the fans who
criticized them.
36

“You want to like Korean idols but don’t want to learn Korean,” a Korean fan of SHINee
angrily posted on X, formerly Twitter. “You call yourselves longtime fans, but you don’t feel the
need to learn Korean because the company provides all the English subtitles, so you misinterpret
the context and tell them to apologize and get an apology just by protesting while sitting in your
room in your own country.”
Not unlike other countries, the shared obsession of attaining white skin among the
general Korean population has been part of Korean history for centuries, long before the first
white person stepped foot on Korean soil.
Classism or racism (or both?)
The young master comes from a family of nobles recognized by the king of Joseon
himself. Like his father and brothers, the young man is well-educated and destined for greatness.
Soon enough, he would be departing for Hanyang — the city that will be renamed Seoul in a few
hundred years — to take the national civil service examination called gwageo.
With the thought of the exam weighing on his heavy heart, the young master puts his hands into
the foggy water collected in a washbasin. After gathering a small amount of the clean water
mixed with a liberal amount of soft rice powder in his hands, he splashes it onto his face,
massaging it to every corner of his fair skin. This is meant to make his face appear white and as
smooth as jade, to avoid vandalizing the skin with freckles or scars. When he is satisfied, he
waits for a minute or so to let the moisture on his skin dry a bit, to let the white powder seep into
his pores. Then, he reaches over to another basin, this one filled with clear, regular water. Once
again, he bows down to soak his face, gently wiping at all areas on his face with his fingers.
37

Through the window, the young master looks out into his family’s yard. He sees the
family servants — cleaning, cooking, running errands, rushing back-and-forth like busy ants
doing whatever chores they are required to do every day. They are dressed in plain, poor-quality
fabric of muted colors, and sweat drips down their reddish-brown skin and glistens under the
merciless sun. Perhaps the young master should feel sorry for them; after all, none of them even
had family names and only relied on their first names to identify themselves.
But this was how the world functioned, as far as the man knew. The young master of the
noble family’s responsibilities involved spending most of his time under a roof, studying and
preparing to become an important figure working for the king, possibly a government official.
The servants’ responsibilities remained outdoors, in the painful rays of the sun, their inevitably
tanned skin doing enough to signal their status near the bottom of the hierarchy ladder.
Cho said South Korea’s history and relation to skin color is far different from that of
Europe and the U.S. While the West’s history of colorism was driven by settler-colonialism
thoughts that spread white supremacy, Korea’s past — and persisting ideas of colorism —
stemmed from class status.
“South Korea just has a really different relationship to race,” Cho said. “Although I will
say that it hasn't been completely innocent of absorbing ideas about race that come from a
Euro-American context, because there's lots of anti-Blackness in Korea, and a lot of that seems
to stem from the influence of American culture in South Korea because of the close relationship
between the two countries ever since the Korean War or the end of Japanese occupation. But
even before that, there were Anglophone missionaries who came to Korea starting in the 1800s.”
The recent incident involving the SHINee members was just the latest incident displaying
colorism in Korean society.
38

Namjoon Kim — known as RM — from the globally popular boy group BTS, said
something similar during an Australian interview back in 2015. When asked what the
bandmates’ impression upon meeting each other was, RM said this about two of the other
members:
“When I first met Hoseok and Taehyung, I couldn’t see them because they were too
black. So, yeah, when the nights got dark, I couldn’t find them.”
While RM is relatively fluent at speaking English, it is important to note that some of his
word choices didn’t translate properly; For instance, the word “black” in Korean can also be used
to mean “tanned” when referring to skin, so he was, most likely, not comparing his bandmates to
Black people.
However, it was a clear example of a colorist joke that immediately received heavy
criticism from international fans of BTS. As a result, the interviewer quickly took down the
original video. Many of RM’s fans, especially those whose skin tones were similar if not darker
than the mentioned BTS members, expressed their disappointment in his remarks.
Some also argued that RM’s comments came from a place of internalized colorism,
considering he had the darkest skin of everyone in the group.
Seolhyun Kim, a member of the girl group AOA and one of the most popular female
idols in the country in the mid-2010s, became the face of several top brands in Korea with her
dazzlingly good looks. With dark and luscious hair, pretty facial features and a perfect hourglass
figure, she became the dream woman of thousands of men across her country. But even a
beloved star like Kim couldn’t avoid the colorism that was ingrained into both her society and
mind.
39

“Heart-fluttering OX talk with Seolhyun!” She smiled at the camera, cheerfully reciting
the line she was instructed to say. She was on a weekly entertainment news segment, the
interviewer and camera crew finding her at one of her several commercial shoots.
“Is there a part of your appearance that you don’t like?” the interviewer asked, assuming
a “no” for an answer. Kim made a ring with her index finger and thumb and raised it while
responding verbally by saying “O” at the same time — her answer was yes.
“I want to be pale, but I have dark skin.”
“But you’re prettier because of that!” the interviewer said. Kim simply went on to list
several other flaws she saw in herself, never elaborating on either of their comments.
Normalizing colorism as a beauty standard
Five Korean boys stepped onto their first stage together on national television on May 25,
2008. All five — Jinki Lee, Jonghyun Kim, Kibum Kim, Minho Choi and Taemin Lee — were
the paragons of the term “pretty boys,” big smiles adorning their youthful faces and sweat
drenching their skinny bodies as they danced and sang their debut release, “Replay,” with all
their might. All five members of SHINee, except for one, who was 18 years old when he
debuted, were minors; Lee, the youngest in the group, was just 14 at the time.
Recently, Choi asked Lee a hypothetical question: If he could go back in time, would he
rather debut as a 14-year-old again, or as an adult?
Lee immediately said he would debut as an adult, on the condition that “[he] can do it
again with the same groupmates.”
40

“There are things that we have to experience at certain ages, but looking back, it was a
difficult time for not just me, but also the other members,” Lee said. “We couldn’t play or
experience certain things, like going on school trips or becoming class president.”
Perhaps working from such a young age in an industry that rigorously judges and tears
apart celebrities for their looks, played a part in shaping their views on the definition of beauty:
big eyes, double eyelids, tall nose bridge, plump lips, sharp jawline, milky-white skin — and so
much more.
As the 30-year-old superstar looked at himself in the mirror every morning, a handsome
man with flawless fair skin, would he remember the 14-year-old child, his skin tanned from
spending so much time in the sun with his friends?
In the early 2010s, a new trend began making waves in the international K-pop fan
community, still a small and relatively unknown genre at the time. Korean fans with expensive,
high-quality cameras would regularly post edited photos of their favorite idols on their “fansites”
and gain a significant following for them.
International fans began editing those photos to make the idols’ skin color darker. It was a
form of retaliation by the fans, in a sense, against the rampant colorism in an industry that was
becoming uncomfortably clear to those outside of Korea. People were unhappy with how the
fansites frequently edited the photos to brighten the idols’ skin tone, in some cases making them
look like ghosts or paper, according to the non-Korean fans.
Tarin said she — as someone who is also darker-skinned — is not happy with the colorist
jokes.
“So when they’re making jokes like that, it’s weird,” Tarin told me. “It’s really weird. But
then I tell myself, well, their standard of beauty is different. You know what I mean? I could try
41

to tell myself different things, but at the end of the day, they’re offending people, and they’re
rude comments.”
Korean fansites quickly expressed their ire towards international fans. They received
overwhelming support from other Korean fans who learned of this overseas situation due to a
few prominent actions: One, stealing their photos and editing them without credit; two, accusing
them of racism; and three, allegedly darkening the naturally pale idols’ skin to be darker than
their actual skin tone. Some even claimed that the international fans were being racist to Koreans
for asserting that Koreans can only be tanned, never pale.
Perhaps as a way to prove that they are naturally pale, the Korean netizens circulated
photos of other celebrities, such as actor Lee Young-ae, who had lighter skin than the white
people she took the photo with. They attached a map showing the average skin tone of each
region, with Korea having some of the lightest pigmentations in the world.
The response — one that seems overly defensive to many fans in the U.S. — is “a
product of Korea’s post-war history,” according to Cho, who said Koreans feel a strong sense of
ownership of Korean culture and history. As a result, they are less likely to accept criticisms
about their country when they come from whoever they deem to be foreigners.
“And I think this is an attitude that you see in other contexts, too, where a strong cultural
nationalism has accompanied a process of either decolonization or post-war rebuilding and
redevelopment,” Cho added. “I mean, when people talk about South Korea as this miracle of
development, there's an ideological component that went along with that [and] got everybody in
the country onboard with — this kind of national project of economic development.”
South Korea’s economic development, which is popularly referred to as the “Miracle on
the Han River,” transformed the nation from being the least developed country in the world right
42

after the end of the Korean War in 1953 to a fully developed country in the 21st Century. Within
70 years, Koreans rebuilt their home from a war-torn wasteland to one of the most culturally
recognized countries in Asia.
After 70 years, the cracks in the cement are becoming visible. But for now, a significant
percentage of K-Pop fans in Korea are more used to feeling wary of outsiders who point them
out.
“It's really common in a post-colonial state,” Cho said. “If you've been colonized, and the
culture that you're a part of was almost eradicated, you're going to be very defensive and very
protective of the idea of a cultural essence.”
Baby steps
Among them, hushed voices murmured whispers of dissent.
A post titled, “The need to be wary of mentioning skin color as K-pop becomes
globalized,” published anonymously on the forum theqoo, garnered more than 83,000 views and
640 comments. The post included a compilation of the top K-pop idols glorifying white skin or
denouncing dark skin, as well as examples of global fans responding with disappointment in
regard to the discussions about skin color. The post itself was worded in a passive-aggressive
manner, clearly expressing bewilderment at how global fans take the issue of skin color
seriously, even when the idols themselves mention it with a lighthearted or self-deprecating
attitude.
A heated debate unraveled in the comment section.
“We should be careful if we’re not going to sell among ourselves,” one anonymous
commenter said. “These days, we consider Billboard charts. Criticizing something you’re born
43

with is a form of assault and when celebrities get on TV and say they don’t like their own dark
skin, what would people with dark skin think? This is very harmful.”
Others were less sympathetic, saying those who criticize Korea’s standards on skin were
being hypocritical for placing Koreans on a higher pedestal compared to other races. Some were
irritated at seeing Westerners trying to “educate” them, perceiving this attitude as being arrogant
and comparing them to the white colonizers throughout history who attempted to assimilate
different groups of people with their own ideology.
Many Korean netizens remained firm in their belief that the international audience was
reacting too sensitively. They dubbed them as a group that criticizes the deep-rooted standard of
beauty in Korean society simply due to their envy towards Korean people. But a significant
percentage of those comments were more critical of the normalized colorism in their society. It
was certainly a shift in public opinion, albeit a slight one.
“Whitewashing aside, it’s true that our country is especially more blunt with skin color
and we need to fix that,” one anonymous commenter said. “People get in trouble for pointing out
other parts of the body, so I don’t get why people just say it’s part of Korean culture when
someone hates on another person’s looks based on their skin. And honestly, a part of it is racism,
too. People say you look Southeast Asian if you have dark skin.”
Growing up with another culture
The United States Forces Korea first launched in 1957, after the U.S. military returned to
Korea after World War II to fight in the Korean War. As the Korean Armistice Agreement was
signed and the war ended with the country divided into north and south, the military power of the
U.S. remained in South Korea for the next 70 years.
44

The American soldiers stationed in Korea, some of whom were Black, frequented
nightclubs in Itaewon — a city that would become known as the largest expatriate community in
the country. Located in the Yongsan District, Itaewon was shaped into the multicultural hub of
lively nightlife and restaurants today by the American G.I.s in the Yongsan Garrison, the
headquarters of U.S. military forces.
While the clubs themselves didn’t allow Koreans in until the end of the 20th century,
American music began seeping into the Korean population’s lives around this time through the
television and radio channels that aired for these soldiers.
Hyungtae Kim, my father, is one Korean man who picked up his lifelong interest in
various American music genres. Kim, the former CEO of a record-selling company in Korea in
the 2000s, became infatuated with American music as a teenager. He listened to the music that
flowed out nonstop from the American Forces Network Korea, a radio channel that selected and
played songs on Billboard’s Top 40 songs list.
Now a 61-year-old man running a dry cleaner in Wisconsin, Kim looked back on how he
was first introduced to the heart and soul of Black music at the age of 15 while listening to artists
like Marvin Gaye and the Commodores.
Despite his parents’ strong opposition, Kim became a DJ at a small local music club in
his early twenties.
“What I liked the most about being a DJ is that I could listen to all those countless
albums,” Kim said. “So I stayed up at nights to listen to them.”
He sifted through the less-known songs from western artists’ albums he thought were just
as good as their title hits and played them for Korean people who visited. Whenever someone
came up to him afterwards to compliment his music list, Kim felt immense satisfaction.
45

“I was very happy whenever I discovered songs other than the one or two popular songs
[on the album] because they were like hidden treasures,” Kim said, a nostalgic smile tugging on
his lips.
It was only towards the late 1900s that Korea was able to launch a rough format of a
functioning industry, in which many Koreans like Sooman Lee took elements of Western music
and shaped them into a system uniquely performed by Korean artists.
“The fact that there are western influences in the music is also not Korea's fault, because
it's geopolitics in the U.S. military presence,” Yoon said. “So how are you going to blame a
country for being influenced by American pop culture when America inserted itself into the
country?”
As much as K-pop emulates existing sounds in Black music, K-pop and its idol groups
have begun appealing to a bigger audience in the U.S. in recent years. While the industry’s
impact was mostly limited to other Asian countries for the first couple decades, groups are now
finding major loyal followers among Americans. The Korean celebrities’ charm also reached
Black fans, perhaps unsurprising as the industry has always credited Black artists as some of
their biggest inspirations.
For Anderson, a Black American woman who grew up in the ’80s with the birth of music
videos with high-quality production — multiple costume changes, scenes and structured
choreography — K-pop’s eye-catching group choreography and spectacular music videos won
her over. Despite being Korean people singing in a foreign language for a foreign industry, so
many of its traits were a constant across the industry that felt very nostalgic and familiar to
Anderson.
46

K-pop also acted as the driving force behind some people’s desires to learn more about
Korea as a country beyond its popular culture. Kayla Harris, a second-year graduate student at
the University of Southern California, was initially only taking one Korean language class in her
first year of college and had minimal background knowledge in Korean culture. After taking
more interest in K-pop, however, she became more invested in learning about the country and
therefore chose to major in Korean language and literature.
“As I learn more about the language and the culture, I was finding parallels between
Black culture and Korean culture,” Harris said. “And so, I wanted to know more about the
history and everything.”
Like Anderson, who was a fan of Japanese anime as well as films and television shows
from Hong Kong and China before she discovered Korean popular media, other K-pop fans were
already consuming content from Asian countries. Aeseret Huguley is a part of the KonnectPop
team, which is a fan community that works to connect people through several in-person events
where K-pop fans can interact with one another. Huguley said she was already familiar with
Japanese music and anime through people around her who were fans at the time, but the Korean
language used in K-pop felt like a novelty for her.
But how do the fans remain supportive after their idols say something that goes against
their values? Do they understand the complex cultural disconnect between themselves and their
idols, or do they have to bargain with the angel on their shoulder for permission to love a
dazzling figure on stage?
Harris said she believes many fans give their idols the benefit of the doubt on the basis
that these idols, most of whom are Korean, would not have been exposed to different cultures in
47

such a homogeneous society. Therefore, according to this assumption, “[the idols] don’t know
any better.”
“I think also there are just some very much ride–or-die fans,” Harris said. “No matter
what their idol does, they're going to ride for them and find a way to flip it and make it right.”
Huguley said she is the type to do this as she acknowledges that many K-pop idols may
not be used to what is considered discriminatory in a more racially diverse community. However,
Huguley also said she chooses to drop the support for certain idols if the controversy is big
enough or if they continue to behave the same way after fans try to educate them as they are “not
[her] cup of tea.”
“I just have to remember that they’re all human and that there's some things they just
don't know,” Huguley said. “And if they haven't lived here or have been around people with my
skin color, they’re not going to know a lot of things that are wrong and it's up to them to take the
lesson when we're telling them about it.”
Black representation in Korean media
Fatou Samba, a 15-year-old Senegalese girl living in Belgium, was enamored when her
friend from school showed her a music video on YouTube. The music video was for the song
“Replay” by SHINee, the young group’s fresh R&B debut release. From the moment she
watched and listened to the video, Samba dreamt of becoming a member of a K-pop girl group.
About 10 years later during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Samba danced and
rapped next to four Korean girls on a Korean music show where several other idol groups
promoted their own songs weekly. She became a member of the K-pop girl group Blackswan.
48

While Koreans and some other Asian individuals naturally dominate the Korean
entertainment media, Black celebrities do exist. Fatou is the first ever K-pop idol to not have
Korean ancestors, but there were a few Black Korean artists who gained mainstream success in
the country. Insoon Kim, more popularly known by her stage name Insooni, was the first biracial
singer in South Korea.
Kim, whose biological father was a Black American, faced extreme discrimination for
having Black features. Her mother was estranged by her own family for giving birth to a mixed
child of African descent and Kim herself had to cover her curly hair when she first began
performing for television. She released her first album in 1978 as part of a female trio called
“Hee Sisters.” Kim became renowned as the nation’s most beloved female singer in the 20th
century.
Since then, more and more Blasian or Black individuals gained popularity in the Korean
entertainment industry. Natasha Shanta Reid, better known by her Korean name Mirae Yoon,
made her debut as a rapper and singer in 1997 and Koreans consider her to be the best female
rapper in Korea. Young Black Korean models like Hyunmin Han and Jenny Park made their
faces known on national television. Others, like Sam Okyere and Jonathan Thona Yiombi, gained
love from Korean TV audiences with their unique style of humor.
This small percentage of Black representation doesn’t equate to any significant
improvements in Korea’s racial awareness. But it does show that the media, at the very least, is
becoming more open to presenting a platform for racial minorities than just a few decades prior.
In 2023, Samba visited Inkigayo, one of the national TV stations’ music shows. She went
with the same friend who showed her SHINee’s music video for the first time in high school.
Samba was able to finally meet Kibum Kim, one of the members of the very first K-pop boy
49

group she became a fan of. After finishing his rehearsal stage before the live performance, Kim
handed her a copy of the signed album he was promoting at the time.
“Fatou, we finally met,” Kim greeted her.
“You know my name?” Samba asked.
“Of course I do,” Kim said. “You’re our fan.”
Recognition of the inspirations
In 2012, on the final stage at the American Music Awards, Korean solo artist Jaesang
Park, better known by his stage name Psy, stood in his iconic sunglasses and slicked-back black
hair, sweat beaded across his skin as the audience cheered below. The horse-riding dance in his
latest song “Gangnam Style” swept up the entire globe in an unprecedented storm, fueled by the
inherent function of the Internet and sites like YouTube that allowed virality that crossed over
international borders.
Two minutes and 30 seconds into the performance, darkness washed over the stage.
When the spotlights cast harsh white lights on the platform, they now showed two figures
standing next to each other. Stanley Burrell, also known as the renowned American rapper and
dancer MC Hammer, shared a glance with the Korean star before breaking into a synchronized
choreography with him.
According to Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, Psy got to talk to and set up
a stage with MC Hammer over the phone when his representative connected the two. Psy, who
had been a big fan of MC Hammer, had already expressed his desire to be on stage with him.
50

Fast forward 11 years later, Jungkook Jeon, a member of the popular K-pop boy group
BTS, collaborated with Usher on a remix of the song “Standing Next to You” from his solo debut
album “Golden” in 2023.
Usher spoke about the collaboration with the K-pop star in an interview with
iHeartRadio. For the American star, the opportunity was one he was excited to participate in.
“I love this song because it made me feel like early Michael [Jackson],” Usher said.
“Something about it made me think about those days, made me think about “Rock With You.””
Usher Raymond IV, who made his debut in 1994 at the age of 16, was now dancing with
a young Korean idol star. Jeon also debuted at a young age, just a 15-year-old boy at the time as
the youngest among the seven members of his group. With him, Usher was reaching out to an
entirely different audience and industry, one theoretically divided by language but joined
together with music.
“I’m now recognizing I have K-pop fans. So, I guess I gotta do more in that area, yeah?”
Usher said.
As shown above, K-pop artists frequently mention Black artists as their role models in
the music industry. K-pop labels, when they use samples in their artists’ albums, list the original
artist’s name in the credits. Because all information regarding a K-pop album’s production is
made public for everyone to see online, Anderson said she believes fans have the responsibility
to do their own research. Furthermore, as an older fan of K-pop, she suggested that fan behavior
may have changed over time, and not as many people are consuming K-pop artists’
behind-the-scenes content.
51

“If you listened long enough and watched enough behind the scenes footage, you would
hear your favorite artists talking about the people that inspire them, or who they're listening to,”
Anderson said.
52

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55

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kim, Sangmin (author)

Core Title Race in K-pop: the influence of Black culture and the Korean perspective

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 05/21/2024

Defense Date 05/17/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Afrobeats,Amapiano,black popular culture,colorism,cultural appropriation,culture,Ethnicity,globalization,hip-hop,K-pop,Music,OAI-PMH Harvest,race,South Korea

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Winston, Diane (committee chair), Lee, Hye Jin (committee member), Richardson, Allissa (committee member)

Creator Email dhgr2019@gmail.com,skim5693@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113950054

Unique identifier UC113950054

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Legacy Identifier etd-KimSangmin-12965

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Kim, Sangmin

Internet Media Type application/pdf

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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