Zoey, Rumi and Mira in KPop Demon Hunters. (Netflix)It's Netflix's biggest movie of all time, with 314 million views and counting. Its soundtrack hit No. 1 on Billboard's album chart and is the first to ever have four songs hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. It was the No. 1 at the box office and made $18 million in one weekend, even though it was still available to watch at home. Kids are rewatching it and re-creating its most popular looks. Parents are watching it out of curiosity and loving it.
Rarely has an original movie infiltrated pop culture like KPop Demon Hunters. It's hard to overstate just how massive this movie is. But no one should be surprised.
The sugary bubble gum pop music, bright visuals and infectious choreography that permeate the movie are all pretty typical of K-pop, a genre made up of largely South Korean boy and girl groups with millions of notoriously intense fans across the globe.
AdvertisementAdvertisementBefore the Netflix film's success, it seemed K-pop was just waiting for a mainstream streaming service to take a chance and market it to a broader audience of people hesitant to try something new. Now, it's clear that it's a powerhouse genre that's nestled its way into pop culture just as much as country, rap or Latin music.
Fans made K-pop mainstreamK-pop is what people are hungry for, and the executives raking in cash right now have its fans, who have long evangelized for the genre, to thank for that.
Rochelle Kelly is one of them."K-pop going mainstream from my experience really was because of how engaged fandoms were online," Kelly, a 27-year-old from New Jersey, tells Yahoo. "It's a massive global community with a passion unlike anything else."AdvertisementAdvertisementThough Psy's 2012 global hit "Gangnam Style" was the first predominately non-English K-pop song to become a cultural force, he wasn't able to mobilize lasting fans as much as swoonworthy K-pop boy and girl bands were. Stacy Jones, CEO of influencer marketing company Hollywood Branded, tells Yahoo that BTS pioneered the "infrastructure" of fan support that many groups copy now. The seven-member boy band was the first K-pop group to break out in the U.S., quickly and skillfully earning the widespread enthusiasm of international young women just like the Beatles.
Fans of K-pop boy band BTS gather at Yeouido Park during "BTS Festa" in Seoul, South Korea in 2023. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)Kelly has been a superfan of the genre since she was in high school in 2011, when she used multiple devices to give BTS music videos as many streams as possible and increase her chance of getting concert tickets. She stayed up until 2 a.m. to watch livestreams and was part of a group on Tumblr that mobilized to win her favorite groups awards and increase their acclaim and name recognition in the U.S.
This trend among fans continues to this day: They continue to voluntarily mobilize on X and Reddit to forcefully launch their favorite artists into the mainstream.
According to Luminate's 2025 midyear music industry report, K-pop fans overindex in online community spaces like Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp and Twitch, which all "enable deeper fan engagement."AdvertisementAdvertisementThat community is, in itself, compelling to people like Kelly - but it's the high-quality visuals that keep her and so many other fans coming back for more. It's all part of a machine, engineered by corporations to emulate perfection to churn out vigorous choreography, trendsetting fashion and gorgeous idols.
Bands need fansThe relationship between K-pop bands and their fandoms is symbiotic. Bands create content for fans, then fans create content for them, making their work even more popular. That's necessary for K-pop groups to make the crucial pivot out of Korean pop culture and firmly into the U.S., where there are simply more people available to become fans and sustain their careers.A cultural shift in the U.S. came first for BTS in 2017, when the group's fans, known as Army, successfully infiltrated the online voting system for the Billboard Music Awards to earn the band the Top Social Artist award. Serona Elton, interim vice dean and chair of the music industry program at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, tells Yahoo that the feat earned BTS instant credibility on social media, which led to collaborations with English-speaking artists like Halsey, Steve Aoki and Coldplay, further introducing them to the mainstream. Since then, the band has only been on an upward trajectory.
Jimin, Jungkook, RM, J-Hope, V, Jin, and SUGA of the K-pop boy band BTS visit the "Today" show at Rockefeller Plaza in 2020. (Cindy Ord/WireImage via Getty Images)Six of their albums have hit No. 1 and eight of their music videos have exceeded one billion views on YouTube.
AdvertisementAdvertisementBTS disbanded briefly at the height of their fame to complete South Korea's mandatory military service requirement and work on solo projects, but is now po