Episode 48: The Apologetics of Kpop Academia

This episode was recorded a few weeks ago but I’d had some things going on and editing went slowly. It was pure coincidence that led to posting it the same day that E. Tammy Kim’s “How BTS Became One of the Most Popular Bands in History” dropped. Ms. Kim’s article is the perfect example of the genre we discuss in the episode—personal-narrative-presented-as-fact with a heavy dose of lazy misinformation about BTS, Kpop, and Kpop fandom generally. The response online has been brutal. It’s rare to find both BTS fans and other Kpop fans united in their anger at an article but Ms. Kim managed it. There have been a lot of great Twitter threads correcting the record so I won’t go into that here but I will say that more than any other piece I’ve read to date, it captures the disinterest and even disdain towards both Kpop as an industry and (worse) towards the Kpop artists themselves that we’ve been seeing in this recent wave of post-BTS Hallyu articles. Kpop is not perfect but it is fascinating on numerous levels and I find it very odd that most of the serious coverage of the industry in this most recent wave that I’ve seen in English comes not from arts or culture writers but from The Financial Times.

Some of the things mentioned in the episode: my post on Astro, the last of the old school idol groups; the episode with 60s/70s pop culture expert Gusts of Popular Feeling; the full panel on Kpop at Stanford where Suho was one of the speakers; and (for fun) the great C.S. Lewis on Christian apologetics.

And some examples of the influence of Hallyu aesthetics around the region: “Bazinga” from Filipino boy group SB19; “Y U Comeback” from Thai boy group 4MIX; “Bye-Good-Bye” from Japanese boy group Be:First (one of my new favorites in full disclosure); “Real” from Japanese boy group Jo1, who even participated in KCON. We’re lightyears away from stuff like “India’s first boy band” F4.

There’s also the phenomenon of Anitta and her hit song “Envolver” that my guest mentioned. There seems to have been a little news coverage of it as a novelty one-off but I agree with my guest that it’s the canary in the coal mine. English language culture writers may not be taking it seriously but Kpop is being studied and we’re now seeing the results. The Kpop industry is also clearly paying attention to these global trends so it will be interesting to see how they respond.

The songs played are:

1. “Still Live” by Treasure (cover of the recent BigBang hit)

2. “My Treasure” by Treasure

3. “Candy Sugar Pop” by ASTRO

4. “Dark Circle” by CocoSori

5. “I Don’t Like Your Girlfriend” by Weki Meki

6. “Ego” by BigBang

7. “God’s Menu” by Stray Kids

8. “Best of Me” by BTS

9. “My Universe” by Coldplay feat. BTS

10. “Campfire” by Seventeen (as a good example of a fan song)

11. “Hit Me” by Treasure (cover of the MOBB song)

12. “Boom” by NCT 127

13. “You Got Gun” by H.O.T.

14. “Spider” by Hoshi

15. “Flash” by X1 (and pour one out for WOODZ)

16. “Envolver” by Anitta (linked above)

17. “Miss Right” by Teen Top

18. “So Amazing” by SHINee