Scholars, fans can explore the rise of 'KPop Demon Hunters' during Humanities Week
A promotional still for the movie "KPop Demon Hunters." Courtesy of Netflix/IMDB
As part of this year's Humanities Week at Arizona State University, a “Fun with K-Pop Demon Hunters” event will take place on Oct. 22.
If you’ve read that sentence and are wondering what, or who, K-pop demon hunters are — well, you weren’t one of the millions of people who watched the “KPop Demon Hunters” musical fantasy film that premiered on Netflix in late July and became the platform’s most-watched original animated film of all time.
And you probably don’t know that when the movie played in theaters for two days starting in early August, it grossed $19.2 million at box offices in the United States and Canada.
And you surely don’t know the plot: that long ago, demons preyed on humans, feeding their souls to the ruler Gwi-Ma, but that eventually three women became demon hunters and sealed the demons away with a magical barrier called the Honmoon.
Presently, the K-pop girl group Huntr/x in the film — comprised of Rumi, Mira and Zoey — is the latest demon-hunting trio under the guidance of Celine, a previous hunter who raised Rumi.
And if you’re still wondering about the phenomenon that is "KPop Demon Hunters," you’re in luck.
We talked to Areum Jeong, an assistant professor of Korean studies in the School of International Letters and Cultures, whose book on K-pop will be released in February, and Katherine Morrissey, an assistant professor of film and and media studies in the Department of English.
Note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Question: K-pop is an abbreviation for Korean popular music. How would you describe it?
Jeong: First, it is a cultural product generated by music industry agencies, which are embedded within a neoliberal capitalist entertainment industry with national and transnational dimensions. Second, K-pop is a receptive phenomenon, by which I mean that the reach and import of K-pop comes from its resonance with individual and collective audiences who propel its phenomenal success. And thirdly, it is a community that is held together and shaped primarily by fandom and its labor.
The biggest misconception about K-pop is that a lot of people think the Korean government poured millions of dollars to create this cultural and periodic machine, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I think K-pop spread because the people who like it tell their friends, “I just listened to this cool song. You have to listen to this.” And then those people tell their friends, and I think that’s how K-pop spread globally.
Q: K-pop music debuted in the early 1990s. Why has it now become such a global hit?
Jeong: K-pop in the 1990s was only popular in East Asia. That was the pre-digital, pre-internet era. We didn’t have YouTube to spread things around. So I think the development of digital media and tech has really helped propel the success of K-pop, because the people who got hooked into it would continue to revisit those kinds of videos or similar content, and you develop this para-social relationship, which is the relationship viewers have with these media figures.
Previously, scholars would say, “Oh, it’s just a one-way relationship. There’s no communication at all. You’re just watching somebody on TV like 'Harry Potter.'" But that has changed slowly because with things like Twitch streaming, all these K-pop stars would read the comments on their livestream and respond back. There are also all these special apps where fans and K-pop idols can text each other. So it’s two-way communication.
Q: Why has this movie taken off the way it has?
Morrissey: I think it's genuinely an enjoyable story that pretty much anyone can get into. It's very fun. It's very cute. It's very easy to follow and understand. No one will ever feel overwhelmed by the references to K-pop. It’s also very straightforward on one level. It’s a superhero bad guy versus good guy movie. And then it has this really cute premise where you have a K-pop girl group versus a K-pop boy group, and the girl group happens to have superpowers and the boy group happens to have evil superpowers and they’re fighting each other.
On top of that, it has all these textural references to ... South Korean history and lore. So it takes this classic story premise, and then it kind of adds these nuances to it, which are very rewarding to a lot of people.
Q: Why does the movie seem to appeal to people of all ages?
Jeong: I think the question should be, “Why shouldn’t it?” I think K-pop carries a lot of stigma because since it came out in the 1990s, there was this prejudice that it’s for these young girls who are brainwashed by the music industry and the media industry. But we never really question that with men’s activities, like sports.
With K-pop, the fandom demographic is so diverse. It includes so many different nationalities, genders and sexualities. But there is still that stigma. My book deals with how do we deal with this kind of stigma? Can we deal with it at all, or do we just hope it goes away?
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