With BTS and Blackpink, can K-pop finally break into the US market?

Name: K-pop fans and TikTok teens troll Trump with fake registrations for first campaign rally in months
Uploaded: 2020-07-11T10:00:21.000Z
Duration: 1 min 42 s
Description: K-pop fans and TikTok teens troll Trump with fake registrations for first campaign rally in months

The South Korean cultural export has come a long way since BoA became the first artist of the genre to chart on the Billboard 200 in 2009

Record-breaking performances from the two biggest names in K-pop – and recent political activism – have it well on its way to household recognition

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Blackpink broke multiple Guinness World Records with the launch of their single How You Like That last month. Photo: Handout

David D. Lee

Published: 6:00pm, 11 Jul 2020Updated: 9:34pm, 11 Jul 2020

In some of his most popular videos, YouTuber Arieh Smith – also known as Xiaoma – asks pedestrians in New York’s Times Square for their opinions on members of BTS and Blackpink. From their reactions, it is quite obvious that the two biggest names in K-pop are not yet household names in the United States.

“It’s not the strangest thing to hear a K-pop song on an Uber ride or on the radio, but it’s also not common at the same time,” says Smith, 29, who has 2.4 million followers on YouTube.

The South Korean cultural export has come a long way since BoA became the first K-pop artist to chart on the Billboard 200 in 2009. A year later, Wonder Girls cracked the top 100 with their single Nobody, after stints opening for the Jonas Brothers in North America.

Since then, K-pop groups have made regular appearances on live shows, events and festivals in the US – but where is the genre in terms of general awareness and acceptance by American listeners?

“BTS is pretty well-known. You’ll almost always have a friend or a daughter who is a fan of the band,” says Smith, though he says the boy band faces a challenge in appealing to the general American public due to differing cultural perspectives.

“Like most skinny and pretty-looking K-pop boy bands, they can be classified as looking too feminine here,” says Smith, mentioning that some of the people he talked to asked if members of the band were women. “However, the quality of Korean music videos is so high and have a standard of their own that I am 1,000 per cent sure that K-pop will become mainstream in the US.”

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K-pop fans and TikTok teens troll Trump with fake registrations for first campaign rally in months

A fan appearing in one of Smith’s videos says she likes the group Seventeen because “the members produce their own songs and choreography”, while another says BTS and their music “cheer her up” when she’s down.