The K-Pop Issue.
Issue 35: G-Dragon walked so Demon Hunters could run. How South Korea became the archetype for cultural contagion.
Andrew here. This issue, or a version of it, is something I’ve been harassing the rest of the team to greenlight for at least a year now. It only took a global phenomenon for them to agree I might be onto something with this “Korea gets marketing” thing.
What follows is long, dense and at times frenetic. Try and do your best to keep up. Promise you’ll learn at least two things and have a new favourite song.
Last month, something genuinely astounding happened. KPop Demon Hunters – a Netflix animated film that’s been streaming free for months – sold out cinemas across the world for singalong screenings. The Empire State Building lit up in the film’s colours. Various configurations of singers and voice actors (there are separate singers and speakers for the trio HUNTR/X and Saja Boys) appeared at different pop-ups simultaneously, creating an omnipresence that would make Marvel’s marketing team weep.
On 26 August, the numbers became historic: KPop Demon Hunters officially became the most-streamed movie in Netflix history. The film had attracted 236 million total views, overtaking Red Notice (230.9 million views) to claim the crown. Golden has dethroned Destiny Child’s Bootylicious as the longest running #1 from a girl group on the Billboard 100. Parents drop their kids at school listening to the track, then restart the song in secret at twice the volume once their kids leave the car (this has been directly confirmed from two independent sources).
The soundtrack became the first ever to deliver four simultaneous top 10 hits on the US singles chart. Sony, who sold the rights to Netflix for $US20 million, watches as the franchise approaches billion-dollar territory through merchandising, streaming, and now theatrical releases.
You already know just how damn big this thing has become, even if there has thus far been relatively little cultural discourse about the film on Substack.
What creator and director Maggie Kang has achieved with this film is a heightened exercise in what Ana Andjelic would call “engineered coincidence”. That is to say, while the film itself seems to have explode out of nowhere, it is, in reality, the culmination of a 28-year government strategy that began in an IMF crisis room in Seoul and extended across a universe of cultural touchstones.
When South Korea’s economy collapsed in 1997, bureaucrats made a decision that would have seemed insane anywhere else: they would rebuild their nation through creativity. Pop culture would become critical infrastructure.
In a submission to the Cannes Lions Brand Marketing Academy last year, I argued that because of this, South Korea might be the world’s most creative brand. The Korean government has created an entire creative economy from policy documents and subsidies, turning soft power into hard currency.
KPop Demon Hunters represents the apex of this strategy. A film by Korean Americans (Maggie Kang had the script for 10 years, thinking it too niche), produced with songs by Teddy Park (responsible for the creation of BLACKPINK and producer of many of their hits) as well as other legitimate K-pop producers, distributed by an American streaming giant that’s invested $US2.5 billion in Korean content, and now breaking theatrical distribution models no one thought possible.
This is what happens when a government decides culture is infrastructure. When Netflix becomes the de facto ministry of Korean soft power. When three animated girls can out-earn most Fortune 500 marketing budgets. Welcome to the future of cultural strategy: it speaks Korean, streams globally, and just made your kids beg to go to the cinema for something they can watch at home.
Act
It’s not a smart conversation if there’s nothing to talk about.
Start with the right strategy and execution to prove you can walk the talk.
How did we get here?
The most successful long-term brand strategy in history
The story begins in 1997, when the Asian Financial Crisis exposed South Korea’s vulnerability; go watch When Life Gives You Tangerines to get a sense of how dire this actually was (and to weep like an infant child). The IMF bailout came with conditions, but also clarity: industrial exports alone wouldn’t cut it anymore. In 1999, the government launched what would become known as “Hallyu”: the Korean Wave. Economic recovery strategy built on the export of cultural production.
Consider the audacity: while other nations were doubling down on manufacturing or tech, South Korea created the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), established Creative Economy Innovation Centers, and started treating pop culture like critical infrastructure, beginning with food. After observing Thailand’s tourism influx after a successful scheme to seed Thai restaurants around the world, the KOCCA offered subsidies to expats opening Korean restaurants abroad. They standardised food spellings. They took out patents on gochujang. From 2009 to 2017, the number of Korean restaurants worldwide soared from 9,253 to 33,499.
It’s brand strategy at nation-state scale. By 2021, South Korea ranked 23rd out of 60 countries on the Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index, ahead of China and India, countries with populations 25 times larger.
Fast forward and BTS alone contributed an estimated $US4.65 billion to South Korea’s economy in 2019. They’ve addressed the UN General Assembly. Twice. BLACKPINK headlined Coachella as the first Asian group ever, and after massive solo releases from Rosé, Lisa and Jennie, their recent comeback world tour is dominating the cultural conversation: from an endless string of celeb appearances at shows, to Jisoo debuting the very first look at Jonathan Anderson’s mega-hyped Dior women’s collection on stage.
It could be argued that we’re just now entering a new era of this cultural pervasiveness, that extends from cultural assets themselves, to cultural discourse on media platforms themselves: “Hongdae Guy” has become global shorthand for a specific type of Seoul creep who targets foreign women with lines like “Are you open-mindeu?” And never forget that it’s Lisa we have to thank for turning Labubu into a billion-dollar global phenomenon after posting Instagram photos with the doll in April 2024, causing prices to jump 400% overnight. Sure, she’s Thai, but it’s the South Korean entertainment machine that turned her into a star. This is a country whose people and iconography became the ultimate cultural kingmakers before KPop Demon Hunters even entered the lexicon.
The real genius lay in creating the infrastructure for stardom. Before Taylor Swift had Swifties, BTS had ARMY. Every K-pop group has a fandom name, official colours, light sticks, ritualised chants. In many ways, the real groups are as manufactured as HUNTR/X themselves, deploying systematic audience architecture with the same precision as Samsung’s supply chain.
From a screen standpoint, this transformation was accelerated with two cultural earthquakes. First, Parasite winning Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020, the first non-English film to do so in the Academy’s 92-year history. Director Bong Joon-ho became prophetic: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
Then came Squid Game in 2021, which proved something nobody thought possible: Americans would binge subtitles. A quarter of Americans watched the show. Netflix reported 97% of US subscribers watched at least one non-English show in 2020. The one-inch barrier got obliterated.
Netflix deserves credit for recognising this better than any Western entertainment company. Since entering Korea in 2016, it has invested over $US3.7 billion, with $US2.5 billion more committed through 2027. Ted Sarandos bought into a national strategy. “The stories produced in South Korea are representing the global cultural zeitgeist,” he said after meeting former President Yoon Suk Yeol. Sixty percent of Netflix’s global audience has now watched Korean content.
This shift parallels another cultural takeover happening in plain sight, and also on Netflix: anime’s journey from basement hobby to mainstream obsession. Forty-four percent of American Gen Z watches anime regularly. Manga sales quadrupled from 2019 to 2022, becoming America’s fourth-largest fiction category. The US anime market hit $US3.56 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $US50 billion by 2030. Patient cultural investment created market dominance.
Both Korean and Japanese content succeeded by refusing to compromise their cultural specificity for Western palates. You can literally see the writers of the English Pokémon dub shudder for feeling the urge to call – what was clearly a riceball – a “jelly donut”. (This and more Pokémon musings here).
Netflix positioned itself as the global home of non-English content. It invested in local production capabilities, dubbing technology and cultural expertise. As Don Kang, Netflix VP of Korean content, noted: “Korean content accounted for 50% of streaming viewership across Asia in the first half of 2023.”
The Korean government’s creative investment nearly three decades ago created a flywheel effect that mirrors the modern requirements of a brand pursuing cultural relevance. And I really should stress, the strategy of building a brand through a flurry of compounding cultural contexts, collaborations, categories and channels is truly a contemporary thing. KOCCA’s foresight really can’t be overstated. South Korean cultural exports drive tourism (72% of K-content viewers want to visit Korea versus 37% of non-viewers). Tourism drives economic growth. Growth funds more creative investment. Even visa policy became content strategy: the new K-culture training visa lets non-Koreans stay two years if enrolled in performing arts academies. The digital nomad visa targets remote workers earning over $US65,000. Every policy serves the brand.
Our perennial favourite, Dr Marcus Collins, would call this cultural contagion: when culture becomes so compelling it spreads itself. South Korea made being Korean aspirational. They turned national identity into a lifestyle brand that people worldwide want to buy into. Most compelling, they did it all in a way that really does prove perception becomes reality, literally creating what it means to be a contemporary South Korean from the ashes of a war-torn country recovering from dictatorship and near financial ruin.
Explain
How big ideas are translated into words that resonate, build identity and set the context for a smart conversation.
KPop Demon Hunters succeeds through cultural specificity deployed strategically. Not only does its use of narrative devices, tone and iconography take advantage of everything discussed from a strategic standpoint in Act – capitalising on the nuevo South Korean cultural literacy shared around the world – it presents as an outright celebration of everything that strategy has achieved. The way this story is explained doesn’t just reward viewers for keeping up, it feels like vindication.*
*Yes I just used the “it doesn’t just X, it Ys” GPT trope voluntarily. Maybe it’s time for us all to relax.
I confess to audibly laughing at the title KPop Demon Hunters when it first appeared on Netflix, expecting a desperate cash grab sucking at the tailpipe of the South Korean cultural supercar. Instead, we get to sit in the passenger seat and enjoy the ride.
The girls eat ramyeon and fight in front of N Seoul Tower. The songs mix Korean and English without apology, unlike much current K-pop that’s criticised for abandoning Korean entirely. Saja Boys dress in Hanboks. TWICE and MEOVV posters line stadium backstage rooms, HUNTR/X reference appearing in actual K-pop events, they do V-Lives. Mira wore a sleeping bag to The Met. The group are presented as a very real part of the actual K-pop – and global – cultural ecosystem. The iconography is, in fact, so legitimate that it’s started a feedback loop: with real brands replicating the exact products shown in the film and setting social media alight, see Nongshim.
Interestingly, the approach of showing cultural markers without explanation is the antithesis of what A.A. Phillips first identified in 1950s Australia as “cultural cringe”. More specifically, Phillips advocated for Australia finding the confidence to be “unself-consciously ourselves” without first asking “what would a cultivated Englishman think of this?”.
Cultural cringe has certainly evolved in 70 years, its source no longer an Englishman (sophisticated or otherwise). Nonetheless, it’s a sentiment that pervades us and keeps our own unique cultural production firmly on a leash: one that insists on being legitimised by other cultures before we have the courage to recognise something as being cool of our own accord. But that’s for another essay.
We explored this phenomenon in COMMPRESS Issue #10 on Heartbreak High, which proved that Australian content could succeed globally by leaning into its cultural specificity rather than watering it down. Viewers are smart, and if you provide them with something compelling enough you can trust them to fill in the blanks themselves, when they do that, they feel part of a club. Cultural literacy becomes a badge of membership. It’s exactly the same principle as when you overheard the older kids talk about a band you’d never heard of and rushed to Sanity to buy the EP. Or, you know, when you bought a Labubu and wallowed in self-hatred for 20 minutes.
The principle applies perfectly here: KPop Demon Hunters operates on multiple frequencies. Korean audiences catch every cultural reference. K-pop fans recognise industry in-jokes. Newcomers enjoy demon-hunting girl power. Everyone gets what they need without anyone getting everything.
Back to Andjelic for a second, because this is again what she identifies in The Business of Aspiration as the key to cultural hits: multiple entry points that allow different audiences to find different meanings. Andjelic’s framework for cultural creation – authenticity, zeitgeist capture and community building – maps perfectly onto KPop Demon Hunters’ success. The film anchors in authentic K-pop production (Teddy Park, EJAE, TWICE), captures the current moment (K-pop’s global peak), and builds community through shared cultural knowledge.
The recent KATSEYE-Gap campaign also demonstrates this strategy in action. Where Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad relied on traditional celebrity endorsement and some awkward scripting, Gap found the most diverse group possible – representative of K-pop’s global expansion – and created a work of genuine value to its target audience: a film shot in the same style as a K-pop dance practice clip (a common companion to the official video clip for a track). KATSEYE’s routine to Kelis’ Milkshake immediately connected with both K-pop and Gen Z audiences. As we analysed in our previous issue’s exploration of Steve Buscemi and Telstra, authentic cultural deployment beats celebrity slotting every time.
An extension of this logic appears in the musical authenticity in KPop Demon Hunters, which is perhaps, the most important part of the whole thing. The songs come from legitimate K-pop infrastructure; they by no means feel like show tunes written exclusively to advance a plot. They stand on their own as big tracks. When the film cuts during musical sequences, it follows actual K-pop video conventions; it turns the songs and their performance into authentic cultural artifacts that function for their intended purpose outside of the context of the film.
Watch the clip for How It’s Done and tell me Rumi deadpan eyeballing the camera before dropping out of a plane isn’t just as sick as the time Cocona shaved her head in Woke Up or anything CL has done. Tell me Saja Boys dancing to Soda Pop doesn’t physically scream this scene from BTS’ Boy With Luv (loosely related: if you’re looking for the toughest K-pop clip of all time, watch AESPA’s Armageddon).
This authenticity works because of the brand recognition Hallyu built over 25 years. When viewers see Korean text on screen, they feel included in something global, participants in a cultural conversation they already understand from following BTS or BLACKPINK.
But KPop Demon Hunters operates on a deeper level that speaks to those who know K-pop’s sometimes fraught history. The industry has faced significant scrutiny over artist treatment, mental health and creative control. The ongoing HYBE-NewJeans conflict – which warrants a COMMPRESS of its own to discuss missteps in reputation management – saw label CEO Min Hee-jin removed amid accusations of attempting to take control of the group, while NewJeans members publicly supported her and accused parent company HYBE of facilitating bullying and a psychologically unsafe environment for a girl group whose mean age was 17. This represents the most contemporary – and high-profile – example in a long history of artist mistreatment.
Against this backdrop, KPop Demon Hunters becomes powerful cultural commentary. The film’s protagonists write their own music, choose their own image, eat without shame, and maintain agency over their careers. For audiences familiar with real K-pop’s restrictive training systems and management conflicts, this represents an aspirational vision of what the industry could be. The film doesn’t critique K-pop directly, it simply shows empowered artists living the creative freedom that real industry figures fight for.
This conscious choice to portray strong female heroes who exist outside traditional industry constraints sparks different conversations about representation and artistic autonomy. When HUNTR/X faces demons, they’re fighting external threats while maintaining creative control: a fantasy that resonates powerfully given current industry realities.
Into this peaked attention comes perfect product-market fit: content that parents love, using music adults enjoy, representing cultures tired of being marginalised.
Amplify
A conversation means someone has to listen and respond. Cleverly amplifying the message to the right audience, at the right time, is the final piece of the puzzle.
Now it’s time to talk about what happened after the Netflix success. For the first time in Netflix’s history, a film went from streaming to theatrical release. Streaming-for-months-then-theatrical shouldn’t work. Why pay for something you can watch free at home?
To quote Matt Belloni: “Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos might think that movie theaters are ‘outmoded’ for most people, but there were many reasons to put KPop Demon Hunters in multiplexes this weekend” — including that “the best way to help I.P. feel meaningful to consumers is still to make it feel theatrical”.
Singalong screenings transform consumption into participation. Parents and kids belting Golden in a cinema becomes a collective experience that home viewing can’t replicate. The distribution strategy leverages the fact that audiences want to experience something with other people (and singalong with them).
As Belloni notes, Netflix is “looking at KPop Demon Hunters as a multifilm, multiplatform, Disney-style piece of intellectual property to be managed and exploited for the next decade or more”. The one-weekend-only theatrical release adds legitimacy and creates shared cultural moments that pure streaming cannot.
The voice actor strategy demonstrates systematic amplification. Six actors for three characters in HUNTR/X (and even more from Saja Boys) means omnipresence – one configuration at the Empire State Building, another in Seoul, another at LA pop-ups. Most anticipated: the singing voices of HUNTR/X will appear on stage together this week for the first time to present a VMA (I guarantee a tour is coming). Every appearance creates content, every content piece drives engagement, every engagement builds the shared universe fans live in.
This mirrors K-pop’s proven amplification model. When BTS releases an album, it spawns unboxing videos, photocards, fan meetings, variety show appearances, dance practice videos, behind-the-scenes content. The album catalyses hundreds of touchpoints across every platform. KPop Demon Hunters applies this playbook: the film spawns TikTok challenges, the characters appear at real K-pop events, the songs chart on actual music platforms competing with real artists.
The property strategy goes beyond merchandise into lifestyle integration. Physical tokens of digital participation – go look at Lisa’s custom Labubu outfit at a recent show – represent the same phenomenon. But KPop Demon Hunters reverses the usual depreciation curve by making the physical experience (cinema) a premium version of the digital product (streaming). Legacy media could take a tip.
The weekend box office results speak to this strategy's success: nearly $US20 million in two days from just 1,700 cinemas, positioning the film ahead of major theatrical releases during their third weekend.
Netflix’s role as amplifier cannot be understated. With 60% of its global audience having watched Korean content, it has built infrastructure for cultural transmission. Its investment in dubbing and subtitling technology – making content available in 30+ languages – removes friction from global consumption. Its algorithm cares about engagement, having engagement care about language.
The franchise planning is already visible. Two sequels announced. Merchandise everywhere. We’re heading toward full HUNTR/X metaverse immersion, possibly including live performances with holographic projection. The film launches intellectual property that exists across every medium simultaneously. In a world where brands are increasingly encouraged to see their core function as entertainment, this could not be a more compelling playbook.
Picks & Recs
Andrew’s guide to Seoul
Take the whole Google Maps list if you’re feeling ambitious or skim the highlights below.
WHERE TO STAY
It’s important to know your neighbourhoods in Seoul. I try to stay in two of these each trip:
Insadong
This is realistically where you should stay on your first visit, close to the heart of town, Gyeongbokgung and in the vicinity of very cute shopping streets. You can also book some fundamentally gorgeous Hannok stays on Air BnB.
Hongdae
Are you open mindeu?
Don’t let Sean Solo deter you entirely, Hongdae is home to some great wine bars, cute streets, my favourite e-darts venue in the country and – of course – The Macaroni Funky Club.
I love Hongdae.
Seongsudong
This is fast becoming my favourite place to stay, it’s close to downtown, across the bridge from the fun parts of Gangnam and home to the coolest cafe scene in Seoul. Plus, the shopping is crazy. This is very much the city’s answer to Brooklyn in its sweet spot, gentrified from its industrial background but still low-key enough to not be crawling with vloggers.
Apgujeong
I love Gangnam. But boy is it terrifying the first time you see it. Five-lane aside highways and not much else, unless you know where you’re going. The correct answer, by the way, is Apgujeong. It’s a little pocket that holds some of the best cocktail bars in the world (no hyperbole, check the rankings) and a bunch of kids that look straight out of a K-pop group being chauffeured in Bentleys to the LV store. It’s up-market, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t fun.
WHAT TO EAT
For unpretentious Korean staples so good they will draw a tear
For upscale fine-dining with a Joseon era twist and a view of Namsan
WHERE TO SHOP
Next, you should spend an afternoon at Dongmyo Flea Market
CULTURAL SPOTS
Gyeongbokgung really is something to behold
This audio museum I’m itching to visit
AFTER DARK
Zest (PLEASE order a Caprese)
Don’t bother with Itaewon by the way. Just don’t.
INSIDER MOVES
Get the apps: Kakao and Naver will save you
Ubers are cheap but will make you ill (a lot of drivers are getting the hang of vehicles and the stop-start feels like a washing machine, it’s even a feedback category).
Understand that nearly all food is made to share, portions be big.
Hangul is an alphabet designed to be simple enough that “a wise man can acquaint himself with [it] before the morning is over [and] even a stupid man can learn [it] in the space of 10 days’, and that’s according to my boy Kim Sejong (c.1446). It’s actually worth trying to work it out a little before you go; you’ll appreciate it!