The dark secret of K-pop: the fan-girls who keep their love for their idols hidden from friends and family, fearing ridicule

By Dong Sun-hwa Kim, 23, is an ardent fan of Exo. When the K-pop boy band played a three-day concert in Seoul last year, she stayed at a hotel near the concert hall for three days to watch all the gigs. Once, she waited for more than 15 hours, only to see the K-pop act on the red carpet for a few minutes. But she keeps these activities secret – hardly anyone around her knows her love for Exo. “I began ‘fan-girling’ at 16,” Kim said. “Initially, I didn’t hide that I was a K-pop fan and used to upload numerous photos of my favourite singers on my social media accounts. But one day, my mother said, anxiously: ‘You are old enough – shouldn’t you be dating or hanging out with your friends instead of chasing after the singers’?” Many of her friends seemed to feel the same. When talking about K-pop, none of them directly said fans were “odd and pathetic”, but Kim still could read their thoughts through their tone and facial expressions. “After realising how negatively people view K-pop fans – especially those who are grown-ups – I decided to keep it a secret to avoid getting hurt,” she said. Jisoo of Blackpink: from ‘mystery girl’ to global sensation, her story so far Dozens of international fans revealed they were also reluctant to openly support the genre. One online user wrote in 2017 on Quora, an American question-and-answer website, that she could not rant about K-pop freely because some of her friends were picked on for liking it. Another commented: “I rather stay silent so I won’t hear other people saying nasty things about K-pop. I get criticised a lot, about being a K-pop fan.” “Fans of pop culture are often derided for having lowbrow taste,” said CedarBough Saeji, a visiting assistant professor of Korean Culture at Indiana University in the US. “The most destructive narrative is the one that dismisses all K-pop fans as immature little girls. I hate to see age and gender wielded like a weapon against K-pop fans.” In South Korea, there is even a derogatory term referring to K-pop fans: bbasooni, meaning “a fan girl who blindly chases after an older male singer”. The term was coined in the 1990s when male acts such as rock band Seo Taiji and Boys rose to stardom and mesmerised legions of female followers who invested considerable time and effort in fan activities. A small minority have crossed the line and turned into sasaeng, who follow the singers around the clock, invade their privacy and cause inconvenience to others. In one case, in 2019, four fans of K-pop boy band Wanna One forced hundreds of passengers on a Seoul-bound flight at the Hong Kong International Airport to disembark shortly before take-off and go through another round of security checks. They booked seats to get a closer look at the members on the plane and after seeing the stars, asked for a refund and attempted to get off the plane. Critic Jung Yeon-kyung says there have been other cases of “excessive behaviour” like this. “When a singer sparks controversy, some fans blindly defend their star out of affection,” she said. “For non-fans, this is hard to grasp.” But the critics say people should refrain from making a hasty generalisation that all K-pop followers are “misbehaving”. Seattle-based music critic Kim Young-dae added that the term bbasooni is misogynistic in essence. “When a man devotes his money to a car or other pricey items, he is usually free of criticisms,” Kim said. “But when it comes to female K-pop fans, many people think they are splashing out on good-looking stars.” Incidents involving obsessive fans are often highlighted more than those of other followers, who have joined forces for a good cause. “K-pop fans have done a lot of good things,” Saeji said. “Disparate groups of people have learned to harness online tools to achieve goals that bring their favourite artists to an ever bigger audience. “They’ve also donated to causes and spent a significant amount of time learning about a new country, culture and language. As the world learns about this side of fandom, I think it really improves the image of fans.” I rather stay silent so I won’t hear other people saying nasty things about K-pop. I get criticised a lot, about being a K-pop fan Anonymous K-pop fan-girl For instance, K-pop behemoth BTS’ global fan base, known as Army, donated 1.2 billion won (US$1 million) in June to support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and battle racial inequality. And Exo fans – EXO-L –contributed more than 12 million won (US$10,000) in March to help combat Covid-19. “It is crucial for some obsessive K-pop followers to develop more rational and critical attitudes, but the public should also be able to respect the fans’ taste,” critic Kim said. Critic Park Soo-jin said: “K-pop fans do not have to strive to change the public’s perception of them. They just have to make sure that they stick to morals when enjoying their fan activities. It is the public who should realise the positive influence of the fandoms and try to cast away a prejudice against the fans.” Read the full story at the Korea Times