Popping with authenticity

Otago Daily Times

3 days ago

When South Koreans start to obsess over a movie or TV series, they abbreviate its name, a distinction given to Netflix's latest hit KPop Demon Hunters. The American-made film is now universally referred to as "Keh-deh-hun" — the first three syllables of the title when read aloud in Korean. And audiences are already clamouring for a sequel.
The animated film follows a fictional South Korean girl group named "Huntr/x" as its three members — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — try to deliver the world from evil through the power of song and K-pop fandom.
Since its release in June, it has become the most-watched original animated film in Netflix history, with millions of views worldwide, including in South Korea, where its soundtrack has topped the charts.
Much of the film's popularity in South Korea is rooted in its keenly observed details and references to Korean folklore, pop culture and even national habits — the result of having a production team filled with K-pop fans, as well as a group research trip to South Korea that co-director Maggie Kang led in order to document details as minute as the appearance of local pavement.
There are nods to traditional Korean folk painting, a Korean guide to the afterlife, the progenitors of K-pop and everyday mannerisms. In one scene, at a table in a restaurant where the three girls are eating, viewers might notice how the utensils are laid atop a napkin, an essential ritual for dining out in South Korea.
"The more that I watch Keh-deh-hun, the more that I notice the details," South Korean music critic Kim Yoon-ha says.
"It managed to achieve a verisimilitude that would leave any Korean in awe."
Despite its subject matter and association with the "K-wave", that catch-all term for any and all Korean cultural export, KPop Demon Hunters, at least in the narrowest sense, doesn't quite fit the bill.
Produced by Sony Pictures and directed by Korean-Canadian Kang and Chris Appelhans — who has held creative roles on other animated films such as Coraline and Fantastic Mr Fox — the movie is primarily in English and geared towards non-Korean audiences. But its popularity in South Korea is another sign that the boundaries of the K-wave are increasingly fluid — and that, with more and more diaspora Korean artists entering the mix, it flows in the opposite direction, too.
Those barriers have already long since broken down in music: many K-pop artists and songwriters are non-Korean or part of the Korean diaspora, reflecting the genre's history of foreign influences — such as Japanese pop or American hip-hop.
"Once a cultural creation acquires a universality, you can't just confine it to the borders of the country of origin, which is where K-pop is today," Kim Il-joong, director of the content business division at the Korea Creative Content Agency, a government body whose mission is to promote South Korean content worldwide, says.
"Despite what the name 'K-pop' suggests, it is really a global product."
In KPop Demon Hunters, Zoey is a rapper from Burbank, California. In addition, the soundtrack was written and performed by a team that includes producers, artists and choreographers associated with some of the biggest real-life K-pop groups of the past decade.
Streaming productions are increasingly flying multiple flags, too: Apple TV's Pachinko or Netflix's XO, Kitty are both American productions that were filmed in South Korea. But few productions have been able to inspire quite the same level of enthusiasm as KPop Demon Hunters, whose charm for many South Koreans is how accurately it captures local idiosyncrasies and contemporary life.
While flying in their private jet, the three girls are shown sitting on the floor even though there is a sofa right beside them. This tendency to use sofas as little more than backrests is an endless source of humour and self-fascination among South Koreans, most of whom would agree that the centuries-old custom of sitting on the floor dies hard.
South Korean fans and media have noted that the characters correctly pronounce "ramyeon", or Korean instant noodles. The fact that ramyeon is often conflated with Japanese ramen — which inspired the invention of the former decades ago — has long been a point of exasperation for many South Koreans and local ramyeon companies, which point to the fact that the Korean adaption has since evolved into something distinct.
It's a small difference — the Korean version is pronounced "rah myun" — but one that it pays to get right in South Korea.
South Korean fans have also been delighted by a pair of animals, Derpy and Sussy, which borrow from jakhodo, a genre of traditional Korean folk painting in which tigers and magpies are depicted side by side, popularised during the Joseon Dynasty in the 19th century.
In the film, Derpy is the fluorescent tiger with goggle eyes that always appears with its sidekick, a three-eyed bird named Sussy.
Though they have long since been extinct, tigers were once a feared presence on the Korean peninsula, at times coming down from the mountains to terrorise the populace. They were also revered as talismans that warded off evil spirits. But much like Derpy itself, jakhodo reimagined tigers as friendlier, often comical beings. Historians have interpreted this as the era's political satire: the magpie, audacious in the presence of a great predator, represented the common man standing up to the nobility.
The movie is peppered with homages to Korean artists throughout history who are seen today as the progenitors of contemporary K-pop. There are apparent nods to the Jeogori Sisters, a three-piece outfit that was active from 1939 to 1945 and is often described as Korea's first girl group, followed by the Kim Sisters, another three-piece that found success in the US, performing in Las Vegas and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Longtime K-pop fans might recognise the demon hunters from the 1990s as
S.E.S., a pioneering girl group formed by S.M. Entertainment, the label behind present-day superstars Aespa and Red Velvet.
For a long time, South Korean audiences have complained about outside depictions of the country as inauthentic and out of touch. Not any more.
"Korea wasn't just shown as an extra add-on as it has been for so long," Kim says.
"KPop Demon Hunters did such a great job depicting Korea in a way that made it instantly recognisable to audiences here." — TCA