K-Pop Meets Animation: The Rise of KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters has topped Netflix’s global rankings in more than 93 countries since its June release. In two weeks, the film has already been streamed over 33 million times worldwide and is currently second in the global top 10. Netflix’s data suggests that the biggest chunk of interest in KPop Demon Hunters is outside the Korean community. Fans are creating art in tribute, and interest in the film continues to grow in real-time online chatter from users clamouring for a sequel.

Chart-topping success isn’t just limited to the Netflix rankings. Since its June 20 release, the animated film’s two fictional bands, all-female K-pop girl group Huntr/x and their devilishly named arch-rivals Saja Boys, have been racking up real-world music chart success. They have even beaten established chart-topper K-pop girl groups like BTS and Blackpink. In total, seven songs from the film charted on the Billboard Hot 100. On Spotify’s US chart, the film holds first and second place for a fictional artist, a feat that has never been accomplished by any real-world musician to date.

KPop Demon Hunters follows the members of Huntr/x — Korean-American triplets Rumi, Mira, and Zoey — as they live the double life of global K-pop stars by day and demon-hunting superhumans by night. The plot sees the girls clash with their rival group, the Saja Boys, as they sing and dance on stage and rumble in choreographed fight scenes. It also sees the group fighting a range of dark forces, and along the way, the members learn about the importance of friendship, trust, and self-acceptance.

The film has had fans the world over by melding familiar fantasy adventure and action tropes with elements of Korean culture and K-pop, the trendy genre of Korean pop music. The final product that has come together has not disappointed, with audiences enjoying everything from the large dollops of humour and the bonding moments to the live-action stage performances and the injection of fantasy and CGI-enhanced action sequences.

Animated films are popular for a reason: there are virtually no limits to what the viewer can see and hear. The makers of KPop Demon Hunters take this a step further with a mix of eye-catching aesthetics and a fantastical story about good versus evil. Still, it is the music that makes KPop Demon Hunters so infectious. Co-director Maggie Kang, who is Korean-Canadian, cites several K-pop idols from her youth as her inspiration for the film. In the world of KPop Demon Hunters, music is an essential way of fighting evil. Inappropriate Korean words are seamlessly integrated into the dialogue, meaning the music interludes feel organic to the film rather than intrusive.

“It gives the film a surprising level of maturity,” according to Lashai Ben Salmi, a community leader for fostering Korean culture in Europe. “Because it does not feel forced, the viewer gets an impression that these bands exist.” To ensure that high standard of quality, co-director Maggie Kang and director Chris Appelhans collaborated with a Korean label on the project and tapped some of the industry’s biggest names. Teddy Park, a producer who has previously worked with Blackpink, and Lindgren, a Grammy-nominated and -winning producer with credits that include BTS, TWICE, and other K-pop stars, created original songs for the bands in the film that could easily be mistaken for real-world K-pop hits.

In her review of KPop Demon Hunters, Amanda Golka, a Los Angeles-based content creator who doesn’t typically follow K-pop, says she now considers herself a convert: “I have been blasting the soundtrack from Spotify every time I’m in the car,” she says. “It’s amazing how universal music can be.”

Respecting Tradition

Respect for tradition is also playing a role in the film’s success. K-pop music, K-dramas, and Korean cinema are already mainstream in Western countries like the US, Canada, and the UK. KPop Demon Hunters, however, goes a step further with its range of inclusions. The choice of daily living rituals, from dining etiquette to fans lining up outside Seoul’s main Namsan Tower or drinking in public bathhouses, extends beyond the tropes and stereotypes and offers Korean viewers a sense of accurate and respectful representation, rarely seen outside of cinema about Koreans by Korean filmmakers.

The production team visited South Korea to capture these details. From taking photographs of folk villages and learning about their customs to eating in restaurants in Myeongdong or snapping pictures of traditional clothing in the streets, the crew found a new level of authenticity. Even down to the animation choices: the English-speaking characters in the film’s final cut still have their animated lips match the mouth movements of the Korean pronunciation, and their facial reactions are true to Korean style and cadence. Some English words are replaced with Korean ones, while some Korean words and lyrics are left as they are.

The production also captured an accurate depiction of K-pop fandom in general, says Golka. Everything from fan signing events to the shimmer of colour sticks, from Kalgunmu (perfectly synchronised dance routines) to Korean fan signage, is rendered in a way that Korean viewers find familiar. The film, for example, makes use of an eclectic range of in-universe K-pop music styles, dance moves, and even characters that reference different eras or groups, but it does not focus on one specific group or style of K-pop.