How K-POP Fans Have Changed the Face of Activism

Words by Zoë Mills (she/they)

Content warning: racism

K-pop has taken the world by storm; a global phenomenon currently dominating the musical, fashion, and pop cultural spheres. Korean pop music is known for a myriad of girl-groups and boy-bands, catchy hits, complex dance routines, and dedicated fan-bases. 

K-pop fans have a reputation for being one of the most loyal and extreme fan bases on the planet. Extreme fans are commonly known as ‘stans.’ Regular fans may engage with artists and bands in a casual way, such as listening to their music, going to concerts, or buying merchandise. Stans, however, will engage in these practices excessively, and will dedicate large amounts of their own time towards helping the artist succeed. In practice, this behaviour can look like streaming parties (streaming a new release on repeat for hours in order to help the artist move up on the charts). Stans also often spam-tweet hashtags in relation to their favourite artist; its nearly impossible to go on twitter without seeing #Jungkook is trending at all times. 

While stan culture is often stereotyped as a group of politically-disengaged, obsessive teenage girls, the elements of stan culture and the fan-groups themselves have proved that they are in fact more politically engaged than ever. In recent times, stans have shifted from organsing fans to vote for award-show wins, to mobilising anti-Trump activism and pro-Black-Lives-Matter movements. Love them or loathe them: KPOP stans are one of the new groundbreaking forces within online activism.

In early June 2020, former US President Donald Trump announced that a free rally for his presidential campaign was to be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma later that month. Trump’s team tweeted out a link on his official Twitter page, asking supporters to register for a free seat at the venue. In the days following, thousands of K-Pop stans shared the link on Twitter to implore other stans to register for seats and not actually show up. The overall goal was to embarrass Trump with a rally full of empty seats. Stans worked by quickly re-posting and deleting these posts to keep the plan a secret from Trump supporters. And it worked. Trump’s Chief Campaign manager at the time, Brad Parscale, shared on Twitter that over one million tickets had been requested for the event. On the day of the rally, the venue (BOK Centre in Tulsa) was estimated to hold an immense overflow of supporters, but was very much underwhelmed. Only 6,200 attendees scanned their tickets, which barely filled half of the venue’s 19,000-seat capacity. 

After the hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter appeared on Twitter in 2020 as a counter-movement to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, K-pop stans mobilised themselves again. They drowned out the thread of racist tweets by flooding the hashtag with positive reinforcement for the BLM movement. K-pop group, BTS, took to twitter to release a statement (translated from Korean) sharing their support for the BLM movement, writing, “We stand against racial discrimination. We condemn violence. You, I and we all have the right to be respected. We will stand together.” And thus, the stans flooded Twitter once more. The tweets, also attempting to prevent #WhiteLivesMatter supporters organising counter-rallies, included images of their favourite band members and plenty of “fan-cams”—close-up clips of favourite artists performing live. Stans also attached messages to those searching for information in regards to the movement, with one user tweeting, “#WhiteLivesMatter oH ? you were here to be racist? no thanks, anyways, good try.”

The movement shifted into stans using the platform to support BLM protestors on the frontlines and prevent police brutality. When the Dallas Police Department shared a tweet asking for videos of protest activity, fancams flooded the responses as an attempt to shield protestor’s identities, with one Twitter user tweeting, “stan twitter now's your chance to use them fancams for GOOD please”. The official Dallas Police Department app was also forced to temporarily shut down, after thousands of fancams uploaded caused the app to crash.

So what does this say about the current state of activism? It says that Gen-Z are more politically engaged than ever.

Twitter user @neokr1sta27 told TIME Magazine, “A lot of K-pop fans are from minority groups—Black, Latino, LGBTQ—and social media is a place for them to connect with other people who have had similar experiences. I believe that the sense of community in the K-pop fandom encourages us to stand up for each other’s rights”. With technology now at their advantage, youth are better able to organise and mobilise large groups in a matter of minutes. Moving aspects of grassroots activism and protest into the digital realm makes participation a lot more accessible, and reduces the risk of endangerment or interaction with potential violence—as seen with the police brutality in the BLM movement. Activism is shifting from traditional spaces—such as protest, rallies and marches—into digital spaces. In particular, the role of teenage girls—which are often stereotyped as obsessive, apolitical, and idle, have proven to be a force to be reckoned with; using their efficient organisational skills and global-reach to engage more people in causes. However, these two spaces—digital and traditional activism—cannot work alone; instead, they work together to create even larger and more impactful social movements across the world, and facilitate major political change in the form of utilising passion for good. 

Even if that’s forcing Trump’s legal team to sift through thousands of LOONA fan-cams.