I’m not your unnie

Hallyu (한류), also known as the Korean culture wave, refers to the popularization of Korean culture outside of Korea, with things like tteokbokki, K-dramas, mukbangs, and hanboks coming to mind. One of the most notable elements of Korean culture is the music, with K-pop being the most widely known genre globally. K-pop groups are composed of idols: people in their teens and twenties who have gone through years of training at entertainment companies to polish their singing and dancing. The music is influenced by sounds from hip-hop, R&B, jazz, rock, EDM, and more. With every comeback, these groups perform their title tracks on music shows in front of crowds of adoring fans.

K-pop started to grow in popularity in the 1990s with the hip-hop trio Seo Taiji and Boys, who were the first to experiment with modern, American-influenced pop music. Their breakout into the Korean music market influenced other groups to experiment with various styles of music, as well. H.O.T. debuted in 2005 as the first-ever idol group with singing, rapping, and dancing in their performances and from that point onwards, idols would be required to master all three performance elements. At the start of the 21st century, K-pop began to go beyond Korean listeners, as BoA topped music charts in Japan in the mid-2000s. The genre soon became available on international streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify, and, by the end of 2012, PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was the first ever video on YouTube to hit one billion views. BTS was the first group to both successfully and consistently break into the English-language market in 2017, and as of 2020, they are arguably the most popular K-pop group in the world. The septet are the first group since The Beatles to have three albums reach number one on Billboard within a year, the first Korean act to present an award at the Grammys, and most recently earned their first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart with their all-English single “Dynamite,” making them the first all-Korean act ever to do so. There’s no denying that K-pop is now more global, popular, and widely accessible than ever. 

Being Korean Canadian, I grew up listening to K-pop regularly; songs by Girls Generation and Super Junior were regularly played at home, and my sister and I would replicate the dances to the best of our abilities. I hadn’t even considered K-pop as something out of the ordinary until I entered grade school and realized that people listened to Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber instead of Miss A and SHINee—it just wasn’t super popular among non-Koreans. High school began around the same time that groups like Red Velvet and GOT7 debuted and made themselves known to audiences around the world; the first time I heard a K-pop song played in my community was when a group of students covered “Dope” by BTS in a high school dance performance. To say that I was thrilled was an understatement—it was the first time that I had heard a song with Korean lyrics being played outside of my home. It was so rare to see East Asians represented in media that is typically saturated with white people, and it was a breath of fresh air to be able to look up to people who looked like I did. 

However, I soon realized that the appreciation of K-pop often comes hand-in-hand with the appropriation of Korean culture, and, in more severe instances, Koreaboos. Koreaboos are people who are so obsessed with Korean culture that they reject their own culture, adopt Korean culture, and call themselves Korean. They give themselves Korean names, use bits and pieces of the Korean language they’ve picked up, and idealize Korean people to build a fantasy surrounding them (wanting to date them, dreaming about moving to Korea, etc.). The origin of this behaviour is fetishization: it reduces an entire country of people to a false narrative and groups them into a stereotype. A non-Korean girl once told me that she “was Korean on the inside and had a Korean soul.” She then told me that she was probably more Korean than I was because she could understand some of the language; I don’t see how this is possible. 

This is “yellow fever”—the fetishization of Asian culture primarily by white men towards Asian women—and its racism. Wanting to date Koreans or claiming that Korean is the “best type of Asian” erases the diversity of Korea. No one would think that all Canadian men look like Ryan Reynolds or all Canadian women look like Rachel McAdams, so why would all Korean people look like K-pop idols? In the comment sections of Asian creators’ TikToks, it’s so common to see dozens of comments comparing them to an idol or calling them unnie and oppa. It’s one thing to genuinely think that someone resembles a celebrity and another thing to compare the first Asian person you see to a K-pop idol on the basis of their race. Comments like these can seem appealing and flattering on the surface, but they’re a form of generalization, and it feels really gross to hear them. Asian fetishization is built upon colonization; it’s a form of erasure that forces a diverse group of people into a single category. 

Asian fetishization and the romanticization of Korea also glosses over some negative aspects of Korea: colourism runs rampant, with paler skin being the ultimate standard of beauty; women’s rights and feminism is still somehow a matter up for debate (don’t even get me started on LGBTQ+ rights); and suicide is the leading cause of death for young people. For people to gloss over these issues and cherry-pick the elements that they like is incredibly problematic; it shows that their interest isn’t in the culture for what it is, but in what they want it to be. In order to fully immerse oneself in a culture, it needs to be understood that there are problems within it as well. To construct one’s view of Korea off of dramas and idols is highly unrealistic, and should anyone move to Korea with that sort of understanding, they’d be met with a rude awakening; check out the number of “storytime” videos by creators on YouTube who talk about how Korea wasn’t like what they expected it to be. It’s incredibly illogical to believe that Korea is a flawless utopia. 

Being a member of a racial group in a country where you’re a minority often involves trying to assimilate into the culture of the majority group. I wanted Lunchables instead of banchan for school lunches as a kid, and felt the stares of my classmates when I brought in gimbap for my school potluck instead of pasta like the other kids. I heard my sister stop calling my mom eomma when she was with friends. I scrolled through lists of baby names for countless hours on end throughout my junior and senior years of high school because job applicants with Asian names are 45 to 60 percent less likely to hear back for an interview compared to their counterparts with Anglo names. 

I have been treated differently due to the colour of my skin, the shape of my eyes, and the language rolling off my tongue. I’ve been yelled at in public to speak English because speaking Korean supposedly “makes me less Canadian”; have received unsolicited comments about getting surgery for my flat nose to help me breathe better (I can breathe fine, thanks); have been suggested by relatives to fix my monolids into double eyelids; and have been called “a polite oriental” on one rather uncomfortable occasion. Therefore, it baffles me to see Koreans and Korean culture being fetishized to the extent that they are today; how can you pick and choose elements of an entire culture to love and celebrate while completely glossing over the unpleasant experiences that come along with said culture? 

People with yellow fever, or Koreaboos, can participate in the fox eye makeup trend and create almond-shaped eyes that Asians have been relentlessly bullied for, give themselves poorly constructed Asian names, and change their lives to match the image they have of Koreans. At the end of the day, they’ll be able to take off that perfectly constructed costume woven with the selected bits of my culture that they love. I, along with other Koreans and Asians as a whole, can’t do that. We don’t have the privilege of only celebrating the cool and trendy parts of our culture without experiencing the discrimination and racism that come along with being a member of our respective ethnic groups. People like Koreaboos want to be Korean so badly based on fantasies from K-pop and Korean dramas, but would that still be the case if they had to deal with the cultural issues, the impacts of the model minority myth, and most recently, the slew of attacks and violence caused by the incorrect perception that Chinese people are spreaders of COVID-19? I’m going to guess that they wouldn’t. My food was frowned at and my language was the punchline of a joke, but the minute that my culture became mainstream, it was something to obsess over and appropriate. I’m not a trend, my culture isn’t an accessory, and I’m not your Korean fetish. 

At the end of the day, I love being Korean and consider it a huge part of my identity. However, I also acknowledge that my culture isn’t perfect and has flaws like any other culture. It’s so important to be mindful of the ways that we consume elements of other cultures and how we choose to interpret them. I’ll gladly talk to you about my favourite ITZY choreography, the jjigae I love the most, and the meaning behind my name. It’s not shameful or a bad thing to be interested in Korean culture (it is really cool). It’s only a problem when people put Koreans on a pedestal and fawn over us solely for our race, which is a practice rooted in yellow fever and Asian fetishes. The increasing globalization of K-pop is a good way to begin to practice the appreciation of Korean culture, rather than the fetishization and romanticization of it.