K-pop fans surprise US political establishment

ANALYSIS

American media and Washington DC-based pundits were caught by surprise when a new player in the political scene made its presence known last weekend.

K-pop fans embarrassed and stymied the Trump campaign when the candidate's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma drew a paltry crowd 6,200 to the 19,000-seat BOT Center making the indoor venue appear empty.

Tik Tok Tlkers and K-pop fans took partial credit for the poor attendance. They said they registered for tickets using fake names and phone numbers  with no intention of attending the political rally meant to bolster Trump's flagging poll numbers.

Prior to the rally, Trump bragged about the million ticket requests and organizers planned for 100,000 to attend. 

To the uninitiated, political activism and K-pop, the musical genre emanating from South Korea, may seem to be an unlikely marriage.

But operating outside the bubble of politics and East Coast media giants that often sets the tone of national conversation, K-pop fandom has been quietly organizing and have set up a global network that has been spreading the political consciousness of the boy and girl groups known for their choreography and wholesome attractiveness. 

They were able to turn their social media savvy into an effective spamming machine that jammed up white supremacist hashtags and curtailed the attendance at the Tulsa rally.

When Texas police asked for personal videos of looting and violence that might occur during the demonstrations protesting the killing of George Floyd, videos of favorite K-pop groups showed up instead overloading the app.

They did the same thing on the hashtags generated by white supremacists in an attempt to drown out #blacklivesmatter. A counterattack of a flood of videos, fancams and memes of favorite K-pop groups rendered useless the hashtags #whitelivesmatter and #alllivesmatter. 

When BTS donated $1-million to the Black Lives Matter movement, the gorup's ARMY said "let's do this!" and raised a matching amount in less than 24 hours.

The social activism didn't come about overnight.

K-pop groups like BTS told its fans that instead of sending them presents, fans should donate to charities instead, a practice that began before BTS popularity went worldwide. At their concerts, BTS offers bins for donations for local charities.

After a decade of leveraging social media as a way to bring awareness to artists and using organizing fans to raise money for worldwide causes, K-pop fandom of individual groups are built around digital organization on a massive scale.

K-pop fan groups main purpose is to promote their favorite artists and their performances  through social media, by flooding the virtual world with photos, videos, memes, fancams and gossip. As a natural outcome of their tech-smarts and passion, they are in constant contact with each other.

So when it came to online organizing for something other than a concert or a new record release, like political causes, the virtual mechanism was already in place.

In the US, the K-pop fans have expanded beyond the Asian American fanbase to include other people of color and members of the LGBTQ communities. As a result, the political outlook leans to the politically progressive spectrum.

In addition, fans appear to acknowledge the deep roots in Black culture from which their favorite K-pop acts draw their music and choreography. Favoring Black Lives Matter and opposing Trump is not a far stretch for the passionate fans.

Whether they can turn that passion into results in the voting booth remains to be seen. Except in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was running, the youth vote has been largely absent from the polls.

Political experts who could cite treaty minutia or quote verbatim the paragraph and line of court decisions, haven't been able to reach out to this particular demographic.

Through the Internet, K-pop fans -- as representatives of Gen Z -- have shown that young people do have political opinions and care which political candidates are elected. They care about racism and climate change. They want equal justice and world peace. They are angry at the world they are inheriting and disillusioned at what they see a failure of older generations to address the issues they feel are important.

The question remains: are they willing to act on their beliefs.

What's needed is a group like BTS to tell their ARMY in the US to go to the polls this November. An endorsement from K-pop idols could be enough to get this group of voters away from their computers and smartphones in order to stand in line to vote or to think months ahead of time to ask for a mail-in ballot. 

In a strangely fitting way, it would be another sign of the Alice-in-Wonderland world we live in today if K-pop fandom turns out to be the answer to the Russian and Chinese spammers and bots interfering with US elections.