The Soft Power of BTS

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critics at Large – “The Soft Power of BTS”

The New Yorker | March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Critics at Large, staff writers Vincent Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz dive into the global phenomenon that is BTS and the broader impact of K-pop. They discuss the band's new album Arirang, their surprising journey through a mandatory military hiatus, the mechanics of K-pop fandom, and the profound way Korean culture has permeated worldwide pop culture—a phenomenon often referred to as the “Korean Wave” or hallyu. The hosts bring a collective yet outsider curiosity to BTS, analyzing the transformative power of their music, the machinery behind their cultural influence, and the nuances of their relationship with fans.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ubiquity of K-Pop and BTS

• Opening Discussion: The episode opens with the hosts talking about how BTS songs have become “sticky,” omnipresent parts of their daily lives, even for those who don't consider themselves active fans.
  • “I just thought that I came programmed with that song. But no, it’s actually a BTS song.” —Alex Schwartz (02:42)
• Cultural Saturation: The hosts reflect on K-pop’s pervasiveness, from Grammy performances to little kids on playgrounds and even parents attending movie premieres of “K-Pop Demon Hunters.”
  • "[...] even if we're not aware of it, it's like opening the tap and what comes out is K-pop [...]" —Nomi Fry (05:51)

2. BTS’s New Album Arirang and Their Return

• Military Service & Hiatus:
  • BTS’s return after a staggered, state-mandated military service was highly anticipated and treated as a global event, complete with an album drop and a Netflix documentary.
  • “The album release has been nothing short of a worldwide event, a news event, a geopolitical event.” —Vincent Cunningham (04:38)
• Album Impressions:
  • The hosts are surprised by the emotional and musical depth of the new album, noting darker and more mature tones.
  • “Songs like Merry Go Round and Aliens, which were a little bit, like, to me, moodier and darker...I can see it being a little bit sexier than I expected.” —Nomi Fry (14:49)
  • Body to Body and Swim are highlighted as particularly “sticky” and resonant tracks.

3. The Mechanics and Dynamics of K-Pop Fandom

• Fandom Community:
  • The “ARMY” is discussed as both devoted and highly organized, driving streaming numbers and enacting communal rituals in YouTube comments sections.
  • “They're working hard. They're ants at the ant farm. They're like, we got this fam. Remember, don't keep streaming Swim. Don't do it on a loop. Cause they're gonna know...They’re all working together.” —Alex Schwartz (29:10)
• Parasocial Relationships:
  • The hosts discuss how BTS’s management cultivates calculated “authenticity” and accessibility with fans, comparing the dynamic to emergent trends in AI companionship.
  • “They were still supposed to be figures upon whom you could project every fantasy, which is the heart of this.” —Alex Schwartz (27:04)

4. Comparison with Past Pop Phenomena

• Beatlemania Parallels:
  • The show draws lines between BTS and earlier youth-culture icons like the Beatles and Backstreet Boys, as well as the commercialization of teenage identity.
  • “Music, on the one hand, and image making on the other...BTS against the backdrop of that history is interesting to me because one of these new terms is called emerging adulthood.” —Vincent Cunningham (31:41)
  • The extreme fandom and its potential for toxicity is examined, noting both historic and present dangers.
• Controlled Evolution:
  • Unlike the Beatles, whose artistic direction drastically shifted due to fan pressure and personal growth, BTS’s transformation appears far more calculated and risk-averse.
  • "They really can't risk doing something that would be alienating. So this fan service thing, I did find myself watching them up on that stage thinking, are they going to be doing this at 45, at 50?” —Alex Schwartz (36:12)

5. The Soft Power of Korean Culture

• Korean Wave (Hallyu):
  • Korean culture's worldwide appeal—from beauty products and food to pop music—is presented as a remarkable example of national soft power.
  • “It just seems to me so interesting to have culture play such a obvious and traceable role in the rising visibility of a nation and its culture.” —Vincent Cunningham (38:54)
• Aspirational Effects:
  • The irony of American audiences increasingly viewing Korea as aspirational is explored, pointing to the effectiveness of Korea’s global cultural strategy, especially as contrasted with America’s political messiness.
  • “It seems orderly...the government supports the arts...Oh, I would like to…” —Nomi Fry (39:59)
  • “It is such a sign of how well the soft power is working that you’re saying that.” —Alex Schwartz (40:40)

6. The Pressures and Costs of Global Pop Stardom

• Fan Pressure and Idol Burnout:
  • Intense pressure on idols to be ever-accessible and positive for their fans is interrogated, with references to tragic consequences, including the suicides of K-pop stars.
  • “There is an enormous amount of pressure. There is national pride pressure. There’s an enormous amount of economic pressure.” —Alex Schwartz (41:26)
  • “You're kind of, like, in a fishbowl of surveillance and attention. And that has broken many over the years.” —Nomi Fry (45:52)
• Managed Vulnerability:
  • The group discusses how BTS and their label “inject a little bit of the poison”—offering hints of vulnerability and struggle in a highly controlled way, likening it to a vaccine that prevents true chaos or breakdown.
  • “By making that part of the show, we can sort of more efficiently, tamely present this show and keep it going for longer.” —Vincent Cunningham (46:59)
  • “It’s like a vaccine, right? So you inject a little bit of the poison.” —Nomi Fry (47:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On K-pop's ubiquity:
  “Even if we're not aware of it, it's like opening the tap and what comes out is K-pop or just generally kind of like ambiently Korean, you know, water coming out of the tap.” —Nomi Fry (05:51)
• On the new BTS album:
  "After, like, one listen, I was already like, you know...body to body, you know, I was already like, it's so crazy, like, how sticky it is." —Nomi Fry (13:58)
• Parallels with the Beatles:
  “The fandom changed the Beatles. They pushed the Beatles into the studio...And that is one of the most fascinating...progressions from childhood to adulthood that I think we have on record.” —Alex Schwartz (35:05)
• On the cost of celebrity:
  “When you are a very, very successful famous person, you're kind of in a fishbowl of surveillance and attention. And that has broken many over the years.” —Nomi Fry (45:52)
• On BTS's musical influences:
  “To me, very close facsimile of a pop song that I really like, Nelly Furtado’s Promiscuous Girl...That is still important to pop music.” —Vincent Cunningham (17:58)
• On fan culture as community:
  “There's a kind of triangulation...being part of the army with BTS as the...third thing. But there is something a little defanged about it.” —Nomi Fry (30:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:42] Discovering BTS’s cultural DNA
• [04:38] BTS’s new album as a global event
• [07:57] Hosts admit to being K-pop outsiders (but curious!)
• [09:59] Intensity and reach of K-pop fandom in youth culture
• [12:01] Discussion of Arirang, military hiatus, and group reunion
• [16:41] Listening to "Body to Body" – musical analysis
• [19:13] Album high points and musical evolution
• [23:09] The Netflix documentary: controlled access and “boringness”
• [27:04] Fandom mechanics and calculated authenticity
• [31:41] Comparison to earlier pop youth culture (Beatles, Motown)
• [38:54] The Korean Wave and global cultural ambition
• [41:26] Pressures of soft power and idol responsibility
• [45:52] The burden of fame and the management of celebrity
• [47:01] Vulnerability as “vaccine” and the containment of chaos

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Tone and Style

The conversation is lively yet analytical, marked by the hosts’ willingness to own their outsider status, their awe at K-pop’s global reach, and their wry humor about their own “latent Army” tendencies. They balance the joy of pop with rigorous cultural critique, referencing everything from consumer culture and AI to international politics, always circling back to the music’s remarkable “stickiness.”

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Conclusion

This episode offers a thorough, insightful look at BTS and K-pop’s unprecedented global influence, examining both the sparkling surface and the complex machinery behind the phenomenon. With humor, honesty, and cultural depth, the Critics at Large lay bare how Korea is winning hearts and minds worldwide—one undeniably catchy song at a time.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Nomi Fry]

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[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

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[Vincent Cunningham]

yorker we've been listening to a lot of K pop recently. Let's face it, K pop BTS out the gills. Which song has been stuck in your head for the past 48 hours?

[Nomi Fry]

Swim, swim. Water falling off your skin. Swim, swim. I just wanna dive. I just wanna dive. Sorry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

I couldn't help but join in, of

[Nomi Fry]

course, because it is undeniably sticky.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sticky.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's sticky.

[Nomi Fry]

It's the new single Swim from bts.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

It is.

[Unidentified Advertiser]

Wow.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's really the hit.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, it's the first single from their new album just released.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I just mean to my ears, you

[Nomi Fry]

know, to your ears.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's the hit.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Is there another favorite in the room or was that was the sing along indicative of a mutual swim love?

[Alex Schwartz]

Definitely. I'm into swim right now. I've been listening a little bit too. Cause I. I am in the starsnut

[Nomi Fry]

oh, that's old school dynamite. Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which I did not know was BTS by the way.

[Alex Schwartz]

So same when you learn that song is by BTS, as I did, I would say within the last 48 hours, you say, ah, this thing that has actually become part of my DNA. Another BTS reference for those in the know was in fact implanted there by this mega successful Korean boy band. I just thought that I came programmed with that song. But no, it's actually a BTS song. This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

Hi, I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Now, last week, something very big happened in the music world. I can't stress how big. If you know anything at all about K pop, and frankly, even if you don't, you're already aware of who bts. Goddamn right.

[Nomi Fry]

So watch me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The group, as we know, is made up of seven members and I'm just gonna start listing accomplishments. They just roll one after the other. They have over 104 billion streams worldwide. They're the best selling Asian act ever, and arguably the most popular band ever, like, of all time. In 2022, they announced that they were gonna take a break so that they could, you know, casually complete the mandatory South Korean military service. It's been nearly four years since they went on this break. And last week they dropped their comeback album, Arirang.

[Alex Schwartz]

I need, I need the whole standing in the trunk. Put your phone down. Let's get on the front. I got my eyes on the roll in the front. The vibe is high feet, big blunt.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The vibe is how I left the building. The album release has been nothing short of a worldwide event, a news event, a geopolitical event. There was also a comeback concert live streamed on Netflix. Perhaps you saw it. A new documentary about the group is about to land on Netflix. And all this is to say it felt like the right time to do an episode about K pop, which is today absolutely everywhere, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah. I feel like most of pop culture is somehow. Somehow leads to K pop. And frankly, I've been a little bit intimidated by the idea of engaging with it because I've just felt so out of the loop. And then of course, I realized I'm not as out of the loop as I thought. All of these songs that are swirling in my head or that I seem to have become ambiently, intimately aware of are K pop songs. K pop demon Hunters. I've, I've. I have watched it. I can't wait to discuss it. K pop at the Oscars. We all live blog the Oscars. And I was very clued into Leonardo DiCaprio just waving his little light bulb just from the front row. Gamely, gamely waving that thing.

[Nomi Fry]

Just gamely waving. Because you know what? This is now the air we breathe, basically. I mean, even if we're not aware of it, it's like opening the tap and what comes out is K pop or just generally kind of like ambiently Korean, you know, water coming out of the tap. I mean, I'm just thinking even about, like Korean beauty, the notion of we're now looking to Korea in regards to, like, how we look, how we take care of ourselves, you know, this is something fairly new but already totally ubiquitous, even if we're not thinking about it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, yep. And so accordingly, today we're diving into this world of BTS and K pop. We're talking about the new album and the intense BTS fandom and about the meteoric rise of K pop more broadly. This phenomenon has been described as this word hallyu, or the Korean wave. Almost as if it's temporary. But, you know, the way we experience pop phenomena is that sometimes they just win. The question I have is when does a wave, a bubble, a moment, just become a new reality? So that's today from critics at large, the soft power of bts. You know, sometimes we do this. We jump into. None of us are experts on a thing. We come with a friendly curiosity to a world none of us. I'll just. Spoiler alert. None of us are on our regular subway commutes just jamming the BTs. Can we concede?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. Is this your play for us not to get assassinated by the fans?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm just saying, except for where you're friendly curiosity. Except us for what we're. We come in peace, strangers in a strange land. You know what I mean?

[Alex Schwartz]

Would you say we're aliens?

[Nomi Fry]

We are aliens. And we are also animals.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Aliens. We're animals. We are asking you.

[Nomi Fry]

We're butter and dynamite.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To accept us body to body, body to body into and swim with us in these new waters.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So given that kind of subject position to start off with, guys, was there a moment when you realized the absolute new ubiquity of K pop? How it's reached our culture with a huge bang and remains in that space?

[Alex Schwartz]

I would say that the K pop demon hunters moment was when I really understood how deeply K pop is part of American pop culture and starting at a very young age for kids that I of course, have known about K pop and the music of K pop and the very devoted fandom of K pop and how international it is for a long time. And some of the songs, definitely, because they're played on the radio, they're around, have wormed their way into my ears. But the huge ecstatic reaction to K Pop Demon Hunters, I think really brought it home for me. And I will just give an example. As recently as yesterday, I was on the playground and I saw one little girl, I would put her at five, at the absolute oldest, was wearing a K Pop Demon Hunter sweatshirt. And another little girl was doing an imaginary play about K Pop Demon Hunters and her dad was like, oh, are you a pop star? So that's when it really became clear to me that it's absolutely enormous. Yeah, not yesterday, but that's just an example.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, yeah. And I feel like it's been growing and growing, but I remember a couple years ago I heard of a daughter of an acquaintance who asked for her bat Mitzvah present to be taken to Korea, to Seoul, because she is so obsessed with K pop. And I was like, oh, this is like, I guess this is kind of like the new Mecca for, you know, these young people, very young people, children who are absolutely not Korean but are pulled like moths to a flame to this, like new culture to learn about it, be curious about it and obsessed with it ultimately.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. For me, I had a student a while back write a piece about the singer Suli, part of the girl group FX, and tragically took her own life back in 2019. And the essay that this student wrote for me, which is really beautiful, talked about the intense fan culture. This really outspoken, strong seeming young woman was sort of brought to her knees by so many eyes and ears. And eventually it's sort of like, you know, the tippy tap of angry fingers from fans. I'd known about the popularity, but I hadn't realized that it was such a hothouse. That really, really opened my eyes. But, you know, it's everywhere. I mean, to me, if I think about pop music, the pop music, you know, back in the day, you know, NSync, Backstreet Boys, the only archetype for that extant today is K Pop, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, this was actually when we were live blogging the Oscars and I heard the song golden from K Pop Demon Hunters that won best song. We're going up, up, up.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's our moment, you know, together we're glowing. Gonn.

[Nomi Fry]

I thought it was Carly Rae Jepsen. Like, I knew the song, but I was like, oh, I'm so glad Carly Rae Jepsen is back. Like, this is a great song. And then I was like, oh, wait a second. You know, I didn't know that this is what it was, but of course it made complete sense once I realized that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I mean, the same thing happened to me with that. We already talked about this. But that, to me, that's just like target music. And I was like, oh, that's bts. So, I mean, it doesn't even. It doesn't code in any sort of ethnic nationalistic anyway. It's just music that's on when you go to Forever 21 and that's like, to me, that's victory.

[Nomi Fry]

That is victory.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So, okay, let's go.

[Nomi Fry]

That outlived Forever 21.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There you go.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Let's turn, though, to the new BTS album, which we all have now listened to. Arirang. This is the much anticipated new release from BTS after their much reported upon hiatus. They've been gone. Not all together. They didn't go all in together, but

[Nomi Fry]

they staggered their military service, their mandatory military service. So there will always be some BTS members not in the military. So the relationship with the fans, there will always be some sort of umbilical cord connecting the fans and at least some of the members to the extended universe. Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I think there was also a big question about whether they would reunite as a group. There was a press conference when they were announcing that they needed to take this leave. And they're all sitting around. It's called the 2022 BTS Festa. They're all sitting around a table. I'll just show you guys. They're enjoying some food and wine here at the festa. There are, of course, balloons in various shades of purple. The BTS their favorite color. Yeah. They are talking about taking a break and their feelings about it and the kind of. The leader of the group RM is saying, we're almost 30 now. Our lives have changed a lot. I've changed a lot in the last 10 years, and I don't know what I want. There was this kind of heartfelt moment where it was clear they were gonna go follow their own paths and make their own music and try out their independent pop star Personas. Like many a solo artist from boy bands before Kauf, Justin Timberlake, and now they've reunited. They've come back, they're here.

[Nomi Fry]

It is their return.

[Alex Schwartz]

They've Returned.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What'd you guys think? First listen?

[Nomi Fry]

So, okay, I feel like I had a kind of. Maybe a little bit of. Of a sense that I wouldn't like it or like that it would be. That it wouldn't be my. My bag necessarily. But then when I listened to it, I was like, wait a second. I like pop. After, like, one listen, I was already like, you know. Yeah, like body to body, you know, I was already like, it's so crazy, like, how sticky it is. Songs like Merry Go Round and Aliens, which were a little bit, like, to me, moodier and darker. I think that surprised me. I guess I wasn't expecting that maybe, you know, kind of naively. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to listen to, so I was like, oh, I can see it being kind of a little bit sexier than I expected, I guess I would say.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Was it sexier for you as well, Alex, than you anticipated?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I've been on a bit of a journey with this album with Arirang, because before I. Before it was released, I had no idea that rap was a big thing for bts. So I turned on this album and was very surprised to hear Body to Body. And I was like, oh, they're rapping. Where's my sweet harmonies? Where's my high floaty voice? How interesting. So I paused the album. We had screeners to this Netflix documentary, the Return, which is a new release that's part of the whole album drop package. And because it shows the making of the album and creates the smallest modicum of drama around whether they're going to evolve as artists, whether they're going to reach this new maturity. And then the biggest theme of all, that they're going to really foreground Korean culture with the name Aririrang for their album title that makes reference to this Korean beloved Korean folk song, Arirang. Suddenly I was like, oh, it has a narrative. Okay. That made it much more enjoyable for me, I think, than if I was just doing the music. And in that I understand the bigger BTS project, which is of course, not at all just about the tracks. It is about BTS as people and bts and their journey and their gelling as a group and where they're going. I was. I kind of. I get what the bigger narrative is doing for it. Vincent, I wanna hear what. Let's get deeper into the album. I wanna hear what your thoughts are. Very curious.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So it's interesting to. Pop music is always where you go to see which sounds are still alive, what's still happening, and what from your personal history is still touching people. So we've talked a lot about Body to Body. Can I play the first couple strains of it?

[Alex Schwartz]

Please, Please.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm now thirsty to hear it.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's been too many seconds since your last.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, it's been like an hour since I last listed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So it's got these kitchen sink, almost. Almost go, go. Like sort of almost ambient drums. It sounds like it be played on a washboard and on a. You know, on pots and pans. It's got these for me, very weakened, like minor key bottom. And of course, it's sampling this Arirang song, which for me really is resonant. Right. These guys who I agree they're absence, as we understand it, is purely nationalistic in character, purely connected to the state. And all of a sudden a patriotic song. And this is how they come back as people who have gone through what any young man of their age would have gone through, Totally connected to the spirit of their country. And here they come with this. And then this song does just explode into a. To me, very close facsimile of a pop song that I really like. Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous Girl.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, the Timbaland produced.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It sounds like. It sounds like Timbaland. You hear the box. There you go.

[Alex Schwartz]

You already know there you go.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So, like, that's good for me to know that the mid-2000s.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Timbaland.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Bop. Like that is still important to pop music. And all through this, I was listening for that. There are these haunting drums that sound like they were recorded in a big warehouse. As one of the signature sounds of this album, which reminds me of recent Justin Bieber, his collaborations with the genius producer and singer Dijon. There's a lot just kind of swimming back and forth in this music. And I think it's interesting a lot of people have said this. It's kind of split into two halves, the album. And I think Swim is when it really turns on for me. Body to body notwithstanding, Swim, as we've talked about. I also like the song Normal. Do you guys remember this one?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

I love this.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Moody, hard drums, right? Vocals cutting through. I was like, this is when the album turned on for me. I was like, yeah, sing it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's not an album I'm gonna listen to over and over. But I was like, I get how if I grew up with this group, this album would sound kind of like a breakthrough to me. In a minute, we delve even deeper into the world of K pop critics at large. From The New Yorker will be right back.

[Nicole Phelps]

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[Vincent Cunningham]

All right, so we've been talking about Arirang, the new album by the Boyz bts. Another part of the release cycle for the album is a new Netflix documentary about the group. Uh, it's called the Return. And there was also a livestream concert also on Netflix. Did you guys catch one or either of those? I saw the, the doc. I've got thoughts. What'd you guys see and what did you think?

[Nomi Fry]

I found it very interesting. Like I found the, the documentary Return interesting in how it kind of like follows and doesn't follow the kind of conventional narrative of kind of a behind the scenes, like making of an album documentary or just even not necessarily just making of an album, but just like what it means to be in a band and kind of like let us glimpse behind the curtain. You know, there's a scene where they like all watch like, you know, old videos of them. Like in, you know, they started in 2013. Some of them were still teenagers and they're like, they say, oh, you know, jimin, like you're a full man now, look at, you're a baby now. Or you know, that, that kind of thing. And you know, they're all sharing this house in LA and while they're recording the album and they like go to the beach together, they're horsing around, they're like jumping in the pool. You know, they're doing all of this stuff. You see them in the studio, like wearing like sweats, sweatsuits and you know, not all dressed up like in their, like, you know, best and so on. But there is something about it that feels like entirely abstract. You know, often K pop stars from what I've read towards this episode and just from watching this and kind of like, yeah, reading a little bit around it, are encouraged, if not to full on take a vow of chastity, then to not reveal, you know, romantic relationships they might be having, et cetera. Now these guys are like now in their early 30s, most of them early to mid-30s. And yet there is this complete kind of disconnect from what it means to be a man in the world, you know. And so the romance part of it is just one part. It can also be family, it can also be friendships outside of kind of anything outside of the bubble of the BTS group in the making of this album. Those are kind of the broad strokes, and it remains broad strokes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I want to know what you thought, Vincent.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, this documentary is psychotically boring.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Nothing happens in it. The only interesting things are, number one, the extent to which they are open about the fact that this is a really kind of focus group process and there are people who are not musicians coming into their studio and imposing prerogatives and demands on them. It should be global. Here's an idea about what the theme should be. And twice in the film, there is a nod to the fans. Once at the very beginning, they're out on the beach and one of them is doing a sort of selfie ish video. And we see cut to the voices of the fans being typed into some sort of. It's clear that they're live streaming. It might be an Instagram live, it might be something else like that. Similarly, my kink.

[Nomi Fry]

So cute. You know, we love you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah. Later on there's another moment where that happens. So, okay. We are getting this sort of intrusion from the outside, this sense of being watched, some updates about, you know, some videos of them going away for their military service or coming back. But it is unbelievable the extent to which this hour long documentary, nothing happens and nobody says anything beyond this is gonna be hard. I hope it goes well. And that's it. It is like psychotically still and turgid and nothing happens and nobody says anything unreal.

[Alex Schwartz]

May I build on that?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay. So I actually think that the total boringness of it is fascinating because the first thing that I understood while I watched this Dull as Dirt documentary was Dull as dishwasher, was that some people, and by some, I mean probably millions of them, are going to lap this thing up. They're going to go to this, there are many millions, and they're going to study every single angle of everyone's face. They're gonna try to see, oh, what was he eating, what was he like, what video game is he playing in his downtime? Because that whole culture of obsession is very, very much a part of pop culture in general and certainly of bts. I learned a really interesting thing from our dear colleague and collaborator Alex Barish's piece about Chairman Bang, who created BTS and created the label. This is a fantastic piece that I really recommend to everyone listening who wants to know more about this. It's called the K Pop King and it was published in October of 2024. The whole thing about Chairman Bang is that he wanted to BTS to have this more authentic communication with fans. They ran their own Twitter account. They were allowed to communicate with people. They were not kept in total isolation. That said, they were still supposed to be Figures upon whom you could project every fantasy, which is heart of this. So you see them, much like with the album itself, striking this note between vulnerability, a kind of calculated vulnerability. There's a lot of talk in the movie about how anxious they are that the songs won't come together and that they won't pull this off. It also really, really prepped me to watch the Netflix livestreamed concert. After every few songs, the group would pause and speak directly to the audience and again perform that kind of vulnerability. Like, one of them said, I worried a lot before standing here. Seeing you all makes me so grateful and happy. And then another one said, hello, Army. Talking to you all right now like this makes me so choked up and grateful. Like, it was a real performance of this kind of emotion of nervousness, but relief upon return. There's a lot of that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And then I was listening more closely to the lyrics also. And the love expressed in these songs is for the fans, the BTS army, and the relationship with Army. I just want to throw one other thing into the pot before I, you know, before I mic drop another BDS reference, okay. Which is speaking of these videos. I was watching the video for Swim. All these videos, and everybody in the comments is part of BTS Army. The huge fan base showing up to try to make the videos go to a billion views, 2 billion views. And they're all working. They're working hard. They're ants at the ant farm. They're like, we got this fam. Remember, don't keep streaming Swim. Don't do it on a loop. Cause they're gonna know. They're not gonna count those view. Let's try to, you know, at the same time make dynamite. Rack up more views and then come back. And so all of it is everyone cheering each other on in the views. And yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm. Am I Army now? Let me get this more views before I, like, have to tap my head and remember, I'm frankly not Army.

[Nomi Fry]

But it's a kind of triangulation, right? In a way, being part of the army with BTS as the. You know, it's like they're talking. These people are talking to each other in the comments, essentially, and they're saying, like, me and you are gonna, like, promote him. I mean, not him, them. There's something. There's a kind of, like, relationality there as well. You know, I'm reading the Judy Blume biography now, and there's a thing, the

[Alex Schwartz]

new biography by Mark Oppenheimer.

[Nomi Fry]

By Mark Oppenheimer. Yes. Which I'm enjoying very much. And there's a thing about how Judy and her friend, when they were like in ninth grade or something, were dating the same boy and they weren't jealous of each other. They would compare notes, they would be like, how many times did he kiss you on the date? How many times did he kiss you? You know, what was it like? You know, they were kind of like relating to each other through this, like the, you know, this third thing of this guy who was like important but like there was something about the creating of a community which was just as important. Like among, in this case among the fans, among the army. It feels like Alex, what you were saying about like army kind of talking in the comments and kind of like, and saying, oh, he's so cute, he's so beautiful, you know. But there is something a little defanged about it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's interesting because if you think about previous manias or youth related manias, the sort of mid century twins of like the Beatles on one hand and the Motown machine on the other, and how those accompanied what now I guess sociologists call the invention of the teenager, that there was a whole developmental area that needed to be defined. You know, all of a sudden there are labor laws and we can't treat children like adults. And all of a sudden your teenage years had to be something, had to have some content and some shape and some kind of an arc, a story to tell and music on the one hand and image making on the other. Think of like the Jackson 5, think of the early Beatles image had a role to play. And I think BTS against the backdrop of that history is interesting to me because one of these new terms is called emerging adulthood. And it's been sort of tracked neurologically where it's like the late teens up until almost your 30s is this new category of, you know, I'm still there. You might live in a big city and be sort of nominally independent, but there's still a kind of really identity creation, finding a place in society is happening. And really this is where it's so interesting to me that BTS is the result of, let's face it, like a government, the South Korean government saying we're going to invest in this in the way that old America invested in Hollywood and invest in K pop, in this music and in the creation of these groups. It's almost saying if you were the most cynical read of it could be no, we need to model this developmental bridge for a whole society. We're worried that the safe passage between childhood and adulthood is again, imperiled. And so we need to get some models in there for this, make it safe. And so that's why it's so interesting to me, this whole thing of this emphasis on anxiety and worry. Are we okay? And you know what? If we almost like in the true patient analyst mode, we created a projecting screen, these kind of weirdly neutral, kind of almost bland figures onto which you could project your struggle to emerge into adulthood. And these guys are gonna ferry you through their music, but also through their appearance in a certain way into this new phase of your life.

[Nomi Fry]

Totally.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's so Vincent, I think that is so interesting as a take and I love it. I'm going with you. But there's one aspect that you didn't touch on of both the current K pop moment and also the mid century moment in the creation of the teenager, which is of course, as a commercial proposition, the creation of the teenager. Suddenly you have all these kids sort of grown up, sort of kids who had money to spend. And so, boom, let's spend money on this. Here we go. This has been making me think back to Beatlemania. You know, I've heard some weird takes. I think people are forgetting a little bit the dark sides of Beatlemania because I've heard some weird takes being like. The difference is that the K pop and the BTS fans can be way too intense and can really. They can be very aggressive, which I think is true. But the Beatles fans, I guess because they went to concerts together, they understood they were in community together. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What about all the crazy conspiracy theories? What about Paul is dead? What about John Lennon getting assassinated in front of the Dakota in 1980? What about the super, super dark sides of fandom that came out there? And of course, the most stark difference, I would say, well before John Lennon's death between BTS reaction to its fandom and the Beatles reaction to its fandom is that the fandom changed the Beatles. They changed the music. They pushed the Beatles into the studio. They stopped touring in 1965. Exactly. They did not wanna perform live. They were done with it. And they went into the studio and they went on a very, very different individual journey as artists and emerged at the end of the 60s utterly different than they had gone in at the beginning of the 60s. And that is one of the most fascinating, like, progressions from childhood to adulthood that I think we have on record watching what happened between the moptop era and 1970 when Let It Be comes out. And the band breaks up. And what was interesting to me about some of this stuff we've been watching around BTS and Vincent, you touched on this before, was how calculated this sense of evolution needs to be. They keep saying in the documentary, we wanna show that we're more mature, we wanna show a new side of ourselves. We wanna express this musically. But also, they really can't risk doing something that would be alienating. So this fan service thing, I did find myself watching them up on that stage thinking, are they gonna be doing this at 45, at 50? Can they evolve past the boy band element? And what happens when inevitably they must?

[Vincent Cunningham]

In a minute, how the Korean waves swept the culture critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Nicole Phelps]

Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex and Money, the show from Slate, about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. Many of us have something going on behind closed doors. Like a listener we called Elizabeth, who told us she's a hoarder.

[Alex Schwartz]

I see mess beyond probably what most

[Nomi Fry]

people think of when they think of meth.

[Nicole Phelps]

We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex and Money. Listen wherever you get podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's hard to talk about BTS as we have been doing without this concept of the Korean wave. Many Korean cultural products have started to dominate the global landscape. Whether you're talking about, as Nomi earlier did, skincare and beauty products, plastic surgery. Whether you're talking about, yeah, plastic surgery or I mean, food was a big one. The best part, by the way, of that documentary that we all didn't like that much. When they eat food, man does it look good. And man does it look like something that any one of my friends, Korean or not today, would lust after and go get. And it just seems to me so interesting to have culture play such a obvious and traceable role in the rising visibility of a nation and its culture.

[Nomi Fry]

It's really interesting. I was thinking about it in comparison to myself coming from not America to America and living in America, but also experiencing it from that distance and kind of like lusting over it because of its, you know, this combination of like strangeness it was in the culture I was born in, but also increasingly something becoming increasingly familiar because of its kind of cultural products which were omnipresent and starting to understand how this might be happening with Korea now. And certainly if you're a younger person, you know, if you're like a 12 year old who has Instagram and listens to music and watches Netflix and all of that you might think, oh, this is where I want to be. Like, this is something. Like, I want to learn Korean. I want to go there to visit. The idea of kind of, like, suddenly ascendant cultural primacy and wanting to be part, I think, of kind of a winning team, right? Especially, I think, because in America, everything is fucking collapsing, and you feel like it's just like, we are losers now. You know? Like, I mean, America is, of course, still like, a. An incredibly powerful world power, but, like, everything is collapsing. And then you see this. Like, again, I've never been to Korea. I don't know actually what it's like to be there on the ground, but seemingly things are working. It seems orderly and clean. You know, like, the government supports the arts. The government supports the arts. It's like, oh, I would like to.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm literally amazed to hear you say this. Like, I think this is just a sign. I'm sorry to interrupt, but my. I'm astonished and amazed because to me, it is such a sign of how well the soft power is working that you're saying that.

[Nomi Fry]

No, of course.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, no, no, no. I know.

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely. I'm not like, no, no, I'm not saying you don't. I came up with this myself. Investment from the Korean government.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm not saying. I'm not saying that.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm just thinking this myself with no connection to anything.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying. No, that's not what I mean. I mean, it's just like the logical expansion that you're doing, which makes total sense about, like, it seems orderly. We live in a mess, and our own society is collapsing. And it's like the former president was sentenced to life in prison last month in South Korea.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm following testing.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, but I'm not coming at you at all. Nomi, like, saying, like, I can't believe it. I'm just saying, like, it's. They did well. They did well. Because when your president tries and fails to impose martial law and then goes to prison for life, and we're all here jamming to BTS and being like, let's visit. I wanna get bat mitzvah again to go to Seoul. Frankly, like, it's working wonders. Absolutely, it's working wonders. It also makes me think about, like, there is so much pressure on these guys. There is an enormous amount of pressure. There is national pride pressure. There's an enormous amount of economic pressure. We were just this morning, as we were prepping the show, sent this headline that the agency behind bts, their shares have dropped because the comeback show's turnout fell short. They have a huge power that you feel the weight of this on their shoulders. And so to balance that kind of economic and cultural weight is very fascinating. And that's what I saw on the live show. I saw these guys coming out there and saying, we wanna show you a new side of ourselves, but also, let's check in with you. How are you doing? And that's when I saw. When they had female singers singing Arirang behind them dressed in traditional Korean clothing, there was a real national pride moment. And I, sitting in New York City with no personal connection to South Korea, I'm tearing up. I'm like, ah, the culture, you know, it's like the authenticity of it, the strains of the folk ballad. So that's just. There's a lot, there's a lot on these guys shoulders.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow. Am I army? I don't know, but am I starting to be army? I feel for them.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, speaking of what's on the shoulders, I know that you guys were sharing a reading of K Pop Demon Hunters that has a lot to do with this kind of. Oh yeah, fan induced pressure.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And K Pop Demon Hunters, which I watched over the weekend, turned by the way, to who had sort of grudgingly decided to sit for this man. Was he enthralled?

[Nomi Fry]

Was he really? Oh, was. I watched a lot. There was refusal in my house to

[Alex Schwartz]

living and breathing it, Living and breathing it, loving it, running around singing all the songs. I'm watching him have a huge emotional reaction to this. But there's this constant underbeat which I found very sinister in the movie, where every time this trio, this pop star trio is about to take a break, they immediately decide they wanna go back to work.

[Nomi Fry]

They just can't not work.

[Alex Schwartz]

And there are plot mechanisms for it, but the underlying thing is for the fans, we're doing it for the fans. And I'm thinking about figures like Elvis, Britney Spears, for whom that pressure, among other things, but the pressure to perform for the fans, to be someone, for the fans to also stay the same forever. I think in both of those cases, Elvis, speaking of the army, you know, Elvis goes into the army, comes back changed, physically changes a lot. Britney, of course, like forced into this really sexualized role as a young teen and not really allowed to grow out of it in the public eye, like for the fans, can be a very, very damaging way to live your life.

[Nomi Fry]

There's a really interesting thing happening now with Chapel Roan, I'm sure You guys have seen where the. She's constantly chafing against the expectation that she will be present for her fans. Like, when she's out and about, you know, like, the paparazzi are taking pictures of her. She's coming out of a car on her way to a restaurant or, like, whatever, and she turns her camera on them and is like, don't. You know, I'm a person. I'm a person. You're, like, treating me like an animal. So it's a whole. She's, like, incredibly annoying. Like, she is absolutely, like, insufferable to me in her kind of, like, refusal to contend with the fact that, yeah, she is a very, very successful, very famous woman now, and people are gonna notice her when she goes outside. You know, people are gonna take her picture. Probably, you know, she's a public figure, like, But. But at the same time, yes, it is a whole lot of pressure. Like, it is a nightmare. Like, when you are a very, very successful famous person, you're kind of like, in a fishbowl of surveillance and attention. And that has broken many over the years.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And the being broken is the part that is inefficient for capital. It's interesting because, of course, as we've mentioned, part of the conceit of the whole group was we're gonna give our fans a lot of access through Twitter, through videos, et cetera, through all this content. And on some way, yeah, maybe it's. You could imagine it as propaganda for the South Korean state. You could imagine it as a way to circumscribe an emerging adulthood as we have. But also, it can be thought of as in organizing the previously messy thing that is hugely huge pop celebrity, it's saying, no, we're gonna bring in the uncertainty of the pop star into our understanding. We're gonna present that as a product as well, and on some level, therefore, tame. The last remaining big problem with this kind of star, which is they burn out, they get angry, and everybody sees past the facade for various reasons. We're gonna. You know, by making that part of the show, we can sort of more efficiently, tamely present this show and keep it going for longer.

[Nomi Fry]

It's like a vaccine, Right? So you inject a little bit of the poison.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

So it's like, oh, we're gonna say, like, oh, we feel stressed. Oh, we're not sure how we're gon this. We don't want to disappoint, et cetera. But of course, there's a whole. There must be. We're talking about people, there must be a whole other level of mess.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Of course, we've talked about these suicides.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, exactly right. The suicides in the industry. And especially there was a very famous case of Jong Yoon, who's a man from a different K pop group. But I'm thinking particularly of Sully and Gu Hara, who. To women who dealt with crazy misogynistic abuse. Just fan abuse. So, yeah, scary stuff when reality meets these fantasy ideals. And a lot about this. Like, again, going back to our beloved Alex Barish's piece about Chairman Bang, a lot of it reminded me of the news cycle that we have now around AI companions and people like these AI companions becoming increasingly realistic, increasingly visually realistic. You can kind of FaceTime with one or chat with one. You can constantly be texting with one. And of course, the BTS stars are not that at all. They're not going to. You can't FaceTime them and summon them up. But there is enough out there that you almost can. You can go to a lot of the cultural output and kind of. Even as I was prepping for the show, I was amazed of how many tabs I had open. Just, oh, I'm just brushing my teeth, watching the concert, and I'm putting on my clothes and I'm watching a press conference they gave, and I'm watching the documentary. And there is an element of AI companionship, I think, by sanding down some of the rougher edges of what it means to be an individual.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Well, you can pay the DM musicians. I mean, I think you get an auto reply. But there's on weverse.

[Nomi Fry]

Right? On weverse.

[Unidentified Advertiser]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

A whole app for doing this. Okay.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. So there's like this. It's like the final frontier, whether either the corporation or the state or whatever, the managing interest can step into that. And this is something we've talked about all the time. Celebrities don't need to go talk to journalists anymore. They can do it by Instagram. This sort of further privatization, even of this sort of mediatory, what we call parasociality, if that can be monetized and organized, it really is the final frontier of the pop star. And I think this is kind of a new technology. This band is not just, you know, they're not just the exemplary form of something. They are a development of it in a way that is, yes, unnerving, but also really interesting.

[Alex Schwartz]

Mm. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. And it all just brings us back to the music.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. And it's a very intimate thing to listen to someone whisper in your ear or a croon in your ear, whatever. Rap in your ear. Swim. Swim.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy with music by Alexis Cuadrado. We'll be back in your feeds next week, and in the meantime, you can always find our [e-mail] Critics.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And on the new season of Heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at

[Alex Schwartz]

him and said, this isn't a joke.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old and a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.

[Alex Schwartz]

How can 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nomi Fry]

From prx.