Friction in KPop Demon Hunters
Benjamin M. Han / University of Georgia

Figure 1. Rumi, Zoey, and Mira in KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters (Kang & Appelhans, 2025) is experiencing an unprecedented global success as an animated film, becoming the most watched content on Netflix with 325.1 million views in ninety-one days following its release.[¹] The popularity of the film has led to a theatrical release and the launch of a sing-along version. While one might be inclined to identify specific elements of the film that appeal to the global audience, KPop Demon Hunters prompts us to examine questions of national identity in terms of its Koreanness, as an animated film produced by Sony Pictures and distributed on Netflix, with Koreans making up twenty percent of the film’s creative team. The search for an answer to the global success of KPop Demon Hunters has led critics to discuss how it is a byproduct of hybridization, a critical concept in the study of globalization and culture.  A reporter for the Korea JoongAng Daily writes, “The common denominator between the two films [KPop Demon Hunters and King of Kings] is hybridity. [They] exemplify this principle [hybridity as third space], combining Korean creative input with global storytelling forms to reinvigorate both industries.”[²] Euny Hong, author of The Birth of Korean Cool, writes in the New York Times, ‘“KPop Demon Hunters’ made me sigh with relief: Hybrids, mash-ups, whatever you want to call it, are no longer a freak show that can only be enjoyed ironically.”[³] The emphasis on hybridity where the animated film incorporates Korean cultural elements, such as K-pop fan culture and shamanism resorts to a cyclical impasse around the question of authenticity. For example, a reporter for The Conversation writes, “Food, clothes and familiar locations in South Korea are rendered with surprising precision, to the extent that even Korean audiences are astonished at their [KPop Demon Hunter’s] accuracy, despite the production being based overseas.”[⁴]

Rather than focusing on the question of hybridity in the film, I would argue that KPop Demon Hunters illustrates the process of friction. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing defines friction as “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference,” which enables us to investigate how “cultures are not only continuously co-produced in the interactions in the form of friction.”[⁵] Friction, as a manifestation of global-local encounters materialized during the creative process of cultural production, also aspires to be universal. As Tsing further observes, “Global connections give grip to universal aspirations [emphasis in original].”[⁶] She also writes that “universals and particulars come together to create the forms of capitalism with which we live.”[⁷] I would also add that this difference is rendered through fluid and ambivalent sensibilities and affect that emerge from unstable Korean diasporic identity and subjectivity. In other words, friction occurs through the tension to create something universal and the desire to remain culturally specific with ties to one’s ongoing identity formation. In the podcast They Call Us Bruce, Maggie Kang, creator and co-director of Kpop Demon Hunters, describes her experience working at DreamWorks and Warner Bros. and notes, “So, I’m trained to think very globally. Whenever I’m making a movie or an idea, I want to have global appeal. That is how Hollywood is…We get to be artists and create stuff, but people have to see it and people have to pay money. It’s a business.”[⁸] Further, in describing the global-local friction within the film, Kang explains, “Honestly, I think that I was the only person who could make ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ because I’m somebody who’s in both cultures equally. I’m the only kind of Korean who with the feature animation experience of this level of storytelling and then I’m also dual culture, so I think I was able to infuse both of the cultures kind of evenly, I would say, into the movie.”[⁹] Kang’s articulation of difference, rooted in her unique Korean American identity, testifies to our ongoing interest to define authenticity in global media. 

Figure 2. Maggie Kang with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in the televised special “K-Pop: The Next Chapter” on Arirang TV

On the contrary, understanding KPop Demon Hunters through friction allows us to think of diasporic Korean subjectivity as a unique manifestation of difference. Friction is often unpredictable, organic, messy and yet ambivalent where different sensibilities and affect tied to one’s unstable identity are expressed through diverse cultural forms. At the same time, this friction as a form of difference renders its racial and ethnic markers less conspicuous, as seen in the animated film KPop Demon Hunters. Further, friction as Korean American difference prompts us to consider the role of the Korean diasporic agency in the globalization of Korean media. For instance, cultural critic Jeff Yang credits the success of the film to its diasporic creative workers, including Maggie Kang, for their roles as interpreters or mediators of what he describes as “authentic and original Asian stories.”[¹⁰] 

Even though diasporic Korean filmmakers, such as Lee Isaac Chung and Celine Song, have garnered international recognition for their works—Minari (2020) and Past Lives (2023)—their diasporic sensibilities and perspectives have often failed to resonate with the local Korean audience. For example, in 2007, the Korean media conglomerate CJ ENM produced a Korean American film titled West 32^nd (2007), starring John Cho, Jun Kim, Grace Park, and directed by Michael Kang, whose previous work The Motel (2005) was well-received in the Asian American film festival circuit. The film’s failure in Korea taught CJ ENM that they should focus on Korean rather than Korean American storytelling. As Daniel Dae Kim notes, “In the past, neither Asia nor Hollywood were particularly interested in Asian Americans. But we’re starting to see a shift. I’m seeing it in Korea, certainly. They used to laugh and ask, ‘Why can’t you speak better Korean?’ But now that they aspire to become a world leader in pop culture, they’ve begun to see those of us in the diaspora as a unique resource.”[¹¹] Such receptivity to Korean diasporic difference is a testament to how their subjectivities shaped by friction have been devalued while simultaneously being perceived through the prism of otherness.

Figure 3. Disney+’s original Korean Series Tempest

Therefore, the unanticipated global success of KPop Demon Hunters should not be focused on trying to determine its national identity and authenticity grounded in Koreanness. Instead, we should treat friction as an important process of global cultural encounter that can advance the diversification and creativity of Korean media. At the same time, the Korean diasporic affect as friction is not a form of difference that should be exploited or commodified, as reflected in the recent Disney+ series Tempest (Disney+, 2025). Rather, it should be appreciated for its potential to engender what Tsing describes as “new arrangements of cultural power” that can reshape uneven global media flows.[¹²] 

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Image Credits:

• 1. Rumi, Zoey, and Mira in KPop Demon Hunters. Source: Author’s screenshot from Netflix.
• 2. Maggie Kang with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in the televised special “K-Pop: The Next Chapter” on Arirang TV. Source: The Korea Herald.
• 3. Disney+’s original Korean Series Tempest. Source: Forbes.

References:

1. Molly Edwards, “KPop Demon Hunters has Ended Its 91-Day Netflix Run with a Massive 325.1 Million Views,” Total Film, September 24, 2025, https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/animation-movies/kpop-demon-hunters-has-ended-its-91-day-netflix-run-with-a-massive-325-1-million-views/. [↩]
2. So-young Moon, “The Power of Hybridity Behind ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ and ‘King of Kings,’ Korea JoongAng Daily, July 18, 2025, https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-07-18/opinion/columns/The-power-of-hybridity-behind-Kpop-Demon-Hunters-and-King-of-Kings/2355446. [↩]
3. Euny Hong, ‘“KPop Demon Hunters’ Is My Kind of Globalism,” New York Times, August 24, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/opinion/kpop-demon-hunters-globalism.html. [↩]
4. Cholong Sung, “KPop Demon Hunters Gives a Glimpse into K-pop Culture in South Korea,” The Conversation, September 4, 2025,  https://theconversation.com/kpop-demon-hunters-gives-a-glimpse-into-k-pop-culture-in-south-korea-264141. [↩]
5. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton University Press, 2005), 4. [↩]
6. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 1. [↩]
7. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 4. [↩]
8. Jeff Yang and Phil Yu, interview with Maggie Kang, “They Call Us KPop Demon Hunters,” They Call Us Bruce, podcast audio, July 12, 2025, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/they-call-us-kpop-demon-hunters/id1217719299?i=1000716923753. [↩]
9. Eun-Soo Jin, “Exclusive: ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Creator Maggie Kang on Pride, Identity, and a Possible Sequel,” Korea JoongAng Daily, September 21, 2025, https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-09-21/entertainment/movies/Exclusive-KPop-Demon-Hunters-creator-Maggie-Kang-on-pride-identity-and-a-possible-sequel–/2402699. [↩]
10. Jeff Yang, “How ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Became a Global Phenomenon,” The Washington Post, July 25, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/25/kpop-demon-hunters-asian-americans/. [↩]
11. Yang, “How ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Became a Global Phenomenon.” [↩]
12. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 5. [↩]