Rethinking Cultural Specificity through Kpop Demon Hunters
Jennifer M. Kang / Queensland University of Technology
Today, K-pop is no longer a niche subculture, but a global phenomenon enjoyed by audiences around the world. Rosé of Blackpink became the first K-pop artist to win Song of the Year at the 2025 VMAs, while the girl group Fifty Fifty’s Cupid went viral on TikTok in 2024, earning a spot on the Billboard Hot 100. However, the latest K-pop act to generate a global sensation is an unexpected one – the fictional groups Huntr/x and Saja Boys from the film Kpop Demon Hunters. This animated film set a record at the most-watched title on Netflix, with over 325.1 million views in October 2025. What’s more interesting is that it was not made by Korean creatives but was produced by Sony Pictures and released as a Netflix Original.
The success of Kpop Demon Hunters set off a round of discussions within the Korean audiovisual industry. There were frustrations over why Korean companies were unable to produce and distribute major global productions like Kpop Demon Hunters, independent from Netflix. Similar debates had emerged when Squid Game became a global hit, though the concern at the time was on fair compensation from Netflix. Now, Kpop Demon Hunters introduced a new issue: what happens when streamers no longer need Korean talent or companies to create globally popular Korean stories? Would this be the new reality for the Korean Wave? These concerns raise questions about whether country-of-origin and cultural specificity matter in an increasingly global landscape.
K-pop has become established to the point where now there are a set of globally recognized characteristics associated with it. It is not just a music genre; rather, it encompasses a distinct way of production, performance, and engagement, which I call the “K-pop aesthetic.” K-pop is known for its visual presentation, featuring young boy bands and girl groups, known as idols, who perform synchronized dance moves with striking stage costumes. Idols and fans are in what Elfving-Hwang calls a parasocial relationship, where fans see themselves as part of a close-knit, loyal community which generates affective value and emotional investment (Elfving-Hwang, 2018).
Kpop Demon Hunters faithfully adheres to this K-pop aesthetic and presents it throughout the entire film. The main narrative is literally about the power of the K-pop fandom; the protagonists, Huntr/x, have to seal the honmoon, a magical shield that protects the human world from the demon realm, through the love and loyalty of their fans. The perfectly synchronized choreography (kalgunmoo) performed by Saja Boys in Your Idol, featuring matching black attire and traditional Korean hats (gat), recalls the stage performances of many K-pop groups. The songs by Huntr/x and Saja Boys each feature distinct music styles, fashions, and choreographies. Huntr/x’s Golden is an uplifting song about discovering one’s true self, with the members dressed in bright, sequined outfits, whereas their follow-up song Takedown has darker, aggressive lyrics complemented by black outfits and heavy stage makeup.
In addition to following K-pop aesthetics, the creator, Maggie Kang, went a step further by situating them into a culturally specific backdrop of Korea. Although she is a second-generation Korean immigrant who grew up in Canada, Kang has revealed in interviews that she wanted to bring her Korean heritage to the film. She and her creative team went on research trips to Korea to see and experience the country firsthand, which later informed their creative decisions. Kang incorporated details like Korean shamanism practices (using music to ward off evil spirts), scenery (the Bukchon Hanok Village setting for Jinu and Rumi’s first meeting), and everyday mannerisms (placing napkins under utensils at restaurants). In other words, Kpop Demon Hunters was a very “Korean” story that even Koreans could relate to, despite being a Hollywood production.
The concerns surrounding Kpop Demon Hunters seem to assume that cultural specificity will be reflected in the content that comes from a particular location, and/or done by a creator from that location. This nation-based assumption has long underpinned the Korean Wave, a term referring to the global popularity of Korean pop culture, which has been legitimized and promoted by the government, media, and academia as a signifier of national pride and cultural power (Yoon, 2022). However, such nation-based frameworks, which once made sense when media systems were primarily national, are increasingly challenged by multinational streaming services. Earlier forms of media, including broadcast and satellite television, relied on business models that aggregated large audiences defined by nation. But streamers do not need to conceptualize audiences through a national frame; they can gather subscribers with similar sensibilities who are dispersed across national borders (Lotz, 2021).
In this context where nation matters less, I question whether labeling Kpop Demon Hunters as the latest evolution of the Korean Wave, as much of the discourse in Korea has done so far, is the most productive way to understand this film. The Korean Wave itself is a nation-based perspective; it focuses on how Korean content from Korea spreads outward to the world. From this approach, the film appears to threaten the local industry (and by extension, the Korean Wave) because creatives outside of the Korean industry, like Maggie Kang, are capable of telling compelling Korean stories.
Instead, I think that Kpop Demon Hunters offers a valuable opportunity to think beyond questions of what happens to the Korean media industry (although this is certainly a question to consider). The film represents a process in which a distinct cultural form, associated with a particular region or country, gets dislodged from its origins – in terms of national identity or country – and becomes a cultural resource for other productions. For example, Nordic Noir, is a type of crime thriller recognizable for its dark and gloomy atmosphere, slow-paced and twisted plotlines, and troubled protagonists (Creeber, 2015). This storytelling form is not limited to Scandinavian production companies; Australian series like The Kettering Incident and The Gloaming were heavily influenced by Nordic Noir aesthetics, but the stories were rooted in local landscapes and referred to as Australian Noir or Outback Noir (Turnbull & McCutcheon, 2019). As another example, Slumdog Millionaire is not technically a Bollywood production; it is a Hollywood film, but the story is set in Mumbai, features Indian and South Asian diasporic talent, and demonstrates familiar Bollywood conventions such as song-and-dance sequences (Cox & Proffitt, 2014). Both Nordic Noir and Bollywood have distinct features that we can point to, but this does not mean that only Scandinavian countries or India can produce such content.
With the affordances of digital distribution challenging nation-based approaches to media, Kpop Demon Hunters invites us to explore alternative ways of thinking about the global media ecosystem beyond traditional markers like nation or language. Instead of framing Kpop Demon Hunters as just a “Korean” case study, what if we identified other configurations across cultures and placed them in conversation with one another? For instance, is the process of how K-pop aesthetics became a resource for Kpop Demon Hunters the same as how Nordic Noir influenced the Australian Noir The Kettering Incident? Is the way audiences perceive the Koreanness of Kpop Demon Hunters different from the way Indianness is experienced in Slumdog Millionaire? Asking such questions not only illustrates how multinational streaming services reconfigure media flows, enabling “national” forms like K-pop to circulate as global cultural resources, but also encourages us to reconsider what “global” means in today’s media landscape.
Image Credits:
- Huntr/x’s Golden is the latest K-pop global hit
- K-pop aesthetics in SHINee concert photo (author’s personal collection), Huntr/x concert photo
- Saja Boys’ Your Idol Performance Video
- Mira has a napkin under her chopsticks
- Nordic Noir and Bollywood as cultural resources
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Lotz, A. D. (2021). In between the global and the local: Mapping the geographies of Netflix as a multinational service. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 24(2), 195–215.
Turnbull, S., & McCutcheon, M. (2019). Outback Noir and Megashifts in the Global TV Crime Landscape. In S. Shimpach (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Global Television (pp. 190–202). Taylor & Francis Group.
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