It's Netflix’s most viewed title ever, with over 325 million views since its late August release. A theatrical singalong version of the movie earned $20 million in a single weekend. Its soundtrack is the first in history to occupy four slots on the Billboard chart’s Top Ten, and its biggest tune — the super-catchy Golden — is a strong contender for Song of the Year at this year’s Grammy Awards.
If you aren’t watching KPop Demon Hunters, what are you even watching?
The animated film tells the story of a female K-pop group called HUNTR/X, whose musical rivals, the Saja Boys, are secretly demons. It also deals with the psychological journey of Rumi, HUNTR/X’s lead singer, whose secret identity is threatened with exposure. It’s a huge hit with young girls, but clearly with lots of other people as well.
Michelle Cho is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, and director of the Centre for the Study of Korea in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Her research and teaching focus on Korean film, media and popular culture. She says that while KPop Demon Hunters owes much of its success to repeat viewing, it’s also been widely embraced for the way it unites music, animation and drama with signature panache.
“It combines different genres of popular narrative and does it in such a way that’s respectful of the different forms that it’s drawing on,” she says. Such forms include animated musicals, such as those created by Disney or Pixar; Japanese anime; and K-pop, or Korean popular music.
The film was co-created by Maggie Kang, a Canadian animator born in Seoul. One of its more interesting features is the way it mixes elements not only of modern Korean culture, but fairy tales, religion and folk culture as well.
Cho says that the incorporation of ancient stories is already a common feature within modern K-dramas, or popular serialized television shows produced in South Korea.
“The cosmology that’s presented draws on a Buddhist worldview, where actions in one lifetime can follow a person across several lifetimes and generations,” she says, going on to explain that the word “demon” carries a different connotation in Eastern cultures.
“I was concerned initially that in a North American context, the word ‘demon’ would be associated with horror,” she says. “But in Eastern genres such as anime, it refers to a spirit that could be playful or mischievous. Demons are entities that can cause nuisance, and need to be tamed.”
This, she says, might be an explanation required more by Western parents and not their kids, who are increasingly used to consuming cultural products from all over the world.
“Today, the typical media diet of anyone under 30 comprises different types of media that transcend geographical boundaries,” she says. “Younger people don’t separate the foreign from the familiar; they take it all in. And I think that’s really been a huge shift thanks to the rise of streaming platforms and the access they give us to media from all over the world.”
In the film industry, much has been made of how Hollywood film giant Sony Pictures Animation sold the KPop Demon Hunters rights to Netflix during the pandemic, thereby losing many millions of dollars. But with their responsibility for the film’s soundtrack, Korean music producers have also reaped huge rewards.
KPop Demon Hunters can be read as an allegory in so many ways. It’s really about self-acceptance and coming to terms with your identity, when that identity seems to be internally contradictory, or has elements that you feel are not accepted by the public or by the society that you live in. So it’s really a diasporic story to me. There’s a poignance to that, for sure.
In this respect, KPop Demon Hunters is the latest of many Korean-themed cultural products to hit big in North America, following on the success of movies like Parasite, TV shows like Squid Game, and musical groups like BTS and Blackpink.
The appeal of all these attests to the versatility of the country’s creators, says Cho. “I think the Korean content industry is trying to be really intentional about broadening its appeal and trying lots of different things. Historically there has been a lot of state support for promoting the global distribution of media. And I think that model has become admired by a lot of other national industries for what it’s been able to achieve.”
Thanks to its multinational origins, KPop Demon Hunters can also be considered not only a Korean and North American success story, but one that beautifully melds both cultures.
“I’m Korean-American,” says Cho, “and I’m always interested in the dynamics of how people forge a relationship with the cultures and geographical spaces that they’re connected to. Maggie Kang is Korean-Canadian, and we’ve probably gone through some similar experiences.
“That’s because KPop Demon Hunters can be read as an allegory in so many ways. It’s really about self-acceptance and coming to terms with your identity, when that identity seems to be internally contradictory, or has elements that you feel are not accepted by the public or by the society that you live in. So it’s really a diasporic story to me. There’s a poignance to that, for sure.”