USA: The emerging activist force of K-pop fandom

In 2020 an activist force emerged and made an impact from a direction few might have expected. As thousands took to the streets in the USA and across the world to protest against police brutality and systemic racism, networks of fans of South Korean pop music, K-pop, applied their digital skills in virtual mobilisations, supporting and amplifying the Black Lives Matter movement. Alongside TikTok users, K-pop fans also captured the headlines during the early stages of the US election campaign, when they registered for President Trump’s Tulsa rally in Oklahoma with no intention of attending, inflating the campaign’s expectations of crowd size and then deflating them with an abysmal turnout of just over 6,000 people.