K-pop is changing, too

IN A SMALL restaurant in a quiet backstreet in Seoul’s Gangnam district, the walls and part of the ceiling are covered in posters, postcards and key rings. On one shelf sits an enormous pyramid of coffee-cup sleeves. All the decorations show members of BTS, South Korea’s most successful K-pop act and the highest-grossing boy band in the world. They are gifts from fans around the world for whom the restaurant, where the band used to eat before they were famous, has become a site of pilgrimage.

So far, so unsurprising. Teenagers have projected their dreams onto K-pop idols for years. But BTS are not your average K-pop band. Although their output has all the trappings of the genre—slick production, perfectly choreographed dance routines, rap interludes and ever-unconfirmed rumours about band members’ relationships—they do not conform to the stereotype of the flawless, manufactured idols who are expected to serve as blank screens for fans’ projections. Their producer, a graduate in aesthetics who set up his production company after years of working as a songwriter, has given them plenty of leeway in writing their songs and developing their own image.

That has led them down lyrical paths previously unseen in K-pop. “Dionysus”, the final track of “Map of the soul: persona”, an album inspired by the theories of Carl Jung, a...

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