BTS for BLM: K-pop, Race, and Transcultural Fandom

Abstract This cultural report contextualizes K-pop group BTS’s history of engagement with Black pop cultural forms, to aid in assessing the significance of the group’s support for BLM organizations and anti-racist activism following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. While providing a counter-narrative to that of inter-ethnic antagonism that has been a feature of media discourse on Black-Korean relations in the US, since the 1980s, the report also provides an overview of the online organizing and protest strategies of BTS fans in the BLM movement, and the subsequent discourse about K-pop’s politicization that emerged in media coverage and on social media platforms; By bringing these accounts together, the essay aims to enrich our understanding of the political significance of emergent fan identities, while emphasizing the need for historical grounding in our discussions of race and transnational pop cultural phenomena.