Trolled by teenagers? K-pop invades the political arena and declares war on Trump
The base of this movement is made up of young progressive people, curious towards other cultures, respectful with minorities and highly trained in the technological field
For years, South Korean K-pop fans have been able, with their coordinated actions on the networks, to get their favorite groups and singers to be on the top of the playlists and in the eye of public opinion.
Now, in the middle of the year of the United States presidential elections and amid protests over racial discrimination, part of this collective or ‘army’, as these fans of South Korean pop music describe themselves, have decided to take a step forward to exert their influence in the political arena.
K-pop is an abbreviation for Korean popular music and became known since the late 1990s thanks to the success of artists of this genre in Asia. With the growth of social networks, this cultural phenomenon spread to America, Europe, Oceania and part of Africa.
Although for the last three decades the headlines regarding K-pop have been related to the music sector and the artistic field, in recent times they involve politics and social struggles.
Last May 31, the Dallas police asked on Twitter for the collaboration of users to detect possible “illegal activities” in the protests of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and immediately the account of this organization was flooded with videos, photos and musical clips from some of the most famous Korean pop groups, such as BTS, ITZY and Red Velvet, causing the system to collapse.
With similar campaigns, the army of K-pop followers, who manage Twitter, Facebook, TikTok or Instagram, have been able to troll supremacist labels such as #WhiteLivesMatter and even boycotting the Twitter account of the far-right party in Spain, VOX, and its main leader, Santiago Abascal.
For days, the hashtags #AbascalPrincesa and #FachaqueveoFachaqueFancameo accumulated hundreds of content that got thousands of retweets and ‘Like ’, getting to be among the most viewed on twitter.
Sabotage Trump
However, the feat that surprised the world was its contribution to the fiasco of the rally carried out by Donald Trump, President of the United States, on June 20 in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The K-pop army was in charge of mass booking tickets without intending to attend the political event.
Before the Tulsa event, promoted as a relaunch of the campaign towards the November presidential elections, after the ‘break’ caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the Trump electoral team, Brad Parscale and the President himself assured on Twitter that more than a million tickets had been requested through the electronic platforms.
The reality is that, according to the local Fire Department, only 6,200 people attended the rally, something that was evident in the photographic records and the videos.
K-pop was behind this fiasco. Viral posts on the TikTok and Twitter networks revealed that calls to reserve tickets ‘en masse’ had been circulating for days, accumulating hundreds of thousands of visits.
A video called for the participation of fans of BTS, the South Korean boyband turned into one of the most popular K-Pop in the world with more than 21 million followers on Twitter.
“Oh no, I signed up for a Trump rally and I can’t go”, said a woman coughing sarcastically in a video she posted on TikTok, reported the AFP agency.
Faced with the failure in Tulsa, Bard Parscale had to admit that the figures were below expectations, blaming “radical protesters” and “a week of apocalyptic media coverage”.
While Trump tried to explain why there were not as many people in the stands as he thought there would be, and blamed the press for declaring “don’t go, don’t go, don’t do anything”, and assured that “the silent majority is stronger than ever”.
In this regard, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, congresswoman of the Democratic Party for the state of New York, replied: “You were only shaken by teenagers on TikTok”.
“K-pop allies, we also see and appreciate your contributions in the fight for justice”, added the 30-year-old lawmaker.
The truth is that, in addition to popular discontent against the far-right government, which falls more and more in the polls each week, South Korean pop lovers contributed to the ‘bucket of cold water that fell’ on Trump in his campaign act.
Strength in the networks
The feat of K-pop against Trump was possible thanks to the unity within the movement and the handling of the Internet as a tool, which makes it a powerful force in the different social networks.
“Fans are connected all the time, K-pop organizers are mainly on Twitter”, said CedarBough Saeji, an academic expert on the genre who is based at Indiana University, who noted that their understanding of Internet algorithms makes them a powerful group for online organization.
According to the social network, a record of 6.1 billion tweets were published under the #Kpop tag in 2019.
Although some political analysts consider the viral tactic to sabotage the Trump rally to be just a joke, several commentators, including Saeiji, claim that it is much more than that.
“They corrupted all this data that the Trump campaign was trying to handle. Basically, they showed the campaign managers that they will not be able to trust any of their numbers in the future”, he said, quoted by AFP.
For Michael Hurt, professor at the National University of Arts in South Korea, K-pops know how to execute a “digital job” with great success.
“No one better for ‘an online murder of Trump’ than followers of groups like BTS”, he told the South China Morning Post.
Support for social struggles
Despite the fact that for decades the efforts of K-pop fans were oriented to the musical field, many are not surprised by their new interest in political activism.
“The base of this movement is made up of young progressive people, curious towards other cultures, respectful with minorities and technologically highly qualified to air their opinions or mobilize their community. Many of their favorite songs carry positive messages, in which they encourage people to be themselves and respect the rest”, said journalist Ismael Arana, Asia correspondent for La Vanguardia.
For Cedar Bough Saeji, K-pop has a culture of being responsible, since its followers “are generally socially conscious people” and do not hesitate to support the causes of the Afro-descendant community and those who identify themselves as part of the LGBTI community.
“K-pop attracts people who like this kind of music but who also want to make the world a better place”, he told AFP.
“They are allergic to the forms of political attack, the evasion of responsibilities and the (outdated) attitudes that Trump represents”, said Michael Hurt.
K-pops will undoubtedly play a role to consider in the upcoming elections in the United States, and Trump adds new detractors with a powerful influence on networks, the Republican’s favorite field for politics.
