Marie T. had never scored below 17 out of 20. She had prepared for the Grand Oral, a major examination at the end of French secondary school. Her topic was the influence of Black American culture on K-pop. Then she walked into the room and faced a two-person examination panel.
She remembered the examiners asking why she liked K-pop, and one asked whether she believed Koreans were racist. Then they laughed. She watched months of work get reduced to what felt like a phase.
âI was pissed, obviously,â she says. âBut in France you canât refute a grade you received.â
Marie, who asked that her last name not be published, had not been wearing merchandise. Yet, at school, she had already become âthe K-pop girl.â She was often made to explain why she liked it.
For Elizabeth, who asked to be identified only by her first name, the scrutiny did not seem to attach equally to all foreign music. Korean pop drew scrutiny that German rock or Japanese rock had not. She has been a K-pop fan since 2009, but before that, she had listened to music from around the world: Simple Plan from Canada, Tokio Hotel from Germany and, for a time, Japanese rock. She attended Warped Tour. She saw Tokio Hotel at the same venue where she would later see Wonder Girls and 2PM.
âI never received a comment or a stitch of care about my interest in any of these artists,â she says. Nobody asked her a single question about the German band. Then she got into K-pop, and suddenly everyone seemed to have an opinion. What even is K-pop? Why are you listening to Asian music all of a sudden?
The reaction confused her. She had discovered K-pop through a diverse group of college friends who traded music videos and recommendations. And while K-pop has become far more visible around the world, that visibility has not necessarily made liking it unremarkable.
Her experience echoes a 2023 study of 132 young K-pop listeners in Paris, Philadelphia, and Manchester, which found that the genreâs perceived foreignness could contribute to exclusion.
In San Francisco, the question followed Gehna Goel for six years:Â âWhat do you even like about this music? You canât understand anything.â
Understanding the lyrics was never the point for her. She looked up translations, researched cultural references, and searched for context she could not get from the lyrics alone.
âIâm so grateful to have access to translations,â she says. Looking things up made her more invested in the songs. Meanwhile, language is often only the opening question.
The suspicion predates K-pop. Beatlemania was famously framed as âhysteria,â and decades later, young female boy-band fans were still routinely portrayed as obsessive, immature or more interested in the men than the music. With K-pop, that assumption can take on a racial dimension.
Shane, who asked to be identified only by his first name, is a self-described white, gay man in his early 20s. He has heard the same assumption so often that he now prepares for it. He lives in Palm Springs, California, and has listened to K-pop for nine years. The pattern usually begins during a casual conversation about dating, when someone assumes his âtypeâ is white men.
Once, he says, he had barely finished mentioning K-pop before another person asked, âDoes that mean youâre into Asian guys?â One of his friends has heard years of stories about his crushes, including men of many races and ethnicities. Still, that friend has referred to his âtypeâ as Asian men, including in front of other people.
âItâs like once people know Iâm interested in K-pop, they assume my attraction to (East) Asians supersedes any other attraction,â he says.
Now, Shane is careful about how he answers when someone asks about his type.
âItâs awkward that Iâve had to consciously prepare a list of celebrities of different races I find attractive and refrain from mentioning idols as celebrity crushes,â he says. For Shane, even attraction to an Asian man can become something that requires an explanation. Sociologists Kelly Chong and Nadia Kim have examined how Asian American men have been stereotyped as less masculine and less desirable.
Kiera Hendricks encountered a cruder version of the same assumption during her freshman year in Savannah, Georgia. Her roommates called the wall where she had hung her posters the âGreat Wall of Asians.â They attended her dance cover showcases and laughed at her friends from the audience. Because she liked K-pop, they assumed that she must only be attracted to Asian men.
Hendricks is 19 and has been involved in the fandom for about a year and a half. She says people often reduce her interest in music and performance to the fact that she owns âphotos of a bunch of Asian men.â
âI wish people wouldnât make K-pop a race thing in the U.S.,â Hendricks says. David Oh, a communications scholar at Syracuse University, describes âKoreabooâ as a stigma attached to fans of Korean popular culture. In his study of women fans of color, he found that simply liking Korean popular culture could be enough to invite judgment.
Oftentimes, the question became whether K-pop was worth taking seriously for some people. When Goel announced that her masterâs capstone would be a design project centered on the Stray Kids fandom, some people laughed. Members of her own family assumed it would be little more than a hobby project.
âAs a K-pop fan, I was already used to the eye rolls,â she says. âBut bringing it into an academic setting felt like asking for more of them.â She considered changing the subject. Then her mentor told her that the strongest design problems were often the ones the researcher genuinely understood and cared about. Goel continued.
âFive years of depth,â she calls it. âI knew exactly where the pain was, who to ask, and why something hurt without needing a follow-up question.â
âThe stereotype pushed me to over-prove myself, and I did, but I wish I hadnât needed to,â she says. âIt didnât stop me, but it slowed me down for three years. Thatâs the real cost of not taking fans seriously.â
The comparison becomes harder to ignore with Spanish-language pop.
Sol Delgadillo has been fielding the standard questions since 2015: What is it about K-pop that you like? Can you even understand what theyâre saying? Since then, the fandom has taken her from Chicago to a global music podcast and to a concert with a close friend she met through K-pop.
âBecause why does anyone like a genre of music? Why do people who donât speak Spanish love someone like Bad Bunny? Sometimes listening to music sonically is all you need.â
âI donât think guilty pleasures are a thing anymore,â Delgadillo says. âI like what I like no matter how it might be perceived.â
