How BTS has helped me connect with my (half) Korean American identity
By: Micah Park
Tags: Kpop, Korean American, Bts, Asian American, Bts Army

How BTS has helped me connect with my (half) Korean American identity Micah Park Jun 17·9 min read

The Bangtan Boys

I think it’s fair to say that during the course of the pandemic, people got into many different things and consumed lots of media — Netflix shows, learning how to bake bread, etc. and for me one of those things was getting into K-Pop.

K-Pop and the intentional, government-sponsored spread of Korean culture (the Korean Wave, or Hallyu) has been a global phenomenon for years now and I had long interacted with it at an arm’s length. My grandma showed me the “Gangnam Style” music video several weeks before it went viral in the States, and I remembered watching “Boys Over Flowers” in middle school when we stayed at my aunt’s house. But I was only half-Korean, half-Chinese, and for almost all of my childhood had felt extreme discomfort at being culturally mixed between two ethnicities that American society largely did not distinguish between. Amongst my non-Asian American peers, I was Asian; amongst Korean Americans, I was half-Chinese, and amongst Chinese Americans, I was half-Korean. (And, when I actually went to Korea — I was an American).

Korea growing in global cultural relevance for me was something I regarded with a mixed sense of pride and awkwardness. The first K-Pop I consumed was the boy band DBSK or TVXQ — I saw the obvious influences of American hip hop on their aesthetics and music, but at the same time, saw something completely foreign I did not understand. Why were the boys wearing eyeliner and dangly earrings? Why did they all bleach their hair and wear colored contacts — were they trying to look more white? When I saw the “Gee” music video, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of beautiful girls who all had milky white skin and long limbs, and was also first introduced to the concept of “aegyo” — which I found thoroughly cringeworthy.

Aegyo has no direct English translation but refers to the act of being or pretending to be cute, and is used in particular by K-Pop girl groups. It often includes using a high pitched or childlike voice, exaggerated hand gestures, and girly or naive behavior overall.

I should point out that I am a 2nd generation Asian American. My mom is an American-born Chinese with immigrant parents, and my dad emigrated when he was 7 from Seoul. My parents each speak a rudimentary, child-like version of their first languages; my grandparents are fluent in accented English; I grew up learning French in school. My strongest tie to being Chinese or Korean was most clearly felt in my food preferences, and even those were Americanized for Western tastes (I grew up eating dimsum and Korean barbeque but not chicken feet). I don’t want to suggest that I was ever ashamed of being Asian — growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I cherished and flourished in my Asian American communities, and the majority of my friends were ethnically Asian. But I think it is important to specify that while I felt deep kinship with the Asian American community, I did not have that same connection to Korean or Chinese culture.

I know that none of this is groundbreaking or unique, but I think this context is important to consider when exploring the concept of Asian identity in America. The Asian, Korean and Chinese diasporic experiences are so vast, and our connections to our “original” culture so varied that there cannot be a single representation of the “Asian American” experience. In San Francisco, there are several Asian communities that have multi-generation Americans. I had several friends with immigrant parents, but also those whose great-grandparents had been the first to come to the States, and whose Asian cultural identity was also now an approximation of the “original.” Around those friends, I never felt guilt for not being able to speak my parents’ language and was able to relate to all our diverse experiences of what it means to be Asian in America. But as a freshman in college, I went to my first and last Korean Students Association meeting after realizing half of it was held in Korean. I realized, naively, how different my Asian American identity was from those Korean students’ whose cultural ties to the “homeland” could actually be felt as such — a homeland that they could belong to.

All of this to say that much of what I know about Korean culture is very limited and learned secondhand. I learned about the Korean Wave from studying East Asian politics in my International Relations courses, I learned about the Korean rise in plastic surgery from my Korean college best friend who would tell me that you could recognize which girls lived in which neighborhood in Seoul because they all went to the same surgeon, and much of the lingering cultural grief of the North vs. South Korean split I learned from the drama “Crash Landing on You.” Still, in my consumption of Korean media, I found some examples that I could relate to directly, even in my watered-down Korean American experience. The evil mother-in-law trope from Korean dramas I recognized from my Chinese mother’s experience of feeling racist disapproval from my father’s family throughout their entire courtship and first 10–15 years of their marriage. I could place my childhood spent in Korean churches to a course I took literally called “Christianity in Korea” and understanding how Christianity has gained such popularity there and also served as a community center for immigrants seeking connection. And while there are many things about me that I’m sure a Korean plastic surgeon could mark up for fixing, I also was taught to treasure my double-eyelids from a young age, one of the many requirements for Korean female beauty.

My relationship to Korean media was that I consumed it as a foreigner with the vague sense of some kind of ownership, like it wasn’t “weird” if I chose to sometimes listen to K-Pop because, hey, I’m Korean too. Even if I didn’t understand what the hell Red Velvet was saying, they made some bops. But my overall impression of Korean culture remained overwhelmingly negative. From my mother’s experience of the racism she faced from my father’s family, the immense pressure to conform to one standard of beauty, and the chauvinism I saw in Korean family dynamics, I thought that the “real” version of Korean culture that wasn’t being put on the global stage was actually racist, oppressive towards women, and punished any deviation from the norm.

Shockingly, this began to change in the last few weeks with a surprising impetus — the “Butter” music video by BTS.

When “Dynamite” came out in 2020, BTS’ first full-length English song, I played it on repeat along with the rest of the world. I remember my first reaction to seeing Jungkook’s opening in the video: “oh, he’s not wearing eyeliner — he’s pretty cute.” I knew right away that this video and song were engineered by the masterminds at BTS’ agency to increase their global and specifically Western appeal — and it was working on me. I almost felt guilty for liking “Dynamite” but not their previous work, which I had seen in 2014 shortly after their debut, an era full of eyeliner and hard-hitting rap that — sorry, ARMYs — at the time I thought was just Koreans’ awkward attempt to replicate Black American hip hop.

Jungkook’s opening scene of the Dynamite music video, for the stans

But with “Butter” I found myself rewatching the video over and over. Then, their dance practice video dropped — and after watching it 6 times in a row, I found myself going down a YouTube wormhole of old practice videos, concerts, and articles till I could finally distinguish who was who by face and voice, resurfacing at about 2am.

So much of what I knew about the K-Pop industry previously — the intense period where trainees eat, sleep and breathe dance, vocal and language classes under their agencies to become popstar machines before their tenuous chance at debut; the agencies’ strict dieting rules and regulation of their bodies; the obsessive fan culture where idols’ privacy is frequently threatened by sasaeng fans to the point that dating is practically taboo — seemed to melt away as I watched episode after episode of Run BTS and hours-long concert streams. All these negative aspects of the K-Pop industry are still true with BTS, but they seemed to possess a larger-than-life charisma that almost made me forget all that. The star quality, loveable personalities, and progressive mindsets they portrayed made me see a version of Korean culture that I had never interacted with before.

The more I learned about BTS, the more I fell in love with them and what I started to think of the “new Korea” they represented to me. Asian culture is notoriously intolerant of mental illness, where there is strong stigma against even discussing mental health — but main rapper and songwriter SUGA has been outspoken about his experiences with depression and parental disapproval over his career choice. Specifically addressing the insane pressure Korean youth face around education, BTS has written several songs encouraging their listeners to resist this pressure and forge their own paths. In 2020, BTS and their label not only donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter, but motivated their ARMY fanbase to match that donation within 24 hours. BTS has also continued to support LGBTQ artists and rights despite the persistently strong taboo against homosexuality in Korea.

ARMY matched BTS’ donation to BLM and even got John Cena onboard.

It’s been said that immigrants bring with them the culture of their home countries from the moment in time that they emigrated, and their descendants continue to live with that version of the culture. For the first time, I realized that the version of Korean culture that I knew and had lived with was outdated, and that young people in Korea were slowly driving change towards a more progressive society. Korean dramas like “Itaewon Class” and “It’s Okay to Not Be Okay” that became popular in the US also display increasing tolerance of sexuality, gender expression and neurodiversity, which makes me hopeful, and even proud to be Korean where I previously felt awkwardness and shame.

Wanting to be able to sing along to BTS songs, I’ve even started learning Korean online. I’m almost embarrassed that this desire to connect to my culture after 26 years is largely motivated by wanting to understand BTS’ adlibs at concerts should I ever have the privilege of being able to attend one, but at the same time, I’m excited to finally feel excited about being Korean. I know that this may offend some people since there is such a deep nationalistic feeling of pride in being Korean, especially in reaction to Japanese occupation and the diaspora. As an adult, I’m also able to recognize how the negative aspects of Korean culture are present in so many other cultures — nearly every ethnic culture is a patriarchy that disparages women, and my experience as an American makes me react to some aspects of Korean and Chinese culture with a gut-feeling of backwardness. Learning and unlearning how my Asian American identity informs my experience of Korean culture allows me to feel pride for its positive aspects, optimism for the progress Korean youth have already made, and appreciation for the opportunities and privilege I’ve had as an American woman.

BTS has the unique and incredible power of connecting to individuals around the world through their music and performances, even if most of us have to Google lyric translations. Reaching across cultural differences and language barriers, they’ve been able to raise global awareness of Korean talent and culture, and promote a message of hope. They’ve also inspired this half-Korean American to connect to a heritage she never wanted to invest in before.

I still have so much to learn about what it means to be Korean and how Korea is changing, and how it has not. I’m still primarily Asian American and half-Korean American second; I wear my race on my face but have to put in the work to understand Korean tropes and practices. If you take me to a Korean restaurant I’m just as useless as a white person — I can’t order in Korean and score us free food. I’m just learning how to make basic Korean dishes and my grandma would probably be appalled to find out what I think goes into making kimchi. But instead of needing to prove my Korean identity for the sake of others’ determinations of authenticity, I’m excited to participate in a lifetime of engaging with Korean culture and expression, and progress past outdated traditions and expectations that hurt and repress. As a hyphenated American, I accept that I will always feel like an outsider in my country and in the place my ancestors are from. But I am also granted the opportunity to draw strengths from both places and push both to be better. I’m proud to be ARMY, and proud to be Korean.