In 2012, the Hallyu wave flooded the globe after Psy released Gangnam Style.
With more than 2.8 billion views, it's – by far – the most viewed K-pop music video on YouTube.
K-pop historians could tell you all the times K-pop infiltrated America in the years before 2012. (One of our favorite moments is Rain's dance battle with Stephen Colbert.) But nothing had quite the same impact as Gangnam Style.
Ask a non-fan if they know anything about K-pop and they'll likely mention Psy. But that will likely be the extent of their knowledge.
While Psy became a household name and brought in a new generation of K-pop fans, he didn't do much to dispel the "niche" label K-pop has in the West. He also didn't make it "cool" to be a K-pop fan.
Why is that though?
Is being a K-pop fan different than being a fan of anything else?
Well, let's take a moment and compare K-pop to the world's most popular sport – football.
Football games are rowdy affairs. Tens of thousands of people crowd stadiums to support their favorite team. People wear their team's gear. There are fan clubs, fan chants, loud music playing, and people standing on their feet shouting and cheering for an hour and a half.
Sounds a lot like a K-pop concert doesn't it?
The energy and passion that soccer fans have for their teams is comparable to the energy and passion K-pop fans have for their favorite artists.
So why is it okay to be a football fan and not a K-pop fan?
If we had to pinpoint one main difference, we'd point to the language barrier.
You don't need to speak a certain language to understand the basics of a football game. Heck, you don't even have to be a football fan to understand that usually when one team kicks the ball into the other team's goal, a point is scored.
K-pop isn't so easy to understand. You could argue that you can "feel" what the song is about without knowing the lyrics. That might be true to some extent.
Although anyone who's heard Vromance's Bing might argue that's not true.
That song has a sexy, down and dirty vibe with its slow-jam R&B rhythm… but it's actually about a high school student being robbed. Whoops.
If you don't speak Korean – only about 80 million people do – you wouldn't know that.
Thankfully, the language barrier is breaking down. Lots of volunteer translators on Twitter, YouTube, V Live (a Korean live-broadcasting app) translate or subtitle just about everything coming out of Korea.
The bigger the group internationally, the more content being translated… and the more languages that content is translated into.
Now, if you're a fan of a less popular group, there's a chance that not everything is getting translated. But thanks to technology and our ever-connecting global society, this will matter less and less.
Some Korean entertainment companies even send out a lot of their content with English translations – whether it's a tweet or a video on YouTube. Jellyfish Entertainment has practiced this for years with their K-pop boy group VIXX.
And, of course, it's easier than ever to learn a new language. Free resources are widely available for anyone who wants to learn Korean. (We'll talk about this more in the future.)
So do we see a great acceptance of K-pop as a whole?
Absolutely.
Legions of new fans are joining the global K-pop fandom. Exposure to K-pop is increasing via awards shows, commercials using K-pop, and collaborations between Korean and Western artists.
We're anticipating the day that liking a K-pop artist will be as normal as liking a football team.