Editor’s note: "KPOP" will close on Dec. 11 after two weeks of performances due to poor ticket sales and high costs.
K-pop fandom is intensely passionate and its idols — the term for singers — are scrutinized with extremity. That euphoria was on display at a recent performance of the new musical "KPOP," the first major Korean-American show on Broadway. When certain performers jumped on stage, elated cheers shot out from different parts of the audience. After the show, many waited excitedly to meet the cast, indifferent to the chilly temperatures that night.
Vibrant music and dance sequences were interspersed throughout a story about backstage drama at a K-pop concert where a popular boy band (F8), a girl group (RTMIS) on the verge of success, and a solo female star (MwE) are set to make their splashy American TV debut. Every act has its own share of personal drama — we get to see how the industry tries to mold its artists, even as some balk and try to reclaim their artistic identity — which leads some to believe that the big show might not come together. To make matters worse, an underhanded TV director is trying to make a name for himself by hunting for behind the scenes dirt on the stars. A lot is on the line here, personally and professionally.
In addition to enthralling backstage drama, "KPOP" probes issues of musical and cultural identity, the latter exemplified by the show’s bilingual approach. Written by Jason Kim, with music and lyrics by Helen Park and Max Vernon, "KPOP" first debuted off-Broadway at Ars Nova in 2017 and was set for a pre-Broadway run in Virginia in 2020, but the pandemic curtailed those plans. Now the musical has arrived directly onto the Great White Way, where it opened at the Circle In The Square Theater on Nov. 27.
Four of "KPOP's" principals have been genuine K-pop stars — including Luna (f(x)), Kevin Woo (U-KISS), Min-Young Lee (miss A), and Bohyung Kim (Spica) — and have had subsequent solo careers, and their input helped shape the show. "KPOP" gives fans a rare chance to see idols and upstarts outside of an arena or stadium show; on the stage at Circle In The Square Theater, they’re not tiny figures in the distance — they are giving their all right in front of you.
"We have 18 Broadway debuts in the cast," says Park, who lived in South Korea then Canada as a child and teenager, and earned her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. "We have a wonderful creative team with a lot of amazing Korean talents as well, but we also have non-Korean but Asian creatives and cast. That's been really special. Everyone is pouring their hearts out."
A standout scene in the show occurs when the members of boy band F8 bicker amongst each other, and a new member pushes back against resentments. The biting but funny quips underscore the drama that many groups experience, and the scene focuses on a new member who does not speak Korean. Kevin Woo, who portrays the leader of F8, grew up bilingual in San Francisco and was influenced by American pop artists like Justin Timberlake, N*SYNC, Usher, Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson as well as Korean music and TV. At 17, he became a K-pop star in the South Korean group U-KISS, performing with the group for nearly a decade before focusing on his solo career. He returned to the States last ago.
"It hits home pretty hard," Woo says of the F8 scene and other moments in the musical. "When I'm on stage, acting and delivering the story, it's really not too far from what I've been doing with my group. Also about the cultural aspect of identity, being Asian, being Asian-American. [There are] a lot of different layers that are being interpreted in our story."
A Unique, Cross-Cultural Sound
Korea experienced a lot of Western influence post-World War II and in the lead up to the Korean War. Western, and specifically American, influence profoundly affected an already rich musical culture.
"A lot of Korean traditional music is very emotionally raw and very expressive," Park says. "I think that, met with Western music, creates this very satisfying [experience that is] similar to what musical theater brings: emotionally transparent and raw, beautiful music that has rich harmonies and melodies."
While Park views K-pop broadly as pop music that can include ballads, hip-hop and more, global audiences are most familiar with "K-Pop idol" music. "That's the unique combination of the music and dance and the hookiness," she explains, adding that the culture of fandom (and idol worship) defines K-pop more than a beat or sonic style.
"Nowadays, mainstream pop feels a lot more monotone. I feel like K-pop [has] a lot more harmonic beauty. I love the early 2000s or 2010s music [from Korea and America] that has these rich harmonies combined with thumping beats and a really catchy hook," Park adds.
Once can trace the evolution of the genre back 30 years, and early '90s Korean hip-hop group Seo Taiji and Boys, featured the future executive of YG Entertainment, Yang Hyun-suk. The label became the home for major K-pop acts like Big Bang and Blackpink. While YG was instrumental in the creation of K-pop as we know it today, Woo notes, "now it is just a genre of its own."
Woo and team aimed to show the history of K-pop through the musical. "You definitely got your catchy, trendy beats and tunes but [also] lots of numbers that are very reminiscent of the early 2000s and 2010. It's the trajectory of how K-Pop came to be this global phenomenon," she notes. "The sound that you're hearing [today] from BTS and Blackpink is a lot more Westernized and more trending right now."
While "KPOP" has live musicians backstage, the score is pure K-pop without symphonic requirement; modern pop tunes that can resonate with fans in different countries. But there are two exceptions: an acoustic guitar and vocal number, and then a song with acoustic piano and vocal that is Park’s tribute to the ‘90s and early 2000s ballads that she loved growing up.
"Most of the songs are electronic — a lot of them are dance numbers, but I would say they're all different," says Park. "We have so many types of grooves and sounds, like dubstep within a more house music type song. We have hip-hop, R&B, uptempo, midtempo, and slower ballads. I don't know if there has been this much electronic music in a show on Broadway."
Speaking In Three Languages
The show is also bilingual, leading some to question whether the non-Korean part of the audience will feel fully engaged — or even understand what actors are saying onstage at certain moments. Within the world of the show, this concern is embodied by a tune sung in English by the new kid in the show’s fictitious boy band F8, a half-white, half-Korean character who speaks little Korean.
Park was initially scared about having a 60 percent English/40 percent Korean lyrical mix, and even some Korean dialogue, "but then I realized what people love about K-pop is not being able to understand every word every second," she says. "It's the emotional impact that it has. That is created not just by the words, but the sound that the words make. And how that melody and harmony interact to create this inevitable emotion. Whether it's joy or just wanting to dance or sadness or loneliness — it's the emotions that the combination of lyrics, melody, and harmony all create along with the performance."
Park and her team threw in some cultural easter eggs for the Korean-speaking audience, relying on English-speaking theatergoers can understand the general connotation through context and body language. "My most comfortable language will be if I'm just speaking Korean and English together," the composer adds."Some words I use in Korean, some words I use in English. I feel like I can express my emotions the best through music. So my three languages are music, Korean, and English, and I was very fortunate to be able to combine all that in the show."
The act one closer "Superstar" may be the best example of how K-pop conveys emotion beyond lyricism. It had to be a triumphant closer that captured the superhuman ambition and talent of the female star, while demonstrating how "K-pop is striving for excellence." The song was the most challenging to compose, and Park wrote six different versions of it before hitting on the right one. It also represents the different mash-up of genres that she says is typical of a lot of K-pop songs.
"There are a lot of other contrasting moments, like the pre-chorus is suddenly ethereal, more more like a ballad-y moment," says Park, elaborating on the song's trap-like chorus, and a big band drum moment that later combines with what sounds like house.
"I think the emotion that we're getting by the end of that number is just overwhelming — this feeling that this person really has this ambition and desire to do whatever they can to be the number one superstar in the world," Park says. "I'm really proud of that number, but it took me a long time to really get it right."
Fandom In The Audience And Backstage
While Park is awed by the big talent onstage, she is incredibly impressed with Luna — a K-pop star who is not fluent in English but who has, with the help of a translator, learned all her lines even amid constant book and lyric changes.
"Luna’s ability to deliver lines of a language that she doesn't normally speak is something that I've never seen before," marvels Park. "She's so confidently embracing her accent, and how she carries herself is so confident that that alone is telling a story that I'm just so proud of."
For fans of K-pop — who are often part of super tight-knit online communities, with a passion for the genre that extends to obsessive adoration with each individual member of a group — the musical offers a unique opportunity to get even closer. "The fans have been saying they feel like they're in this [concert] taping, which they are. They get to see a concert but also what it's like behind the scenes of a concert," Woo says.
"For the Broadway fans, a lot of them are saying they've never heard of K-pop," Woo continues. "But now they've got to look into it and have become fans."
"KPOP" also fills an important void in Asian, and specifically Korean, representation in theater. "Asians are the most populated race in the world, but our stories are often the same. It's about war, trauma, or historical events that are not that relevant now. Or maybe the message itself isn’t relevant," Park says. "To just see modern day, diverse Asian people on stage is rare on Broadway, and to be able to do that with modern sounding music and these diverse cast members and characters is very rare and new."
"The response has been explosive," declares Woo, who has experience performing musicals like "Altar Boyz" from his time in Korea. "People have been just raving about how different it is compared to other Broadway musicals they've seen so far."