One hot afternoon in the city of Malang, Indonesia, Korean missionary Ki-Joon Park was walking past a small neighborhood café when he heard a familiar tune: the K-pop hit “Golden” from Netflix’s popular animated film KPop Demon Hunters.
That evening, Park heard the same song again as a group of teenagers hanging out near his church sang it aloud, laughing as they stumbled through the Korean pronunciation of several words in the song.
KPop Demon Hunters took home the best animated feature and best original song for “Golden” at this year’s Golden Globes. Since its release last year, the film has been a runaway success, garnering more than 500 million views globally and becoming the most-watched title in Netflix’s history. It also earned more than $20 million at the global box office last year.
Across the world, the film has expanded the reach of K-pop music, a genre that often comprises a mix of sounds—including pop, hip-hop, electronic dance music, and traditional Korean music—set to energetic dance moves.
The Korean and Korean American Christians CT interviewed appreciate how KPop Demon Hunters’ widespread acclaim has enabled them to share the gospel more effectively. But they do not see Christian K-pop music as a growing genre in contemporary Christian music (CCM) and are wary of incorporating K-pop into worship songs as a means of outreach.
KPop Demon Hunters has opened up more conversations about the spiritual world in Indonesia, Park said. The film’s use of Korean shamanistic imagery—a demon boy band decked out in traditional Korean hats known as gat, or the mythical haetae, a lionlike creature known as Derpy—has allowed conversations about God and faith to emerge naturally among the young Indonesians he ministers to.
related
We’re Not Afraid of Monsters and Demons Anymore
Isabel Ong
Shamans, Sorcerers, and Spirits: How Christians in Asia Grapple with the Supernatural
Compiled by Isabel Ong
Introducing Christ to people in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country has also felt easier thanks to increasing interest in Korean culture, Park said. Once, his church held a summer event in its courtyard where a short-term missions team from South Korea taught local youth simple K-pop dance moves and how to cook Korean dishes.
Still, some believers in other parts of the world are uncomfortable with the film’s repeated references to demonic influences. One Christian school in the UK banned its students from singing the film’s soundtrack to respect people who find the film themes “at odds with their faith.”
Jaewoo Kim of the Christian nonprofit Proskuneo Ministries does not think that KPop Demon Hunters’ popularity has encouraged more Christian artists to adopt K-pop music styles into their compositions for similar reasons.
Certain elements in the film, like demons, spells, and shamanism, “likely make [Christian artists] feel hesitant to openly draw inspiration from it for their own work,” he said.
Kim melded K-pop music with Christian lyrics in the 2019 rap “I Will Proclaim.” He worked with Korean, Burmese, and Sudanese second-generation youth in Clarkston, Georgia, to write verses in their native languages that drew on Psalm 118:17—“I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done”—to encourage young people living with depression and suicidal ideation to find hope in Christ.
Yet Kim, who now lives in Portland, cautions against a wholesale adoption of K-pop in corporate worship.
“Even if we package Christian truth in popular sounds and distribute it widely, that alone does not advance the gospel,” Kim said. “The content must remain faithful, the medium must serve that content, and the messenger’s life must reflect what is being proclaimed.”
Within South Korea’s K-pop industry, success is often measured more by marketability and image than by personal maturity or communal responsibility, Kim said. K-pop idol mania also enforces narrow beauty standards; treats artists as consumable commodities; and subjects trainees to long hours, intense competition, privacy restrictions, and financial inequities, leading many artists to experience prolonged physical and emotional burnout, he added.
“Churches should not simply appropriate cultural forms without considering the values and demands embedded within the industry itself,” Kim said.
KPop Demon Hunters’ trendsetting soundtrack, which topped Billboard charts and earned five Grammy nominations, also may not result in Christian K-pop music experiencing a corresponding rise in popularity.
Leah Payne, author of God Gave Rock & Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music, says she will not be shocked “to hear a catchy tune from someone like Forrest Frank about the love of God that bears a strong resemblance to ‘Golden.’”
But Payne wonders whether any Christian K-pop group will catch on, because CCM’s older method of creating faith-based music that imitates pop trends is less prominent now.
In the late 20th century and early 21st century, CCM provided “safe” alternatives to mainstream top 40 music, like how DC Talk was marketed in comparison to Nirvana, Payne told CT. Based on this approach, there “should have been a K-pop CCM alternative a few years ago,” she said. But CCM now focuses mainly on producing music that can be used in worship services, Payne said in a recent interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper.
related
Shout to the Lord in a Foreign Language
Jaewoo Kim
What Makes a Song Good for Corporate Worship?
In South Korea, there is no specific music category labeled “Christian K-pop.” Most Korean Christians see a clear distinction between mainstream K-pop and CCM, even as some CCM artists may utilize K-pop sounds or visuals in their music. Popular K-pop idols who are believers may occasionally sing worship songs at their concerts, but they do so because they want to express their faith, not because they are part of CCM.
CCM in South Korea partly emerged from the growth of a vibrant church culture between the 1960s and the early 1990s. Youth ministries and worship teams in megachurches like Yoido Full Gospel Church began adopting pop, rock, and eventually full K-pop soundtracks as a way of reaching out to teenagers who were immersed in K-pop idol music.
Brian Kim (no relation to Jaewoo Kim) is part of a generation of Korean artists who normalized CCM in the East Asian country’s Christian music landscape. The Korean American artist and worship leader, who hails from Texas and currently lives in Seoul, is one of the most prominent CCM artists in South Korea.
Kim began writing Christian K-pop songs in the early 2000s, and his 2012 song “God’s at Work” has amassed nearly 3 million views on YouTube so far. More recently, he has spent the past four years training and mentoring a group of young artists in Seoul to equip them for Christian music ministry and gospel-centered missions.
Korean pop culture has experienced a huge popularity boom—a phenomenon known as hallyu or the “Korean wave”—in the past two to three decades. But Kim laments how “the Korean church has lost much of its influence” during the same period. South Korean churches have experienced declining membership amid low birth rates, increasing secularization, and growing skepticism toward religion.
In contrast, he said, more and more young people are participating in K-pop fandoms: organized communities of fans who support artists through concerts, online platforms, streaming campaigns, and shared rituals.
Kim hopes that avid K-pop fans can look to the church to find the loyalty and emotional bonds they currently experience by being part of a fandom. Adapting K-pop music styles in songs that remain grounded in Scripture could be one way to draw people into the church in his view. “The gospel is unchanging, and everything must ultimately return to it,” he said.
Park, the missionary in Indonesia, is hosting a cultural event in Malang later this year that will highlight Korean food and dance. It will also be an opportunity for locals to learn Christian songs in the Korean language.
“Culture may open the door [to evangelism], but the gospel is what we ultimately speak,” he said.
Additional reporting by Isabel Ong
The post ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Helped a Missionary Talk About Jesus appeared first on Christianity Today.
