This is an interview text with Ms. Mayako
Shibagaki-Liu, a Ph. D. candidate in History and East Asian Languages Program
at Harvard University. She is a graduate
of International Chrisitan University, Japan, and holds a MA from Regional
Studies- East Asia at Harvard University.
She is currently working on a Ph. D. dissertation examining wartime
tourism in colonial Korea. She has also
been involved in K-pop dance training and her love for K-pop has been one of
the motivating forces for her commitment to studying Korean history and
culture.
This interview was conducted on July 8, 2025. It has
been edited and shortened for clarity and economy. The contents of this
interview are copyrighted to Ms. Mayako Shibagaki-Liu and Professor Kyu Hyun
Kim. Any reproduction of the contents therein without the explicit consent of Ms. Shibagaki-Liu will be
considered a breach of copyright laws as defined by the United States court
system. “K” refers to Kim and “MS” for
Ms. Shibagaki-Liu throughout the text below.
K: Thank you so much for agreeing to this discussion. I would just like to talk about Kpop Demon Hunters [abbreviated to KDH] this time. Have you checked out my review?
MS: Of course! Should we just use English or a mixture of
English and Korean or even of English, Korean and Japanese? [Laughter]
K: Let’s use English for this
particular one, although we would definitely want to write about the movie or
related issues in Korean and Japanese as well. OK, here goes. I honestly did not expect much before I
decided to delve into KDH.
MS: Me neither!
K: What was your initial response to the title?
MS: Oh, something definitely cliché…
like a Disney feature supposedly set in Korea. And it was like that for maybe
ten minutes. But then again when the Huntr/x music came out, my view shifted.
K: Right, right. Their song sounded like a real piece of Kpop music. Going into the movie, I played several scenarios in my head about how this movie could go wrong. I was not so much worried about it getting Korean culture wrong. At best, I thought the movie would be set in some fantastical environment like a “San Fransokyo” from Big Hero Six (a film that I love, by the way). The latter takes a view that the world of Japanese animé is sort of merged into the United States (specifically Northern California), or that Japanese Americans are in fact no different from the “Japanese.” So, I thought KDH would include select elements of Korean culture but would be set in a sort of globalized fantasy landscape. I was wrong! The movie is entirely set in Korea, and specifically Seoul. Another big surprise was, of course, I did not expect those behind KDH to get Kpop “right.”
MS: Absolutely! The protagonists Rumi and Jinu have these
character traits, arcs and motivations that are authentically those of Kpop
artists. That was quite amazing that the
producers and creative staff actually understood this!
K: Japanese animation has a
well-respected tradition of casting characters whose identities are hybrid,
in-between beings. However, the utterly
straightforward, non-compromising way KDH dealt with this issue, the way
characters expressed this conflict of those traversing two different, even
antagonistic worlds, through their music and bodily performances, I thought was
unmistakably Korean.
K: Let’s talk about the elements of KDH that were particularly interesting or noteworthy.
MS: I was really impressed by the
character designs, by which I mean the ways they look, specifically the ways in
which their bodies move, their dances are designed, their costumes are crafted. I do not know if it is obvious to those
unfamiliar with Kpop that Saja Boy’s Your Idol getup is, by Kpop
standards, neither exaggerated nor off-putting: how their “supernatural” action
in fact closely hues to a real-life Kpop performance. Saja Boy’s gat (the yangban hat),
golden glowing eyes, their heavy boots, clawed hands, all these could easily be
a real-life Kpop boy group’s “looks” during the latter’s “comeback”
performance. By the way, I absolutely
agree with your point in the review that the design aspects of the Huntr/x and
Saja Boys performance, say, how choreography and costumes were constructed,
could have been great resources to draw on in any future iteration of KDH.
K: Yes, I would for one have loved to see the details of how Jinu put together Saja Boys, how he selected members, how he “trained” them, and so on.
K: Could you talk about how KDH’s take
on Huntr/x and Saja Boys fundamentally differ from the American animation films
and musical films?
MS: KDH is clearly aware of how Kpop
music is performative, and that there are layers of mediatization in its
dissemination and reception, live performances, TV broadcasts, short snippets
of video, and so on. For how these layers of mediatization are concretely
depicted in a Kpop music video, you could check out IVE’s I AM. The musical
performances themselves are identifiable as “Kpop” quite aside from the
functions they serve as “songs” in a musical.
K: As I wrote in the review, “Free”
and “Your Idol” are my favorite songs. I
was actually surprised by “Free,” because, while it appeared to follow the
convention of “characters breaking out into a song” in an American musical, it
also totally made sense as a duet performance during a Kpop concert, something
that Taeyang and Park Bom would sing together during the heyday of Big
Bang/2NE1. And “Your Idol,” man…
MS: I want to see a dance performance
video for “Your Idol” by Saja Boys!
K: YES!
MS: “What It Sounds Like” in
particular reminds me how top-tier kpop songs have such incredibly powerful
lyrics, which, as you wrote in the review, do not avoid the pain, suffering and
dilemmas faced by the artists and the world.
K: Absolutely. I do not want to hear
people yammering about how “shallow” Kpop is anymore. How “deep”
is an average American sports game, a Country & Western song, or a rehashed
Disney feature?
MS: I also thought that “Soda Pop” and
“Your Idol” both made sense as Kpop songs designed by demons [Laughter]. They are addictive, alluring and directly
address the desire for the listeners to completely focus on the artists.
K: If there was one genius idea that
might have struck those unfamiliar with Kpop as potentially silly or a form of
inside joke, it was the “debuting” of a demon boy group.
MS: [Laughter]. Oh my God, truly brilliant! But taking this idea seriously and actually
coming up with a great boy group based on it is where I think the makers of KDH
show their real understanding of what Kpop is. Such seductive coevality of light fun and expressions of the dark side
in the same personalities— Big Bang’s “Fantastic Baby” followed by “Monster,” to
cite only one of numerous such examples— has always been a part of Kpop music
from the very beginning.
MS: KDH drew the characters in such
ways that even Saja Boys standing in certain poses emulate and build on the
performative strengths of real-life Kpop artists. So it is not just the
exciting and precise movements, known as kalgunmu (group dance so well
coordinated that it cuts like a blade)— although Saja Boys certainly show an
excellent example of that template—, but the whole package. Huntr/x’s choreography, on the other hand,
shows a lot of flowing into and out of each member’s space, and stresses the
relationality of the members, similar to IVE’s dance moves. This was very noticeable in the scenes
illustrating rehearsals for “Golden.”
K: That is very illuminating. I might
prefer Saja Boys choreography because there are five members, rather than three
for Huntr/x. As we have complained about
this many times, Kpop groups usually have too many members. There are of course commercial and historical
reasons for this tendency.
MS: What the Japanese model of idol
performance calls oshi-katsu (“bias stanning”) is also predicated on maintaining
a certain maximum number of idol members.
Some Kpop groups still operate in this mold but few of the current
top-tier girl’s groups exclusively rely on this strategy. They of course still talk a lot
about their fandom. But the oshi-katsu
mode must sustain the illusion of a fan in a close, personal relationship with
an artist he or she (often he) “stans.” I am not sure whether the top-tier,
globally successful kpop girl groups really feel a need to continue to feed
this fantasy. However, KDH’s denouement
hints at the kind of fans that the filmmakers think as healthy and sustaining:
young girls who look up to the Huntr/x as possible role models. And this is of course replicated in real life
among the young female fan demographic (and their parents).
MS: Yes. And Rumi rejects the “industry protocol” in
the end. The new Honmoon she creates
metaphorically changes the way the industry operates, if we consider Gwima as a
company honcho exploiting both artists and consumers.
K: Hmm, anybody specific comes to mind? [Laughter]
K: KHD is, in so many ways, a good
movie to break down the prejudices held by both Koreans and non-Koreans, that Kpop
must assume certain specific Korean forms or must show specific Korean
sentiments. The top-tier Kpop really
does not aspire to do that. Anyone, of
any gender, ethnicity and culture could express him/her/themselves through Kpop. Otherwise it would not enjoy such a global
influence.
MS: I wonder if you find some parallel
between the way KDH’s characters and Japanese anime characters move away from
ethnic/gender specifications.
K: There are some parallels of course.
But it is important to remember that Kpop,
despite the legitimate accusations of chauvinism and lack of sensitivity lobbed
at it, has already been doing this with real-life groups and artists, that this
is not something an animated feature could uniquely bring to the table. You can draw a character’s hair purple,
scarlet red: make her skin tone white to brown to black: make her eye colors
hazel, green or jet-black. There are
already, breathing, living Kpop artists who embody those characteristics: you
do not need paintbrush or CGI adjustments to “draw” them at all.
MS: The notion that Kpop was selling
“fantasy” was used by many to criticize the artform as if there is something
wrong with this very notion. But this fantasy is also “real,” because it has
been expressed through the concrete workings of the bodies of the
performers. This I think is one of the
reasons why the music in KDH is so powerful and feels “different.” It is deeply tied to the corporeal
expressions of the subjectivity of the performers. It is never just “ear candy.” People, even really young viewers, those who know
nothing about Korea, nor Korean language, can sense the power of this mode of
expression.
K: And that endows an unusually
powerful conviction to the movie’s premise, that music is the ultimate tool to banish
demons, to heal and suture the tears and wounds of the world.
MS: Yes, but in a way, Jinu is reminiscent of a supremely talented Kpop singer, having to withstand a trainee life without any sense of reassurance for many years (four hundred years in his case!), then becomes truly successful, only to doubt his own authenticity as an artist.
K: I would really think that KDH
should open up new pathways for the top-tier Kpop groups to expand their
repertoire and agendas. At the very
least, they should just perform “Golden” and other songs during their concerts.
MS: Absolutely! Kpop is one of the few sites in which such
radical breakdown of the border between “fantasy” and “reality” could take
place in a totally “naturalized” manner.
The paths toward multi-layered collaboration are literally too numerous
to even think about!
K: My hope is that the “regular” Kpop fans do not denounce or denigrate KDH arguing that the groups in it are not “real.” Such an attitude, I feel, does not understand, as you so greatly put, the strengths of Kpop: why it is so powerful in the first place.
K: To summarize, Rumi and Jinu were
especially wonderful as both performers and animated characters, not just because
they were well designed and acted, but also because they accurately captured
and represented the qualities in Kpop to which we are attracted. Can you imagine the kind of movie that consign
such talented and massively hard-working Kpop singers to the delivery of
sermons about things like “inner beauty?”
The level of condescension would be unimaginable.
MS: We love Kpop so much, it is
inevitable that we feel there are so much more about the premise, characters
and the world-view of KHD that could have been realized. Still, I am very happy that the overall
design of this film paid such a close attention to the world of Kpop, instead
of simply taking the latter as a cultural overlay. The movie is really, really about Kpop. For me that is the singular achievement of
this film. And in the process of
enticing so many global viewers, it actually manages to showcase the strengths
of Kpop to those who had not been aware of them.
K: Thank you so much for the
interview! I feel that we have by no means exhausted what we could talk about
KDH.
MS: Thanks Professor Kim! No, we have not for sure. I would welcome
another opportunity to delve into many issues we have barely touched upon,
using the KDH phenomenon as a gateway.
