With its millions of adoring fans, formidable streaming numbers and unprecedented video budgets, K-Pop has more than proven its clout on the worldwide stage.
Formerly a phenomenon specific to East Asia, it’s recently put the fear of god into confident pop stars like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, as a rise in listeners looking further afield for their pop fix has seen it smash into Western markets via streaming platforms like Spotify.
Its appeal has become so astronomical and so international, that when one of its stars makes the smallest of gestures, it can send shockwaves felt all over the world.
Sunmi is a solo artist from Iksan, South Korea, formerly a member of supergroup Wonder Girls. Last night at a concert at Amsterdam’s Q-Factory, she proclaimed to the crowd “I have many different sides to me…dorky…and LGBT”
The crowd went wild, as did the internet. Videos of the speech went viral, and Sunmi immediately become the number one worldwide trend on Twitter.
Many speculated that this was her way of coming out, which would have made her the first K-Pop star ever to do so. But she cleared things up with a tweet this morning, saying “Yeah, I support LGBT but don’t get me wrong guys.”
Either way, it shows the power the k-pop industry wields, and has exciting implications for when (or if) we see an LGBT k-pop singer publicly speak out.
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