K-pop addiction: Teenagers are soft targets (2024)

In December 2023, Keralites read with disbelief about how a diehard fan of the popular South Korean boy band BTS reacted with allegations of sexual abuse when her father forbade her from following the K-pop group. The father had to approach the High Court seeking bail to come out of imprisonment! The State is reeling under the shocking statistics that indicate about 40% of youth under 18 years of age, are victims of substance abuse, and the majority are girls. There are no statistics about the percentage of youth addicted to K-Pop, but it can be presumed to be reasonably high, as it is a global fad, even in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Millions of teenage students, especially girls, around the world, are hopelessly addicted to Korean bands, popularly known as K-Pop, aka Korean popular music, known as Hallyu or Korean wave that has taken the world by storm. Since its debut in the mid-1990s, this genre of music has created a wave of successful pop groups, leading to their meteoric rise to fame, popularity, and pop culture dominance. Some of the most acclaimed K-pop groups, are BTS, Blackpink, and Seventeen. Crazy fans affectionately call them “K-poppers”, and “cutie patootie bootie” and so on.

K-pop, or Korean pop music, has been causing crazy addiction waves among youngsters, especially young girls. K-pop influence extends to China, America, and even the Middle East. Their catchy beats, colourful visuals, and choreographed dance routines have gripped the fascination of millions of fans around the globe, but critics point out that K- pop has a negative influence on young people. The hyper-sexualized and violent imagery, queer beauty standards, as K-pop stars undergo extensive plastic surgery, can have harmful and perverted values becoming ingrained in young minds. The videos explicitly portray mistreatment, suicide, sexual assault, and sexualization of minors.

There is even a 12-member girl group called ‘Loona’. With 13 members and three units, the SEVENTEEN band is revered as one of K-pop's leading superstars. The band boasts over 2 billion streams and over 10 million albums sold. In 2021, it became the first group with two No.1s on Billboard Top album sales and was nominated for the Best K-pop award at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards.

Teenage Indians form a huge fan base of K-pop music and K-dramas. According to a report by Facebook Analytics, there are over 15 million fans of K-pop music and K-dramas in India, and the number is growing. Even Indian singers do not enjoy this kind of popularity. Over the last year or so, the influence of K-pop music has been so widespread in India that Gen Z is literally hooked on to it 24 hours. In May 2022, the craze even led a small-town 18-year-old girl, Shreya Lenka from Odisha to become India’s first K-pop star when she aced the worldwide audition conducted by DR Music. She also got inducted as a band member of the popular K-pop girl band, Blackswan. Another popular K-pop band Bangtan Boys (BTS) enjoyed a staggering 1.52 billion YouTube viewership last year in India alone and also topped Twitter India’s music trends. And, when BTS launched Dynamite, they had 8 million Indian fans liking the video within 24 hours of launch. This stupendous popularity also took them to the coveted cover of TIME magazine as Next Generation Leaders.

The K-pop albums teleport the viewer into a strange fancy world of its own. The swanky set designs and the vibrant colour schemes appeal to Gen Z and ensure escapism from grim reality. Space and Sci-Fi themes powered by AI and Techno concepts co-existing with a strange wonderland leave viewers spellbound.

The K-pop bands extensively use make-up. Most undertake a 10-step skincare routine and this adds to their popularity amongst both boys and girls who wish to achieve flawless skin by emulating the beauty routine of their K-Pop idols. This has also boosted the Korean cosmetics industry, which is expected to reach USD 20 billion by 2026 globally.

To enhance their beauty and appeal, the common procedures done in K-Pop are blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), rhinoplasty (nose job), facial bone contouring (can be for either a V-shaped jawline or to bring cheekbones in), epicanthoplasty (inner eye corner surgery), lateral canthoplasty (opens up the whites of the eyes), breast augmentation and lip fillers. Plastic surgeries are done while the band members are still young (teens or pre-teens) so as to prevent old photos of “pre-surgery” looks from surfacing in social media after their debut. This craze has enabled to building of an enormous cosmetic surgery empire in Korea. This has led to a recently announced goal by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to attract some 700,000 medical tourists by 2027 only to do cosmetic surgery. Industry bodies hope at least 15 percent of the government’s 700,000 benchmark will be made up of travellers seeking beautification procedures, making only cosmetic surgery tourists touch a phenomenal new high of 110,000. This highlights the global brand power of Korean cosmetics and the skill of the country’s surgeons – both, a source of national pride, leading to South Korea being called the “plastic surgery capital of the world,” and also, boasting the highest number of cosmetic surgeons per capita than anywhere else on the earth! But this has resulted in complicated societal pressures about the “perfect” image requirements for going to college, entering the workplace, or even finding a marriage partner.

In Korean pop culture, Korean beauty standards prioritise having a small, youthful V-shaped face, symmetrical eyebrows, a very slim body, and double eyelids! Double eyelid surgery, as defined by Stanford Medicine, “creates an eyelid crease resulting in a larger and more symmetric, almond-shaped eye,” and is one of the most popular surgery in Korea.

The Korean influence has resulted in the growing trend in India for ‘Profhilo’ to enhance skin health. Profhilo is a form of injectable skin bio remodelling treatment used to inject hyaluronic acid into the skin layer to enhance skin looks. It is common to see Korean ladies with wide eyes, full cheeks, slimmed jawlines, pointed chins, puckered, bubble-gum-pink to light coral lips, and filled under eyes, skin as white as snow overlaying a drastically altered and unnatural facial frame. This obsession is fast spreading to other countries and is a driving force propelling India’s cosmetic industry.

Kerala has a huge fan base of K-Pop lovers, almost every social media platform, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram is flooded with thousands of followers from Kerala. In April 2023, a Malayali girl Gauthami made her debut in the K-pop band named 'X’. But the flip side is that apart from drug addiction, the new addiction sweeping the state is the K-Pop addiction. Several cases of extreme addiction to BTS and other K-Pop bands are being reported at the district resource centres under Our Responsibility to Children (ORC)across the state. Teachers in schools and colleges need to be trained to handle this new kind of addiction, sweeping among youth. Students get attracted to K-Pop as it provides high voltage excitement, a spurt in dopamine — the brain chemical that gives thrill, happiness, and excitement. To sustain the excitement indefinitely, students sit glued, continuously watching K-Pop programs, resulting in sleep cycle disruption, disturbing lifestyles, and consequently poor academic performance, depression, throwing tantrums, and rebellion in many households.

The sad part is that there is no known therapy for such kind of novel addictions, engulfing every continent and affecting new generations.

The author is former Director General of National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics