K-pop mastered everything Gen Z: a deep dive

And you can too. Here’s what I learned while undercover for four days.

Image: A young speaks into her cellphone outside a club.

You may be thinking okay, you’ve gone crazy, this doesn’t make any sense at all: makeup, flashy outfits — and jaw-dropping budgets. So, what does K-pop have to do with user-experience?

Well, everything.

K-pop contributed roughly $5 billion to the South Korean GDP, fueled millions of passionate fans around the globe. The question is, how did such an industry hypnotize a generation? To answer this, I camped out in the community for four days, so you don’t have to. Here are my findings.

Four ways record labels mastered user experience –and how you can too

Parasocial bonds: fan-service as the bonding tool

On the first day, I needed to find the K-pop fan’s natural habitat. Thankfully, helpful fans encouraged me to use V Live (a live-streaming app used by record labels to promote interactions between their artists and their fans). Right away, I noticed that subscribing to a group’s channel costs $35, but that is nothing for someone who has a strong parasocial relationship with an artist.

Parasocial ties, “one-sided psychological relationships,” are what keep the K-pop community thriving and buying. Record labels know this and encourage their “idols” to provide fan service — which consists of hours of personal videos and livestreaming in front of millions of people.

Image: Source by Timelle Thomas

This parasocial bonding content typically focuses on the artists’ personal lives — such as birthday or “hang out with me” videos. I selected three old live-streams ready to take notes. I didn’t know what to expect in the comments.

Image: Source by Timelle Thomas

The chat room was flooded with emojis and praises as viewers hungrily devoured fan…