BTS and the Korean Language Craze

“우린 전생에도 아마 다음 생에도/영원히 함께니까”

These lyrics will be familiar to BTS fans, who have probably heard them hundreds of times while listening to the group’s hit single “DNA.” But many international fans have to wait for translations to be able to understand the band’s lyrics or watch an interview with the group in Korean.

Soon, however, fans from around the world will be able to use their love of BTS to start learning the Korean language, thanks to an upcoming project from the group’s management company, Big Hit Entertainment. Their new program, called “Learn! Korean with BTS” will launch in stages beginning in March, and will use BTS content to create a Korean language learning curriculum for international fans.

Korean Language Boom

With this new program, Big Hit will be able to capitalize on a huge trend among Hallyu (Korean wave) fans around the world, many of whom are investing in learning Korean so they can understand their favorite songs and TV shows. From Saudi Arabia to the Philippines to India and beyond, interest in Korean language education has been growing in recent years thanks in large part to pop culture fans.

In the United States, enrollment in Korean language classes at the college level has been growing even as enrollment for foreign languages classes overall has fallen. Korean language enrollments for college students has grown steadily since the 1990s, then jumped 45 percent from 2009 to 2013 and grew an additional 13.7 percent from 2013 to 2016, the most recent numbers available from the Modern Language Association of America.

Big Hit isn’t the first company to capitalize on the increased interest in learning Korean through pop culture content. In 2017, drama site Viki added Learn Mode to its platform, allowing Korean drama fans to pause their favorite show and learn word-by-word what their favorite star-crossed couples are saying to each other. There is even a book already dedicated to teaching fans beginner Korean through BTS lyrics.

The South Korean government is also all in on the Korean language boom – the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism supports 180 King Sejong Institutes in 60 countries around the world, providing Korean language classes and helping train and support Korean language teachers. According to their website, the institutes were founded to cope with increased demand for more resources for international Korean learners amid greater interest from fans of Korean culture. By helping more people learn Korean, they say, the organization aims to translate language learning into an improvement in South Korea’s overall national image.

The Language of Soft Power

In a 2018 interview, when asked what made them feel proudest in terms of their influence, BTS member Jin said that he loves seeing fans learning Korean as a way to connect with the group. “When I see fans studying hangeul (the Korean alphabet) and learning about Korean culture, I think ‘oh, they’re getting to know Korea,’ and I feel proud,” he said.

This is exactly the sentiment that the South Korean government has been trying to capitalize on as the popularity of K-pop has swelled around the world. As Jin mentioned, fans who spend time learning Korean because of their favorite singers not only learn the language, but they also often learn and gain an appreciation for Korean culture and society more broadly.

In fact, Hallyu studies have spread on campuses across the United States – to universities like the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, and Brandeis University, among others. The topic has also become a topic of scholarly study in recent years as researchers dig into what has made Korean culture so popular, how fans interact with Korean content and with each other, and what impacts Hallyu has had on Korea’s image around the world.

The soft power windfall that Hallyu has brought to South Korea is hard to overestimate. For example, in a recent survey of 12,663 K-pop fans from 111 different countries, 89.8 percent said they want to visit Korea someday, and of those who had visited already 86.8 percent said their fandom was a driving factor in making the decision to travel to Korea. Another study found that an estimated 800,000 tourists visited South Korea in 2017 just because of BTS. No wonder the band has been named Honorary Tourism Ambassadors of Seoul for the last three years running.

Beyond the reputational benefits of popularity, this boost directly brings concrete and substantial benefits to South Korea. In 2017, exports of Hallyu-related content, including music, TV shows, video games, and movies, reached $8.2 billion. If you include secondary effects, such as the impact of an actor’s endorsement of a product or the hotel nights that fans book while visiting Seoul for a K-pop concert, the numbers are staggering. Again, BTS alone brings in an estimated $4.65 billion to the Korean economy every year.

Earlier this year, another of South Korea’s current cultural powerhouses, Parasite director Bong Joon Ho, urged audiences to give foreign films more of a chance (a wish that perhaps foreshadowed the movie’s history-making Best Picture win at this year’s Academy Awards). "Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” Bong said, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Fans of Korean pop culture have taken this plea one step further – leaping over the 1-inch barrier and dedicating themselves to learning the Korean language itself so they can interact directly with content rather than through translations and subtitles. As fans get more and more access to Korean language materials, sometimes even directly through their favorite K-pop group, this interest in South Korea more broadly is likely to spread even further.