In 2022, the group introduced that it might take a break so its members may concentrate on solo tasks and fulfill their nation’s necessary navy service over the following two years. However up to now, followers have remained loyal, exhibiting as much as stream, buy, and assist that solo work. With seven particular person careers now taking off, it’s potential the fandom may proceed to develop.
Although BTS Military is the most important in quantity, different Okay-pop fan teams now interact in comparable social and political actions. Jorquera, whose favourite teams are BTS and EXO, emphasizes that Kpopers for Boric was precisely that—a coalition of Okay-pop followers who observe completely different teams.
The Chileans riffed on what they realized from different profitable Okay-pop campaigns: how one can create viral social media posts, host occasions to construct neighborhood, and join individuals on the premise of a standard curiosity. Additionally they used iconography acquainted to Okay-pop fandoms. Each Okay-pop group has a emblem, and each fandom will get a reputation and a particular gentle stick that modifications colour or shows messages synced to the music by way of Bluetooth. Some teams even have a delegated colour (BTS is purple). Kpopers for Boric created a emblem for the politician and adopted inexperienced as his signature hue.
They used photos of Okay-pop idols in social media campaigns to achieve traction. They despatched an Uber to Boric’s marketing campaign headquarters to ship a cake embellished with the candidate’s face, a “Koya” keychain (that includes an animated koala who represents BTS’s chief RM), and Okay-pop-inspired picture playing cards of Boric, documenting all of it in a TikTok video. The video unfold, incomes 387,000 likes.
As they organized occasions at cafés, printing 200 coffee-cup sleeves with QR codes linked to voter data websites, Boric started incorporating Okay-pop into his marketing campaign movies. The group even organized rides for voters on election day.
In December 2021, with file voter turnout, Boric was elected because the nation’s youngest president. He’d promised to cancel pupil debt, tax the wealthy, decrease health-care prices, revise the nation’s social safety system, and battle local weather change. After the election, Jorquera thought, “Oh my God, we did this.”
It wasn’t solely Okay-poppers, she acknowledges: “Everybody was utilizing what they cared about essentially the most for supporting this marketing campaign.”
In Brazil, the place Okay-pop is extraordinarily fashionable, BTS followers used comparable ways to succeed in apolitical followers. The group Military Assist the Planet initially shaped to battle local weather change however turned its consideration to registering voters forward of the October 2022 presidential election. Initially of its voter registration marketing campaign, 16- and 17-year-olds (for whom voting is optionally available, although it’s necessary for many residents 18 and up) had been turning out on the lowest degree in 30 years.
