14 - Following the Footsteps of BTS

Summary

The globalization of K-pop has spawned an inbound flow of tourists and shoppers to the country. As Korean popular culture functions as a window through which audiences come to know Korea, specific places have emerged as sites through which K-culture can be experienced. Beyond conventional tourist destinations, these sites are related to K-pop idols, such as music video shooting locations, cafés and restaurants that idols frequented, locales used as the background of album cover photos, shops that sell celebrity merchandise, K-pop agency buildings, even ordinary parks and bookstores that K-pop stars visited. Thus, “K-pop pilgrimage” has emerged as a new tourism trend, and Korean local governments and the tourist industry are busy creating, discovering, identifying, and publicizing K-pop-associated places. This chapter presents a detailed ethnography of K-pop tourism by ARMY, BTS’s fandom, and discusses how local municipalities and tourism agencies, which have discovered the market power of ARMY, actively promote BTS-themed destinations via social media. By combining the two analyses, this chapter examines the ways K-pop consumption is extended into urban places, thereby reconfiguring the tourist and urban landscapes in Korea.