The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SPRING 2026 The Linguist 19 FEATURES concerts, commercials and other content into multiple languages. At the same time, the desire to understand jokes, song lyrics or Korean food references made by K-pop stars immediately drives individual language study. 4 The urgency to stay abreast of content, especially announcements of tour dates or albums, is the key reason many fans start studying Korean. Memorising different time zones, and learning dates and months in Korean to understand album and content release times, all contribute to an expanded linguistic identity. For many monolingual English speakers in the US, it also provides a shift in language awareness away from viewing English as the primary language of opportunity. 5 Countless threads across social media platforms echo the search for genuine understanding, as one Reddit user expressed: "I still think it is totally worth it because there is a lot of nuance/words that just don't translate at all to English, and reading lyrics in Korean is just completely different." 6 Language learning with the stars The drive to study Korean through K-pop does not just exist in online spaces or serve solely as symbolic linguistic capital. Over the last decade, K-pop groups and artists have entered the mainstream touring and award show circuit outside East Asia. Fans learn Korean event cheers so they can 'fan chant', and show support and collaborative respect. Tourists also now pay significant amounts to book pilgrimage tours to South Korea to visit famous K-pop sites and study Korean. The K-pop industry itself may benefit financially as well. Music entertainment companies design, package and sell language learning programmes with their own popular artists, utilising their voices, videos and music to engage fans in learning Korean. A leading example, 'Learn! Korean with BTS', features textbooks with animated versions of the band and videos. Its trademarked Motoaudio pen plays audio of the group members' voices reading grammar points and pronouncing vocabulary when pressed to the digital print in textbooks. Study materials utilise clips from popular song lyrics and videos as a starting point familiar to fans who may have been singing phonetically in Korean. Bangtan Academy, a free language course to learn Korean through Discord, connects BTS fans so they can work together towards their language-learning goals. The rigorous programme has a rotating formal application, rigid assignment deadlines and a five-hour-a- month commitment to stay enrolled. It also offers incentives for completing modules, including exclusive access to K-pop discussion groups. The impact of AI and subtitles A challenge to this desire for genuine understanding may, however, be under way. In early 2025, a K-pop entertainment agency announced it would provide AI-generated subtitles for live streams and content spoken only in Korean. Fans can pay a membership fee to access subtitles in 14 languages. Social media posts already identify numerous errors, yet the option is increasing in popularity. The economic value of Korean continues to grow as fans pay for access, yet one wonders what will be lost in the beautiful struggle to learn, value and understand the language as other digital forms of translation emerge within the multilingual world of K-pop. From the worldwide success of Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters to new K-pop groups forming outside Korea, the value of the Korean language continues to rise across the world in globalised and hybridised forms. AN ARMY OF FANS A Blackpink concert (below); and (inset) BTS win a Billboard Award in 2017 © SHUTTERSTOCK

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