Abstract
This article examines how anglophone K-pop fans negotiate the resonances and frictions inherent in transcultural fan engagement, focusing on fans of the K-pop group OnlyOneOf. Anglophone fans celebrate OnlyOneOf for creating what they understand as a queer safe space within K-pop. They identify with what they see as OnlyOneOf's bravery in sharing queer narratives and LGBTQI support in the face of what many anglophone fans perceive as the conservatism of the K-pop industry and Korean culture. Discussions among anglophone fans of Korea's conservatism and homophobia heighten fan appreciation of and commitment to OnlyOneOf and to K-pop more broadly. Fans find parallels between the issues faced by OnlyOneOf and fans’ own experiences in their home cultures and in fandom itself. Moreover, often these ambivalent narratives resonate with larger discourses within K-pop media that emphasize overcoming adversity and becoming your best self despite obstacles. Thus, even ideological friction between anglophone fan values and their perceptions of Korean cultural values can fuel fan investment. Anglophone fans articulate their perception of South Korea as an imperfect place, but one that has allowed them meaningful self-growth and that is personally dear and powerful to them. This understanding of South Korea and K-pop fandom as imperfect imaginary homelands motivates some anglophone K-pop fans to visit or even migrate to South Korea and others to engage with Korean popular culture deeply but from afar.
Keywords
Introduction
These young people…who spend much of their mental time in another culture, feel a strong sense of semiotic solidarity and cultural connection …Some…come to visit as a weekend only world, even as others live there full time. These places are, in their own senses, also imaginary homelands.
This article considers anglophone transcultural fan engagement with K-pop fandom, exploring why anglophone fans are drawn to K-pop, how they frame their investment in K-pop in relation to their own ambivalence about their home countries and cultures. Why do fans choose to consistently engage with the media products from another culture, and what feeds the sense of connection that they feel so strongly? In his work on Western fans of anime reclaiming the term “otaku,” Matt Hills argues that Western fans of anime identify with what they perceive as the marginalization of fans in Japan, seeing their own cultural marginalization echoed in the depictions of otaku in anime and Japanese culture (Hills, 2002). Does a similar recognition of what Hills terms “transcultural homologies at the subcultural level” fuel anglophone fan engagement with K-pop? (Hills, 2002, p. 12) Why do anglophone fans choose K-pop as a space of comfort and escape, and do they consider it as a separate space, a “weekend only world” where they share values with other fans in opposition to their daily life? (Jenkins, 1992) And how do anglophone fans negotiate elements of K-pop fandom that they see as conflicting with their personal, cultural, and national ideological frameworks? The answers to these questions are not uniform across anglophone K-pop fans; indeed, anglophone K-pop fandom is widespread and diverse, and K-pop itself is an ever-evolving and multiplicitous cultural arena. Thus, some fans respond to and feel hailed by certain corners of K-pop while others do not, and some may feel ambivalently hailed. For example, Korean diasporic K-pop fans experience different—and potentially more fraught—negotiations than non-Korean fans. Nevertheless, for many anglophone fans, K-pop serves as a “bridge between worlds,” which fans use to escape from the constraints of their own cultures and enter into a real of the imagination. And for some fans, this “real of the imagination” motivates physical transport, be it through pilgrimages to the K-pop section of their local Barnes and Nobles, or further afield to international K-pop concerts, or to Korea itself.
This study examines a specific instance—anglophone fans of the lesser-known K-pop group OnlyOneOf—that has its own set of tensions in relation to these questions. While no snapshot could answer these questions for all anglophone K-pop fans, this case study offers an understanding of the complexities of such “transcultural homologies,” and constructions of fandom as “imaginary homeland” (Hills, 2002; Jenkins, 2026).
OnlyOneOf is a group known for their engagement with mature themes of sexuality and identity, and they have gathered a visible and vocal queer anglophone fan following who celebrate the group's commitment to nuanced queer storytelling and issues of identity and alienation. Building on Ingyu Oh, Wonho Jang, and Hyun-Chin Lim's (2023) “What is Female Universalism,”, Hwang et al. argue that international female fans have been drawn to K-pop through their investment in a myth of “female universalism” that envisions South Korea as “an imaginary homeland that is the safest place for women and sexual minorities who want to achieve their lifetime dreams.” Here I look at the flipside of this: within this context of Hallyu articulated female-universalism, how do anglophone LGBTQI-identifying fans negotiate their love of K-pop while articulating their perceptions of South Korea as a challenging culture for sexual minorities? Predominant discourses in anglophone fan spaces such as YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and x.com present South Korea as a repressive, homophobic, and gender normative culture. Does South Korea and K-pop culture offer an inviting imaginary homeland even when fans discuss issues of homophobia and censorship within South Korea and K-pop cultures and fandoms?
In his work on Japanese female fans of Hallyu, Ingyu Oh considers the complex disenchantments Japanese women feel with their own national contexts that leads them to be drawn to Hallyu media and discourses, and eventually to move to Korea itself (Oh, 2011; Oh et al., 2023). In a similar way, queer anglophone fans are drawn to K-pop's evocative expressions of queerness and nonbinary gender expression, as well as with its subtle address of the struggles of living in the closet (Oh, 2015; Putri, 2021). Indeed, many fans in Western contexts may themselves be in the closet, and their own social worlds are far from free of homophobia and bias (Zhao, 2021). The issues of identity and the more coded registers in which they are shared in K-pop may very well be personally resonant and reflective of anglophone fans’ own negotiations of their identity within their home cultural framework. Even with knowledge of homophobia in South Korea and an understanding that South Korea's stance toward LGBTQI identity is highly conservative, constricting, and damaging to sexual minorities living there, queer-identifying fans can and do find resonance and a sense of “being seen” in K-pop. K-pop's engagement with queer meaning—and specifically OnlyOneOf's explorations of personal struggles of coming to know oneself and facing the real threats of an unwelcoming society—resonate deeply with their anglophone queer fans.
This article considers the perceived potentials and frictions of transcultural fandom through the anglophone fandom of OnlyOneOf, and more specifically examines how anglophone fans relate to, engage with, and pursue the vision of gender, sexuality, and identity offered by OnlyOneOf. OnlyOneOf (also known by the shorthand OOO) is a lesser-known group with a devoted international fandom. Nonetheless the group remains situated within Korean pop music culture and Korean culture more broadly. Anglophone OnlyOneOf fans articulate their appreciation of OnlyOneOf's bravery in addressing queer themes, the maturity and nuance with which those themes are presented, and the solace they find in both OOO's work and fan spaces. They also articulate an ambivalent perception of the Korean context from which OOO's work emerges: the group's response to its cultural context showcases both deep-running tensions and the presence of hope for social change. It is this internal conflict that seems to invite motivation, inspiration, and deep investment. Moreover, often these ambivalent narratives resonate with larger discourses prominent in K-pop media of resilience, of overcoming adversity and becoming your best self despite obstacles (Kim, 2019). Thus, even ideological friction between anglophone fan values and their understanding of Korean cultural values can fuel fan investment.
OOO debuted in May 2019, and the rise of COVID-19 affected their ability to tour and perform abroad. Fans in the United States had no opportunity to gather in person in concerts. Engaging initially only online, anglophone OOO fans worked to establish shared values set apart from “real life.” These discourses also positioned OOO as distinct from other K-pop groups, as from the outset anglophone fans perceived OOO as a group unusual in their engagement with mature themes and overt sexuality. Later albums cemented and focused this distinction, as OnyOneOf's work addressed queer themes in lyrics, choreography, and storytelling. Fans engaging around these themes of identity and sexuality sought to articulate shared values and create a sense of safe fandom space; however, many fractures and frictions are visible in their negotiations of what OOO might mean and to whom.
When OOO was able to tour the United States, the concerts cemented perceptions of OOO fandom as queer friendly and activist space, both for the experiences of those who went and from those who engaged with the content second hand through fancams and official concert coverage. In Spring of 2024, I attended the second world tour concert in NYC with my teen daughter, where I experienced firsthand the welcoming but also tenuous and uncertain temporary community. Even more than the online fan community, the in-person concert showcased the diverse and welcoming space of desired togetherness alongside the awareness of friction and difference, of fans who shared overlapping but different understandings of OOO, their music, and their cultural value.
Some notes on method
This study draws on discursive analysis of anglophone fan engagement primarily on YouTube, one of the key centers of anglophone K-pop fandom. I focus on YouTube because it is a central forum where official and fan-made material mingle as do anglophone, Korean, and other international fans. Thus, the articulation of semiotic solidarity and frictions of all kinds are quite visible. I focus primarily on YouTube comments on official music videos and performance videos but also consider fan-created videos and comments as more enclosed, fan-determined moments of community authorship.
As in all my scholarship, I position myself as a participant observer and a scholar fan (Stein, 2015, 2019) who actively participates in these spaces. I have attempted, in my selection of videos and YouTube comments, to offer a multifaceted picture of anglophone K-pop fandom via a deep dive into this case study. Even with a primary focus on a single group, my selection of examples from OOO fandom engagement cannot be comprehensive, however, and my analyses are qualitative rather than quantitative. Moreover, though all the videos and comments I look at are publicly posted and have significant viewership online, I do not offer direct links to these conversations, and in some cases obscure or omit potentially identifying language in order to protect the intimate publics of fandom, in accordance with contemporary practices within fan studies (Dym & Fiesler, 2020).
Finally, I wish to discuss my use of the term “anglophone” fandom. I focus here on comments and video material shared on YouTube in English. However, YouTube fandom is international and transcultural, and many fans comment in English though it might not be their primary language. Moreover, fans engage on YouTube across languages as well as nations, using YouTube's embedded translation function. Thus these “anglophone” conversations and fan spaces are not rigidly bounded by language, culture, or national context.
Fandom histories: from (seemingly) utopian weekend-only world to fractious fan experience
Before we turn to OOO's fandom as a space of semiotic solidarity and a potential imaginary homeland, let's reconsider the notion of “weekend only world” first articulated by Jenkins in 1992 and explore how it might apply to K-pop fandom specifically and to our discussion of K-pop fandom as potential imaginary homeland. From the perspective of 2024, Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (Jenkins, 1992) offers a nuanced snapshot of a particular community of media fans in the cultural moments before the “digital revolution.” Discussing a pre-internet fan community, the picture of fandom Jenkins paints is one in which media fans who found meaning and self-understanding in their engagement with popular culture had to reach out in analog ways to one another, through (what we now call) “snail” mailing zines and VHS (Video Home System) tapes, and through gathering in person at fan conventions. The fan conventions described by Jenkins (1992) in the conclusion to Textual Poachers were time-bound and space-bound, set apart from fans’ everyday lives, spaces where media fandom interests and values would shape the schedules of days and the interactions and relationships that formed there. Conventions offered this “weekend-only world” where fans gathered with others who shared their values and who shared their understanding of what was and could be real, of what mattered. The seemingly utopian weekend-only world existed in perceived juxtaposition to fans’ everyday lives, where they lived in friction and disconnect from their surrounding culture, differing from those around them in their sense of what ought to matter and what is worth caring about. However, it is important to note that this seemingly utopian weekend-only world of early fan conventions (a) was only accessible to those with the resources to attend conventions and (b) likely left some feeling alienated or uninvited if they didn’t agree with the dominant shared values embraced by the fandom culture of the time. Racism, xenophobia, and other forms of bias no doubt delimited this utopian gathering space and/or simmered beneath the surfaces of fans’ convention experiences.
The digitization of fandom necessarily changed these dynamics and transformed fan senses of community, inclusion, and separation. Now fans did not have to work so hard to find one another—gone was the need to painstakingly copy and snail mail VHS tapes of fan videos or zines; fan videos could be shared as video files, or eventually streaming sites; fan fiction could be posted to fandom-specific or collective fandom archives. Fans did not need to travel by plane and gather in the liminal spaces of hotels to connect with one another; instead, they could find communities through online forums and social media networks. And crucially, these communities were no longer so strictly time delimited. They were ongoing or asynchronous worlds that fans accessed whenever they could.
If these fan community spaces were now continuously available and accessible, this meant that fan worlds were no longer set apart; they were more easily findable and visible, not just by dedicated fans but by mildly interested viewers, by fans to be, and by those who did not share values, who did not care about fandom-beloved media, and who did not agree on what was “real” and mattered to fans. This meant that fandoms could grow exponentially but it also increased the potential for outsider “misreadings” and judgment, or for friction between different value sets. Subcommunities who shared beloved media objects but held different value sets now might very likely come into contact and potentially conflict with one another. Fandom experience was no longer so set apart, but neither was it so seemingly harmonious, no longer such a clearly marked out escape and relief from being misaligned in “real life.” “Real life” frictions made themselves known and visible, indeed were and are often inescapable in online fandom.
Although the shift to online fandom removed many of the protective barriers allowing fan conventions to feel like weekend only worlds, nevertheless online fandom still offered (and continues to offer) some of the perceived escape and unity described in Textual Poachers (Jenkins, 1992). Though not weekend-only, nor restricted to those who can purchase a plane ticket and hotel room, nor set in a geographically delimited place, nevertheless some dimensions of the weekend-only-world fandom experience are still present in online spaces, and contribute to participants’ sense of fandom as an imaginary homeland. Within certain demarcated online spaces, fans gather with other fans who implicitly or explicitly share their value sets, their sense of what is “real” and of what they care about. These definitions and divisions can be indicated (and policed) by hashtags, by use of coded terminologies and cues, by forum titles, by restricting quizzes to join various fan groups, by moderators of semipublic communities, or by fellow fans recognition and approval or condemnation/ostracization (Busse, 2017; George, 2020; Hannell, 2023; McCracken et al., 2020; Stein, 2015). The idea of the separate shared mindset of a weekend-only-world remains, but it must be actively maintained and policed in ways small and big, the frictions that instigate the separation always in active process. 1
Online fandom allows multiple not-quite-weekend-only-worlds to exist 24-7, seven days a week, alongside and directly or indirectly in contact with one another. Online fandom is thus rife with evolving tensions between different versions of what counts as “real,” what people care about, what matters, different value systems and different cultural and subcultural and for that matter generational frameworks. These many intersecting bubble worlds mean that online fandom was and is fraught, a place of alignments and misalignments, resonances and misunderstandings and strong disagreements; it is far from always a happy place (Stein, 2019; Zhou, 2013). Often fans experience online fandom as an angry or ambivalent space, or as an unwelcoming and harmful space in which they are told they do not belong (Lothian & Stanfill, 2021). As Rukmini Pande (2024) argues, “the construction and maintenance of the dominant characterization of media fandom, by both participants and scholars, as a utopic space for fans from marginalized identities to share pleasure, depends on the active erasure of antiracist critique” (pp. 108–109). What is perceived as a utopia for some—and indeed, as imaginary homeland—is upheld at the expense of others who would critique it for its exclusionary practices.
These tensions are further complicated within the contexts of transcultural fandom when fans may not share cultural context with one another or with the media texts at the center of their fannish investment (Aburime, 2024; Annett, 2011; Han, 2017; Lynch, 2022; Min et al., 2019; Morimoto, 2018, 2019, 2021). Bertha Chin and Lori Morimoto (2013) describe how “fans understand and deploy the objects or texts of another culture through the means they have at their disposal within their own popular cultural context” (p. 103) …driven by a “moment of affinity between the fan and transcultural object” (p. 105). But, as Sandra Annett (2011) argues, a transcultural fan community can be defined as a “a group in which people from many…personal backgrounds find a sense of connection across difference, engaging with each other through a shared interest while negotiating the frictions that result from their differing social and historical contexts” (p. 174). And in a fan world of intersecting bubbles, fans may be fans of the same object, and have varying transcultural relationships to those objects, but find more friction than affinity in their interactions with one another, especially in spaces in which different fandom-bubbles commingle.
But even with all this friction, policing, and self-policing, fandom online offers at least the potential to envision and rehearse new ways of being, to transform oneself and the world. Fandom online can function as transformative space and can enable new forms of collective civic imagination (Cho, 2022; Jenkins et al., 2020; Jenkins & Jie, 2024; Saraswati, 2020). However, even these transformative moments happen within fractious contexts and are not equally accessible and inviting to all and indeed may do significant harm as they exclude some even as they offer transformative value to others (Jenkins, 2020; Pande, 2018).
Finally, it is important to note that even with the advent and growth of online fandom, in-person fan conventions and events such as concerts persist. Indeed, thanks to online networks, they are easier for like-minded fans to seek out. And though in-person gatherings remain to some degree set-apart opportunities for fans to gather and feel connected with other fans, at the same time participants understand these gatherings to be always already connected and connecting. Moreover, music concerts have a long history of sharing the experience to fans who cannot attend, a tradition that has become ever easier online and on social media. Concerts are always potentially accessible to fans who are not present via live streaming, live-posting, fan cams and the like, and also to nonfans who may stumble upon the online traces of these in-person experiences on their various social media feeds. Rare in 2024 is the in-person fan experience that feels to any participants completely divorced from the outside world and its nonfan value systems (Baym, 2018; Bennett, 2016; 2017; Burnet, 2023; Petersen, 2003). This coexistence of online and in-person fandom is especially crucial for any analysis of K-pop fandom, since, in addition to conventions, concerts function as central K-pop fan experiences.
Anglophone K-Pop fandom's messy media mix
Anglophone K-pop fandom is made up of varying intersecting bubbles. Each of these bubbles exists within and between multiple networks of social media platforms and are part of the larger multimedia spread of Hallyu in online Anglophone fan spaces. Anglophone K-pop communities began developing in earlier social media spaces such as Livejournal, Facebook, and MySpace, and they then spread to Youtube (unsurprisingly as that is where many K-pop companies share music videos and related video products), as well as Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram. Thus, anglophone K-pop fandom evolved alongside and in conversation with other anglophone fan cultural networks—and instances of media fandom—and the ever-evolving discourses within those various fan spaces (Widita, 2018).
K-pop fandom grew steadily in anglophone spaces during the 2010s but it reached a tipping point during COVID and pandemic lockdowns, as fans changed their media consumption behaviors in the face of COVID restrictions and sought out new ways of engaging with media (Jang, 2022; Lee et al., 2020; Shin & Whitaker, 2023; Silva, 2021). However, anglophone media fan spaces had already seen an earlier influx of East Asian media fandom with the spread of anime fandom into English-speaking fan communities (Lamerichs, 2013; Napier, 2006). These fandom spaces thus had already seen processes of transcultural flow and frictions around the integration of East Asian media into fandom cultures previously primarily focused on Western media. Specific narratives had already taken hold as a result of these transcultural processes. Fannish discourses centered around cultural appropriation, the potentials of exoticization, and the threat of being overly engaged with media culture from elsewhere. These policing discourses sought to place moral frames onto fan behaviors, distinguishing between “good” and “bad” fan behaviors (Bradburn, 2023; Galbraith, 2011; Larsen, 2021; Stone, 2023; TWC Editor, 2022). Such policing discourses evolved to encompass K-pop and K-pop fans as its popularity grew in anglophone fan spaces (Khedun-Burgoine, 2022; Oh, 2017; Yoon, 2019). Fan-authored material such as video essays and discussion threads in anglophone social media spaces including YouTube, Twitter/X, Tumblr, and TikTok negotiate K-pop's perceived otherness, at times depicting a dark underbelly of K-pop and warning against the harm it does to idols and fans. Awareness of social issues in South Korea, including those faced by sexual minorities living there, became entangled with sensationalist and xenophobic framing of the negative influence of East Asian cultures on Western fans and fandom.
Despite these prevalent negative and often xenophobic discourses and the self-policing structures already in place that might discourage anglophone fans from engaging with K-pop and Korean culture, many were nonetheless drawn to the K-pop media mix, the music, culture, and multimedia spread (Oh, 2017; Yoon, 2019). Of specific centrality to the focus of this article, anglophone fans were drawn to the different articulations of gendered sexuality within K-pop, which include seemingly more play with what masculinity and femininity could be imagined to be (compared to the visions on offer within Western media and fandom) (Gutiérrez, 2019; Monocello & Dressler, 2020; Oh, 2017). Anglophone fans actively engage with the revised male spectacle and potential queer meanings they perceive within K-pop's multimedia spread, and contribute to it in the form of comments, gifs, fan fiction, fan video (Oh, 2015; Lee et al., 2020).
OnlyOneOf as Stealth “cultural reset”
Within this context came OOO, a group initially distinguishable to fans by their intellectual framing and mature themes. The official description posted on YouTube together with their first music video, “Savanna,” positions OOO as distinct from other contemporaneous K-pop boy bands in their direct address of sexuality: Too many… boy bands have shown fresh, and flattering concepts on their debut. OnlyOneOf's first love is different because it is rather burnt with thirstiness, and… out of breath. (OnlyOneOf Official 2019)
Anglophone fan discussion of “Savanna” supported this distinction. For example, one YouTube comment on the music video read “the description of this debut really screamed breaking stereotypes in K-pop, and that my friends, is what we love to see.” This phrase—what we love to see—is a variation of “we love to see it,” a common phrase at the time within anglophone media fandom. It invokes a collective “we” even as it states the commenters’ individual pleasure/joy/appreciation. This phrase thus imagines and enacts a unified bubble of “we,” rooting for the “breaking of stereotypes” in K-pop. Though unstated, this uniform bubble, the invoked “we,” is assumed progressive and anglophone.
Moreover, anglophone fan commentary on OOO's debut focused on the way in which in performing the song on music shows, the group or their producers supplied incorrect English transliteration to hide in plain sight the group's taboo-breaking. Where it sounded like OOO, in their debut live performances on competition show stages, were singing “I don’t give a shit what they think about us,” the lyrics were posted on screen as “I don’t give up, shake what they think about us,” thus simultaneously offering and denying what fans themselves were hearing and singing along to. For example, one comment hypothesized I think they did say the swear word but they had to censor the lyrics so that they can perform on music shows without conflicts. most Koreans who don’t speak English well would consider the words they sang like lyrics because the pronunciation sounds the same to them.
Other commenters took the shared lyrics at face value, yet rejected them for their own interpretation: Me: has seen the lyrics and know they say ‘shake’ Me; I don’t give a SHIT what they think about us
OOO's later release in 2021, entitled “Libido,” brought OOO into greater visibility because of its overt engagement with not only mature but also queer themes. Invoking Freud, the description posted along with the music video addresses the negative impact of denying or concealing one's desire: The title track “libidO” shares the boy's impulsive mind through the expressions of S. Freud. The mind's energy “libidO” is considered as a feeling that shouldn’t be openly talked about in real life and should be concealed, so its existence is often denied. However, the more the boy tries to suppress “libidO”, the stronger it gets and the more impact it has on his subconscious behavior. (OnlyOneOf Official, 2021)
The choreography in the music video and stage productions also included what fans termed a “crotch grab” between two members, which drew much media attention and fan critique (Rasheed & Sarin, 2024). This direct representation of queer sexuality in the music video and performance videos triggered heavy criticism on the part of Korean fans for being too explicit and in bad taste. Anglophone fans critiqued the choreography too but offered different reasons. They drew on existing anglophone fan discourses around “queerbaiting” and “fetishization” to critique the industry for potentially forcing the members to perform this sexually suggestive choreography and for seeking to appeal to fans with inauthentic queer content (Bradburn, 2023; Brennan, 2019; Fathallah, 2021; Galbraith, 2011; Rasheed & Sarin, 2024). Anglophone fans also critiqued fellow fans for enjoying this sexualized queer content supposedly uncritically at the expense of the safety and agency of the groups’ members. For example, one commenter wrote: You “fans’ only hear what you want to hear, huh? Y’all don’t want to believe that these men could possibly be in a terrible situation because it ruins your fantasy. This group is not huge like BTS where they have a little bit more freedom of expression and security, if groups like OnlyOneOf came forward or don’t do what their agency wants their lives could be ruined and it’ll go unnoticed, Real fans question the well being of their favorite groups to the agency no matter what…”
A second level of commentary denounced the original critiquers for oversimplifying the cultural work of “Libido” and dismissing the authorship/agency of the members. In response to the comment above suggesting that OOO was being forced to perform in a sexually explicit way because they weren’t a well-known group with clout in the industry, one fan writes: Hi, the members do have creative freedom in their work. The members trained predebut to be actively involved in the making of their work, and ever since debut the members have been taking a role in a variety of factors across the board, including: song composition, song arrangement, choreographing…discussing with their creative team and taking the lead in their concept direction.
This close recounting of the frictions within fan reception of “Libido” demonstrates how complex are the negotiations and collisions anglophone OOO fans performed in their responses to Libido, even if they were celebrating the song and group. In comparison to more simple visions of fandom as “weekend only world,” fan celebrations of “Libido” in no way existed in a vacuum. Fan moments of reception such as this do not offer pure escape; there is no sense of secure engagement with others who share the same values; even seemingly aligned fans may have slightly different value systems which make for potentially tentative or fraught celebratory exchanges. Celebration comes embedded with awareness of potential friction, or even depends on that friction for its articulation: transgressive celebration in the face of alternate interpretations/critique. Fans argue with one another over the proper ways to celebrate, the ethical emotions to have in response to representations, and the appropriate strategic ways to make their celebration visible. In comparison to the tension described in the original formulation of a “weekend-only world,” the “others” who care about different things aren’t relegated to the “real world” but are often even within niche fandom spaces.
However, OOO's later Underground Idol series cemented the sense of the group and its fandom (known as “lyOn”) as a safe space of LGBTQI celebration and to a degree unified fan positions in relation to the group's perceived queer authorship. The series of songs and music videos were solo releases by the members, structured in pairs, each which told two sides of a queer love story, with the members playing characters in “units” that spanned each pair of music videos. As these music videos told clearly queer narratives and were framed in reasonably direct language about their intent, OOO fans more fully articulated defenses against queerbaiting charges and more clearly expressed what OOO meant to them and how deeply their work affected them. Fans described the significance of OOO's intentional queer storytelling and emphasized the cultural contexts of Korean media with greater nuance, casting OOO as brave speakers of cultural truth who are working toward social change regardless of their own sexuality and gender orientation. The first song released in this series, Yoojung's “Begin,” depicts an urban love story between two tentative lovers, performed by Yoojung and fellow group-member KB. The description posted with the music videos reads Among the countless lovers in the world, there are also lovers that couldn’t be blessed. For whatever reasons. Religious reasons, things like parents’ disapproval. I dedicate this song to all those lovers that couldn’t be blessed. (OnlyOneOf Official, 2022) This group is close to my heart. In a country where lgbtqa remains VERY controversial and a much prejudiced topic, they deliver content/music that audaciously entertains fans who normally don’t find representation in mainstream idols. More than that, they’re not apologetic or embarrassed about it. I LOVE THEM and the fandom … we can’t forget lyOns [the fans] as well, thank you for making those videos about OOO and bringing their message to more people! I always love watching your videos, and I hope you know too that your work is not in vain! So glad these dudes have a company that lets them do this and even more thankful that they have the courage to speak out and the love to always accept others. I hope that one day people like them help make the world a kinder and more beautiful place for everyone.
Following the Underground Idol project, OOO's following album, SeOul Collection, situated their queer storytelling more fully in a specifically Korean context, while also offering commentary on other axes of identity including rural versus urban experience. The primary single, “Seoul Drift,” depicted young adults struggling to find connections with one another in Seoul (OnlyOneOf Official, 2023). Fan discussions in turn explored these topics further, articulating how fans felt “seen” by OOO's address of the realities of localized, imperfect cultures and what it means to speak out within them. For example, one fan wrote: Despite the fact I didn’t struggle with my identity, more with denial and fear before I figured myself out, I still have to hide from most people I love now and that hurts. OnlyOneOf makes me feel so seen and safe with their art. I am beyond grateful for everything you do! I love you so much! Another wrote… Can’t stop crying after …seeing the description. Some empathy come in my mind. As a migrant in the big city, I know there are lots of pressure that makes me can’t breathe. Thanks for speaking for us. Really hope more people can see this masterpiece!
Conclusion: How emotional it must be to just be in the room
Post-pandemic and following the release of SeOul Collection, OOO was finally able to tour internationally. This marked a significant shift. Where once the safe-ish space of OOO anglophone fandom had been only imagined and imaginary, now it became embodied, at least for the select few who were able to attend the concerts. These concerts were simultaneously intensely local and intensely transcultural, and the experiences that took place within them circulated online in striking ways. Shortly after each concert, fan cam videos emerged that featured the members holding and draped in LGBTQI flags signed by the fans. At first, this imagery differed from the photos being shared through official outlets. Debates erupted among anglophone fans about whether the touring company was censoring this imagery, whether OOO would get in trouble with their company or with their fans in Korea for this imagery, and whether the members really knew what the flags meant, etc.
At one concert, one LGBTQI fan proposed marriage to another, and the group members not only introduced the couple but cheered them on. Videos of this moment went viral among K-pop anglophone fans. Comments on these videos conveyed hope, euphoria, and fulfillment. Fans thanked OOO for creating a queer-safe K-pop-specific space, while at the same time expressing confusion as to how this might be received in their Korean home context. Overall, the comments were celebratory, grateful, and deeply personal. this was so sweet :(I genuinely love onlyoneof so so so much they are amazing beautiful people am crying just watching this, I can't imagine how emotional it must have been to be in the room. So happy for these LyOns and getting to experience that Queer joy together 
so many people are learning to accept themselves and feel supported because of them and I hope ooo knows how special they are
The concert that I attended with my teen daughter in NYC, while it did not include a marriage proposal, did feature many variations of pride flags, including an enormous flag that we all signed and that the members draped over themselves at the close of the show. The pre-concert fan interactions, in which fans shared with one another fan-made goods and bonded over their appreciation of the group—and the concert itself—felt like its own subcultural entity, multigenerational, queer, and multicultural. Coverage of the concert addressed what it meant for concert goers to have the concert take place in the predominantly Hispanic Washington Heights, describing the performance as “creat(ing) a bridge between Asian and Hispanic communities” and providing fans with “cultural pride” and a sense of feeling “seen” (Moses, 2024a). For fans…like 15-year-old Autumn Rain, the sight of both K-Pop and Latin cultures embracing one another made her heart feel full. Watching her friends clutching their light sticks and dancing to salsa, while seniors laughed playing a game of dominos, reminded her of something her Puerto Rican grandmother would attend on the weekends. (Moses, 2024b) I think they really stand for the LGBTQ + community when they brought those flags onto the stage it really said it for me because I started crying and I felt really connected to them… they are not scared to take the pride flags on stage and they are not scared of speaking out… it makes me feel loved and seen as a community. (Moses, 2024b)
This understanding of South Korea and K-pop culture as imperfect imaginary homeland does indeed motivate some anglophone K-pop fans to visit and migrate to South Korea. Within anglophone K-pop fan spaces such as Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and x.com, fans warn of South Korea's conservatism, but they often simultaneously acknowledge homophobia in Western spaces. Likewise, those who have indeed visited long term or moved to South Korea share their own stories of both cultural friction and cultural adjustment. Inspired by this relativist perception of South Korea conveyed by other fans, more fans of groups that express queer meanings (like OOO) may very well travel to South Korea in the future, sharing their own experiences of South Korea with fellow family, friends, and K-pop fans as they do.
OOO fans offer us an understanding of the power of negotiative allegiance: they weigh their understanding of the K-pop industry and Korean culture with their perception of the constraints anglophone K-pop fandom itself and even the limits of OOO fandom as an idealized space, and weigh both in relation to their understanding of the limits of their own local/national culture(s). Yes, they find meaning and solace within OOO in distinction from the more conservative narratives circulating about Korean culture and from their own struggles for acceptance, but they also find a safe space from anglophone K-pop fandom at large within the more narrow confines of OOO fandom. And even anglophone OOO fandom can be a fraught and fractious space. In some instances, this discourse draws on xenophobic and othering logics, but often, far from any simple perceived binaries (fans vs. nonfans, OOO vs. more mainstream K-pop, K-pop vs. western culture, OOO fans vs. other K-pop fans), OOO fans articulate a sense that all contexts are fraught and that there is no utopian escape. As I have suggested above, some OOO fans may choose to travel to South Korea—for short or long term—because of the large influence it has had on their lives and because of their love for K-pop and Korean popular culture, even while aware of the challenges they may face there. Indeed, acknowledging the necessary imperfections of their imaginary homeland can bolster fans’ identification with OOO and with K-pop/Korean culture, and strengthen their openness to imagine and hope for new possibilities within all contexts.
Regardless of the draw that pulls anglophone LGBTQI fans to K-pop more generally and OnlyOneOf more specifically (and that draw is likely multifaceted and not only about sexual identity), I would argue that we can be powerfully moved by media cultures other than our own even when it—or the contexts of its production and circulation—are far from perfect alternative options, if they offer something that is missing from our own cultural frameworks, or offer a way in which we may feel seen, connected, or released. Whether this is a hailing or a mis-hailing in the end may not matter as much as the cultural framework of reception that in itself becomes a powerful homeland and sense of belonging. But even this imaginary homeland of transcultural fandom is imperfect, as even in its smallest corners, fandom is inevitably multidimensional and full of frictions and contradictions. However, as fans negotiate these imperfect imaginary communities, they articulate strong senses of self and community that can coexist with and indeed integrate these imperfections as a part of being in culture, fandom, and otherwise.
Footnotes
Ethical Statements
This research did not require Institutional Review Board (IRB) review or approval. Following established practices in online fan studies, studies conducting discursive analysis on publicly available data from online forums do not fall under IRB jurisdiction when no interviews are conducted and no private or protected information is accessed. This study's methodology involved discursive analysis of discussion comments on public YouTube videos—a freely accessible online platform that requires no membership or special permission to view. All data analyzed were voluntarily posted by users in public spaces with the expectation of public visibility. Additional interpretive insight was drawn from the author's personal experience within fandom and concert spaces. No human subjects research, as defined by federal regulations, was conducted.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.