You might not be surprised hearing this. But how, exactly, is K-pop a religion?

Ninian Smart was a religious studies scholar who argued that religion isn’t primarily about belief in God. It’s about how humans organize meaning. He identified seven dimensions that characterize religion, which are:

  • Ritual: what you do repeatedly
  • Narrative: the stories the group tells about itself
  • Experimental/Emotional: what it feels like from the inside
  • Doctrinal/Philosophical: what you’re supposed to believe
  • Ethical/Legal: what you should and shouldn’t do
  • Social: how the group organizes itself
  • Material: the physical stuff that carries meaning

These dimensions map cleanly onto K-pop fandom.

K-pop through each lens

Ritual

Listen when the new album drops. Do and learn the fanchant. Bring the lightstick to concerts. Participate in fan projects. Organize streaming rotations with documented shifts. Etc.

Experimental

Concert experiences described in quasi-religious language such as “connected” and “transcendent”. Fan accounts of seeing their idol in person for the first time read like descriptions of seeing God.

Examples:

Narrative

The origin/suffering/triumph arc. Trainee hardship stories. Survival shows. Almost-didn’t-debut moments. The group that nearly disbanded but then got their first win.

They’re narratives within the community to give it meaning. BTS’s RM shared that he once lived with nine other people, sharing clothes and a single bathroom. Blackpink lived with cockroaches. These stories get retold as foundational mythology.

And fans don’t just consume these stories. They use them in ways similar to scripture readings, or prayers used in a church. E.g. as motivational scriptures (“I want trainee hardship stories to boost my motivation to study”).

Doctrinal

Loyalty to your group (in Korea, being a fan of more than one group is heavily frowned upon — it’s not different from a religion prohibiting you from following another one), “idols worked hard and deserve success”, what counts as “genuine” vs “manufactured”, “are you a real fan if you only like the title tracks?”, etc.

Ethical

You should stream. You should vote. You should support during a comeback. There are virtues (loyalty, dedication, organized charity in the idol’s name) and sins (leaking content, stalking behavior, being a “fake fan”, or even an idol dating is condemned — “Do you not get enough love from your fans?”).

More (a lot more) can be found here: What are some unwritten rules you notice a lot of K-pop fans agree on? - Quora

Social

Fan accounts with hierarchies, admin teams, translators, organized fundraising structures, official fan clubs with membership tiers.

A paper examines how BTS’s ARMY functions as an informal labor system, with organized streaming, data management, bulk purchasing, reputation defense,… It’s unpaid work, but they take their process seriously and care about commitment.

Material

Photocards collected, traded, and displayed in binders. Lightsticks that transform concert into something in the church, when thousands light up in coordinated colors. Albums bought not to listen to but to possess. They even call the space for storing those artifacts a shrine. These things provide comfort, signal identity, and connect the individual to something larger.

So what?

Okay, K-pop maps onto all seven dimensions. But is this just an academic exercise?

Honestly, I’m not sure yet. I haven’t applied the framework to anything beyond this analysis. But a few things feel true.

Be skeptical when something insists it’s not a religion

Actual religions have “antibodies”: we know to be wary of charismatic leaders, social pressure, excommunication threats. If something shows up as “just a company”, “just a movement”, or “just a fandom”, it’s trying to evade those defenses.

It gives you better questions

Just for the sake of curiosity. Knowing a structure is actually a religion helps you look at it through a new lens. It can even inform you of appropriate actions. E.g. re. K-pop fans, you know that their identity is deeply fused with the thing, so it’s better to leave them be rather than saying anything negative about their idols or fandom.

And the framework helps you understand humans

Ninian Smart’s framework is actually about how humans find meaning. You see the patterns repeat in many places: corporate culture, nationalism, political movements, or even crypto. Which raises an interesting question: are you currently part of a religion?