All Your Questions About K-Pop, Answered

By now, you probably know what K-pop is. (Real quick if you don’t: It’s a genre of super sugary, upbeat pop music from South Korea.) But while the genre has been around since the mid-1990s, it’s seen a massive uptick in popularity stateside thanks, in part, to the massive popularity of groups like BTS. In other words, K-pop is here and booming.

That being the case, you might need a primer. Generally speaking, the popularity of K-pop acts isn’t that different from the popularity of US boy bands and artists like Taylor Swift. There are legions of screaming stans, arena concerts, and massive online followings for everyone involved. But there are a few things that set K-pop acts apart from other contemporary pop acts.

WIRED asked the 10-member group NCT 127—themselves a sub-group of the South Korean boy band NCT—to answer a series of reader questions from Twitter about what, exactly, K-pop is. Think the movement’s stars need to come from Korea? (They don’t.) Want to know how their skin-care regimens? (Pro tip: Seoul’s public water system, known as Arisu, does wonders.) Wondering what to expect when you go to a K-pop concert? (A lot of them don’t have opening acts, but the beginning and ending of each show is amazing.

Find out everything NCT 127 revealed in the video above.