Indonesia's K-pop fans rally to support green and social causes

Their social media reach, purchasing power and numbers can influence businesses

- Linda Yulisman

Indonesian fans of Korean pop bands are making headlines for all the right reasons, wielding their influence to promote social and green causes in the archipelago and getting businesses to adopt more eco-friendly practices.

Numbering in the millions worldwide and in the hundreds of thousands in Indonesia, their ability to quickly mobilise en masse has made K-pop fans increasingly influential online and offline as they rally to support their chosen causes and petition their cases, experts say.

And businesses are starting to take note of these fans as a force to be reckoned with.

Among them is South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor, which recently dropped a deal linked to coal power in Indonesia after concerted efforts and a petition kick-started by Kpop4Planet – an environmental group founded in 2021 by two K-pop fans, Indonesian Nurul Sarifah and South Korean Lee Da-yeon – which garnered about 11,000 signatures in two months.

Hyundai’s decision to end the deal was welcomed by Kpop4Planet, which said: “It is the victory of thousands of K-pop fans who genuinely care about the climate crisis, especially those in Indonesia who have felt the real impact.”

Ms Nurul, 24, told The Straits Times she hopes that going forward, Hyundai’s green investment will support “just and clean” energy transition in Indonesia.

In April, Hyundai announced it had scrapped plans to purchase aluminium for its electric vehicles (EVs) from Adaro Minerals, a unit of Indonesia’s second-largest coal miner Adaro Energy. The deal drew flak from environmental groups as Adaro Minerals’ aluminium smelter would be powered by a new 2.2-gigawatt coal-fired power plant.