KEEP ON KEEPING ON

IN 2025, K-POP BATTLED ITS DEMONS

- STORY: JON CARAMANICA / NYT

n 2025, from a distance, the cultural phenomenon that revealed the most about K-pop's place in the global zeitgeist was the Netflix animated film KPop Demon Hunters.

Among the most consumed cultural products of 2025, this parable about good and evil — framed as a tug of war between competing K-pop groups — became the most watched film in Netflix history, and its songs topped the charts here and abroad. It seemed to clearly cement the universal embrace of K-pop as a sound, style and milieu.

But take a slightly closer look, and the fissures beneath this top-level triumph become evident.

The true gauge of K-pop's power, and the shape of its future growth, was playing out between lawyers in the struggle between NewJeans, the most innovative group of the past few years, and its label, Ador, a subsidiary of the entertainment conglomerate Hybe, over claims of workplace hostility and creative sabotage.

The members of NewJeans tried to break their contract, but in October a South Korean court upheld its validity. In November, the label announced the return of two of the group's members — the other three announced their intention to return soon after, though no announcements about the full group have been made since. NewJeans' contract is set to expire in 2029.

K-pop is more than three decades old as a form, and in the past 10 years has asserted itself worldwide, remaking pop music in the macro by out-innovating its competitors. The K-pop industry is highly restrictive, highly regulated creatively and largely managed top-down, led by a handful of entertainment conglomerates that have attempted to streamline and scale the creation of pop stars.

But K-pop also has become a playground for pop experimentalists and eccentrics, and for some groups, NewJeans among them, musical innovation became crucial to their thrill.