After 10 years and more than 17bn YouTube views, Geonroung Park, aka Baby Shark Boy, speaks about his life as a child star and his new K-Pop career

“I just remember having fun dancing and playing on what felt like a huge set,” Geonroung Park says, recalling the day 10 years ago when he was filmed, aged seven, doing the hand movements to a children’s song about a family of sharks.

That footage became Baby Shark Dance, now the most-watched video in YouTube’s history. It has racked up more than 17.2bn views and has held the platform’s global no 1 spot for 69 consecutive months.

„BTS“ erklimmen dank ihrer Anhänger erneut die Charts, nachdem sie die Grammy-Awards boykottiert haben – dafür müssen sich „Blackpink“ wegen mangelnder Fan-Pflege entschuldigen. Über eine einseitige Liebesbeziehung.

K-pop superstars will not submit Arirang album or its songs for 2027 ceremony

BTS, the biggest pop act in east Asia, have withdrawn themselves from the 2027 Grammy awards, intimating that their decision is due to the addition of a new award for best Asian pop music performance.

Writing on Instagram, each of the South Korean group’s seven members said: “We have decided not to enter the Grammys this year. I hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language.”

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London
Fans and cynics are putty in the boyband’s hands as the lads lark their way through a catalogue of tracks that ricochet from hard rap to buttery pop

The 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats is about America’s conflation of art and consumerism at the turn of the millennium. But it could just as easily be about the K-pop industrial complex, grinding out act after act to see what sticks (sometimes with a lack of care for the art or the artists). The film culminates with nefarious label execs selling branded headsets that broadcast subliminal advertising messages directly into fans’ brains.

It’s a film that comes to mind while watching BTS play their first UK show in seven years, an unbelievably enjoyable spectacle of pyro and panoptical staging, and the purest distillation of what makes a boyband precision-engineered to capture fans’ hearts. BTS are the biggest K-pop group in the world. With more than 40m albums sold, they have a fanbase so fervent it is called the Army. This is the band’s first tour since a three-year hiatus for each member to complete 18 months of compulsory military service – marked by a new album, Arirang – and it’s hailed by activations across the capital including a London Eye takeover. A cynical mind might think the in-the-round staging provides more opportunity to sell expensive pit tickets. A cynical mind might see the brands blacked out on the water bottles onstage and think … “clearly Fiji Water didn’t cough up sponsorship”. A cynical mind might behold the light-up “Army Bomb sticks” wielded by the crowd and think … “are those mind-control devices?”

Galaxy Robot Park in South Korea hopes to attract tourists to concerts and fashion shows, but can robots ever replicate K-pop’s connection with fans?

Four child-sized humanoid robots take the stage at an arena in eastern Seoul, and as the opening beats of a song by K-pop star G-Dragon begin, they start to dance.

Arms swinging, legs stepping in sync, heads bobbing, wigs and baggy clothes swishing, until – mid-performance – one of them seemingly malfunctions and has to be removed from the stage.

Police seek warrant for Bang Si-Hyuk over allegations he illegally gained millions in investor fraud scheme

South Korean police are seeking to arrest Bang Si-Hyuk, the chair of the agency behind the K-pop band BTS, as they expand an investigation into allegations that he illegally gained more than $100m (£74m) in an investor fraud scheme.

The Seoul metropolitan police agency confirmed it had asked prosecutors to request a court warrant for the arrest of Bang, the founder and chair of HYBE.

Since the regime quashed China’s version of the K-pop industry in 2021, an underground ‘alt-idol’ culture has emerged, championing freedom and experimentation

Over the past decade, “idol” culture has turned east Asia into a pop music powerhouse as global audiences have flocked to Japanese and especially South Korean groups. Formed and exactingly trained by big entertainment conglomerates, bands such as BTS and EXO have blown up internationally thanks to bombastic songs, sensational dance routines and marketing campaigns designed to build a parasocial relationship between performers – idols – and their fans. Their neighbour China, however, the population of which is roughly eight times that of Japan and South Korea combined, has produced few groups with similar fame.

Until 2021, Chinese versions of Korean idol-training shows – think The X Factor with considerably more challenging choreography – were gaining huge audiences. But the shows, and the fan culture they inspired, drew the ire of the Chinese government. It cracked down on “toxic” fandom, an initiative that included banning idol-development shows. “It was an excuse to regulate the internet,” says Emily Liu, who runs the popular idol newsletter Active Faults. The government has also unofficially prohibited Korean pop idols from performing in mainland China for the last decade due to geopolitical tensions.

Everything Korean – from K-pop and skincare to food and clothing – is booming in popularity in Chile, Mexico and Brazil

On the polished flagstones of a Santiago cultural centre’s forecourt, four Chilean girls dance in energetic union, counting their steps aloud in Korean.

In front of them, a YouTube video with 1.3bn views plays atop a speaker throbbing to the beat of How You Like That, by the K-pop megastars Blackpink.

Spin-off launched with 10 nations, as original event remains mired in protests and boycotts over Israel’s involvement

Eurovision is seeking to expand into the Asian market by hosting a version of its song contest in Bangkok this year, just as the original annual event is being buffeted by discord and boycotts on the eve of its 70th anniversary edition.

The grand final of the inaugural Eurovision song contest Asia will take place in Thailand’s capital on Saturday 14 November, the Switzerland-based organisation announced on Tuesday. Broadcasters from 10 countries have confirmed their participation.

Tens of thousands gathered in Seoul to show that, after a four-year hiatus, they had still kept a place for the band in a very changed world

The Zubillaga family had come from Veracruz, Mexico. Julio and Miryam had brought their daughters, Renata, 15, and Fernanda, 11, as a gift, across 15 hours of flights to a city none of them had visited before.

They had tried for world tour tickets to see BTS in Mexico but they had been snapped up already, so they came to Seoul instead, joining the tens of thousands outside the gates, waiting for the music to reach them. “It’s beautiful,” Renata says of the new album, Arirang. Her favourite member, like her mother and father, is Jung Kook.

The Zubillaga family, (L-R) Julio (44), Renata (15), Miryam (43) and Fernanda (11), flew to South Korea from Mexico as a birthday gift for Renata.

Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul (via Netflix)
In front of 100,000 screaming fans, it barely feels like the eyes of the world are upon them, as the group showcase new album with cool confidence

“Annyeong Seoul. We’re back.” A drone soars over the South Korean capital, revealing 100,000 screaming fans filling the city’s historic Gwanghwamun Square.

With the palace gates behind them, RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook stand swathed in leather, game-faces fixed, ready to perform as a group for the first time in four years. Streaming live via Netflix to 190 countries, this is a comeback of epic proportions – but BTS have always known how to put on a show.

Boyband drops album that speaks to its Korean roots ahead of Seoul comeback concert, with more than a quarter of a million fans expected to attend

K-pop stars BTS released a new album on Friday billed as reflecting the maturing boy band’s Korean roots and identity, as buzz built ahead of their open-air comeback concert in the heart of Seoul.

The Saturday night gig, which is expected to draw around 260,000 people, will be BTS’s first after a hiatus of almost four years while all seven members served compulsory military service. It comes ahead of an 82-date world tour.

Am Samstag startet die Band ihr Comeback. Es wird ein Entertainment-Event der Superlative, das sich von Südkorea über Europa und die USA um den gesamten Erdball entfaltet – und ein neuer Höhepunkt der K-Pop-Maschine.

Thousands of police prepare to deploy to South Korea’s capital ahead of K-pop’s most anticipated comeback

Seoul has stepped up security ahead of BTS’s huge comeback concert on Saturday, which more than a quarter of a million fans are expected to attend, with authorities raising the terror alert in the area and preparing to deploy thousands of police to the capital.

South Korean president Lee Jae Myung warned at a cabinet meeting this week that “the issue is safety” and urged heightened vigilance by the interior ministry and emergency services to prepare for every possibility. He described the concert as an important occasion to reaffirm the country’s global cultural standing.

I used to be embarrassed by my teenage fandom of the Korean boyband. Now I look back at that version of myself with so much softness

When I heard the surprise news that BTS are releasing a comeback album, it pulled me back into a past version of myself, one that was all-consuming in its obsession but equally marked by shame.

At the ripe old age of 14, I had mastered the art of lowering my screen brightness and switching tabs to hide my shameful secret from any passerby or seat-sharer.

Aastha Agrawal is a writer, illustrator and multidisciplinary creative based in Naarm. Find more of her work at enchantedclub.net

The 26-year-old dominates in Manchester, landing the night’s biggest prizes as Rosé, Wolf Alice and Mark Ronson also take top honours

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Olivia Dean was the big winner at the 2026 Brit awards, taking home awards for artist of the year, pop act, song of the year for her Sam Fender duet Rein Me In, and album of the year for The Art of Loving.

In less than a year, Dean has leaped to the forefront of British pop thanks to The Art of Loving, her second album. With songs that get to the heart of the joys and frustrations of casual modern dating, she is enormously relatable, while her sophisticated and cosmopolitan songcraft, deftly finessing styles such as bossa nova, trip-hop, neo-soul and jazz together, has given her an unusually broad and cross-generational appeal.

Booking system freezes and screens crash amid rush of fans trying to secure tickets to 21 March free concert

Tickets for BTS’s comeback concert in central Seoul were snapped up almost immediately on Monday night, with authorities expecting an estimated 260,000 fans to descend for the K-pop group’s first full performance in nearly four years.

At one point, more than 100,000 people flooded the booking website when sales opened at 8pm for the free concert at Gwanghwamun square on 21 March, causing screens to crash and booking systems to freeze.

As the film’s megahit song Golden looks likely to sweep everything in awards season, its singer Ejae explains why she’s ready to step out from behind her animated alter ego

‘The directors were crying, the producer was crying, and I thought: Oh my gosh, this is an incredible musical world.” It was February 2025, and Ian Eisendrath was conducting an orchestra through the final flourishes for the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. He knew that the team had built something special – “but I never thought it would be like this,” he laughs, marvelling at what came next.

Mere weeks after its release in June, the animated film – about Korean girl band Huntr/x who battle soul-hungry demons through song – became Netflix’s most-watched title ever. The film’s soundtrack, a fleet of emotionally charged, devilishly catchy hits crafted by real K-pop heavyweights, became a platinum-rated phenomenon all its own.

As the superstar K-pop boyband prepare for their first album in three years – after its members completed their military service – we count down the best of their toothsome pop

At the start of their career, BTS were marketed as a cross between a Korean idol band and a blinged-out rap act: “Our life is hip-hop,” offered band member Suga early on. No More Dream is actually far tougher-sounding than you might expect: the vocals growl, the backing blares, the double-bass sample that drives the intro is great.