“Is Korea Really Like That?”: Teaching K-Content Literacy in the Age of Global Media

“Is Korea Really Like That?”: Teaching K-Content Literacy in the Age of Global Media

By Jiwon Yoon, Ph.D.

Imagine you don’t speak English and you’ve never been to the United States. Then you watch a movie set in America, like Mean Girls or High School Musical or Home Alone. You laugh, you enjoy it, and then you conclude: “So this is what America is really like.” Most of us would immediately push back. We’d say: that’s a genre. It’s satire. It’s an exaggeration. It’s selective. It may reveal something true, but it isn’t the whole truth. That’s the exact move we need in classrooms right now, because K-content is increasingly the default pop culture text for many students, and the question comes fast:

“Is Korea really like that?”

The question itself is honest and important. In a media‑saturated world, young people are meeting “Korea” primarily through K‑pop, K‑dramas, games, and now animated films. K‑Pop Demon Hunters is a perfect case: it looks and feels intensely Korean – the language, food, cityscapes, shamanic symbols, and fandom aesthetics are everywhere – yet it is also a Sony Pictures Animation film, released under a larger multi‑film partnership with Netflix, which financed the production and distributed it globally, built to travel as a global platform title.

We need a name for the kind of literacy this moment demands. I call it K‑content literacy:

the ability to read Korean-themed media as constructed texts.

This involves asking who made them, for whom, under what conditions, and what gets emphasized or omitted. It is less about “introducing Korea” and more about training students to connect representation with power, industry, and audience.

K‑content literacy is what allows a student to move from “Korea is like this” to “This particular text shows this version of Korea, and here’s why.”

Why K‑Pop Demon Hunters?

This film is an ideal classroom text because it sits at a crossroads of local and global forces.

On the one hand, many Korean viewers can recognize real places and textures: the narrow alleys of older Seoul, the hanok (traditional Korean tile‑roofed houses) rooftops of Bukchon (a traditional Korean house district in central Seoul), the fortress wall trails, the bathhouse, the subway crossing the Han River.

On the other hand, these locations have been carefully selected and stylized. The tiled roofs become an action stage; the fortress path becomes a perfect date walk with panoramic views; the bathhouse becomes a dramatic battle arena. These are real elements of the city, but they are arranged to create a particular fantasy of Seoul, one that feels both authentic and cinematic.

Most importantly, the film is not just a case of “Western misunderstanding.” It is a sophisticated result of what happens when the sensibilities of Korean-diaspora creators meet the constraints and possibilities of the Hollywood system. This creative team, led by director Maggie Kang, acted as cultural brokers who successfully navigated the machinery of a major studio to protect the story's soul. The result is a complex, hybrid text that is deeply affectionate toward Korean culture while being shaped by global market logics. In my view, it is remarkably successful at navigating both.

The Power of the Un‑translated

The same is true at the level of language. One of the most striking creative decisions is how many Korean terms are left untranslated. Viewers hear sunbaenim (선배님) when junior idols show respect to their seniors, maknae (막내) for the youngest member, and Honmoon (혼문) for the spiritual gate, with subtitles that keep these Korean terms rather than replacing them with generic English equivalents like “senior,” “baby,” or “spirit portal.” Netflix even released a “K‑Pop Demon Hunters Dictionary” to explain fandom terms like hoobae, maknae, and light stick after the fact, instead of flattening them inside the movie itself.

That choice matters. It subtly shifts the power dynamic. Instead of Korea being fully simplified for a Western audience, viewers are invited to come closer. They have to tolerate not understanding everything at first, to sit with a story that runs on its own cultural logic. For students, this can be a crucial early lesson in intellectual humility: the realization that their default language and categories are not the center of the world.

This is particularly important in a U.S. context where other languages often feel optional. In many U.S. public schools, children do not begin a second language until middle school. The timetable itself sends the message that another language is enrichment, not a basic tool for citizenship. There’s an old joke: “If you speak two languages, you’re bilingual. If you speak three, you’re trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks only one? An American.” It’s funny, but it’s also a critique of what happens when the world arrives pre‑translated: curiosity becomes optional.

I love that a kids’ movie like K‑Pop Demon Hunters normalizes hearing another language and encountering un‑translated words. It gently insists, “You can still enjoy this, even if not everything is for you, or in your language.”

From “Is it Real?” to Better Questions

If K‑content literacy is our goal, then “Is this really what Korea is like?” is the wrong final question. A better set of questions might include:

Genre lens: What genre is this – musical, fantasy, action, comedy? What does this genre typically exaggerate? (Mean Girls is not a documentary about American high schools; K‑Pop Demon Hunters is not a documentary about Seoul.)
Production lens: Who made this? Who is the assumed audience? How might Sony and Netflix’s desire for a global hit shape which parts of Korea are highlighted: the neon concerts, the spiritual gate, the spectacular skyline; and which everyday realities are muted or absent?
Representation/omission lens: What Korea is shown here (idols, fans, ritual spaces, iconic landmarks) and what Korea is not shown (workplaces, rural areas, elders, social conflicts)?
Language lens: Which terms stay in Korean, and what happens in translation? What power relationships (like sunbae/hoobae hierarchy) become more visible or less visible in English?

Media literacy has always insisted that “media is constructed.” K‑content literacy adds a cross‑cultural twist: whenever a text claims to show us another country, we must teach students to see construction and selection at work: what is amplified, what is simplified, what is erased.

The “exotic pleasure” students feel, including the thrill of neon Seoul, ghost battles, unfamiliar rituals, is not inherently bad. It can be a bridge into empathy and curiosity. But we can help them ask: Who designed this pleasure, for whom, and what responsibilities do we have when we enjoy someone else’s culture as entertainment?

Finally, we can model a stance of cultural humility ourselves. As educators, we do not have to serve as definitive spokespersons for Korea. Instead, we can position ourselves alongside our students as co‑learners, asking: “Whose gaze is this? Which Korean voices agree with this version of Korea, and which might tell a different story?”

When we teach students to read K‑content critically, we are not ruining their fun. We are deepening it, turning passive consumption into a practice of curiosity, respect, and critical imagination. And in the process, we are not only teaching them about Korea; we are teaching them how to read the world.