FEATURE
Five K-pop short-form trends on TikTok
How K-pop artists use TikTok
2024.03.04
Credit
Article. Lee Heewon, Yee Siyeon
Photo Credit. ENHYPEN TikTok
As the New York Times said, “For Gen Z, TikTok is the new search engine.” With its powerful algorithm, TikTok has become more than a video-sharing platform; it’s a social media and a community. Within the TikTok ecosystem, K-pop plays a significant role. According to TikTok’s What’s Next 2024 Trend Report, #KPOP grew 91% in new uploads and 67% in views in 2023 compared to the previous year. So how did K-pop become one of the most popular topics on TikTok? From comeback promotions to challenges and vlogs, here are some ways K-pop artists use TikTok.


Lip-sync challenges
The artist in the video asks, “Do you like me?” and whispers, “Sorry for being cute” along the lyrics of a song. Lip-sync challenges don’t involve dancing or singing, but literally “lip-synching” over a pre-recorded song. The key to any-one-can-do-it lip-synch challenges lies in convincing facial expressions that match the lyrics. Lip-syncing to MattyBRaps' "Little Bit" is one of the most popular lip-sync challenges of the moment. As of January 29, 2024, TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s “Little Bit” challenge recorded 25 million views, ENHYPEN garnered 15.2 million views, NCT and RIIZE had 9.8 million views, and THE BOYZ had 4.5 million views. In the video, the artist mouths the lyrics “You like me a little bit?” and looks at the camera while making the viewers' hearts flutter with facial expressions like the eyebrow flash. For fans, watching the first-person perspective video is as if the artist is looking at them and talking to them, which gives them butterflies and further immerses them in the experience. The “Sorry for being cute” challenge (featuring "可愛くてごめん" by Honey Works), which went viral on TikTok and has become a regular request during video call fansigns, has also started as a lip-sync challenge. The challenge involves making cute faces and apologetic hand gestures🙏 along the lyrics “Chu！可愛くてごめん (Chu! Sorry for being cute)” TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s SOOBIN personalized the challenge with pop-up heart💖 and bunny emojis🐰 at the highlight. It’s a fun challenge in that one song has different ways of being presented depending on the artist and their facial expressions.


Dance challenges
Dance challenges are short clips of the key choreography of a song, and have become a staple of K-pop promotion since ZICO made a splash with his "Any Song" challenge on TikTok in 2020. Dance challenges are a favorite among K-pop fans because not only do they get to see artists dance offstage, but the artists in the video bring a new twist to their choreography in combinations not usually seen. TAEMIN's comeback with his new song "Guilty" was a huge hit, with artists from the same agency including NCT, aespa, and RIIZE as well as other artists such as SEVENTEEN's HOSHI, &TEAM's FUMA, ZEROBASEONE’s Han Yujin, TEMPEST's HYEONGSEOP, and BOYNEXTDOOR's SUNGHO participating in the challenge. In particular, the “Guilty” challenge with BTS’ Jimin became a smash hit, with Jimin becoming number one in real time trends on X (formerly Twitter) globally as soon as it was released. As of January 29, 2024, it had 16.7 million TikTok views. The key is for the artist to tuck their hand into their top, grab their chin, and tilt their head back in a body wave, and each artist will have their own take. Mnet’s Street Woman Fighter attracted the attention of the public with its “Hey Mama” challenge and “Smoke” challenge over the two seasons. The challenging moves in choreographer BADA’s “Smoke” challenge drew attention to each participant and K-pop artists who are skilled in dance also participated in the challenge, leading the trend. It was a different take on the dance challenge in that it stemmed from a program that featured dances rather than songs and led to a spontaneous trend among K-pop artists. BTS's Jung Kook's "Smoke" challenge has been incredibly viral, with 89.1 million views as of January 29, 2024, making it the most viewed video on Jung Kook's personal TikTok account (@AbjkMRstY).


Drama lines challenge
“I’ll tell you what I really wanted to say… Baek Yi-jin.” is a line from the tvN drama Twenty-Five, Twenty-One and the intro to NCT U’s “Baggy Jeans” challenge. The key to the drama lines challenges is the phonetic similarity between the lyrics and the lines. In the case of NCT U, the similarity between the pronunciation of the character’s name “Baek Yi-jin” and the lyrics “Baggy Jeans” was used as a play on words. The sudden transition from serious drama acting to powerful dancing provokes laughter. The popular challenge featuring NCT's JAEHYUN and aespa's WINTER garnered 9.1 million views. In the beginning of the video, WINTER crosses her arms and shows serious acting chops as if she’s playing Na Hee-Do from the drama, before breaking into a smile as the song begins. NMIXX’s “Kwon-mo-sul-su” challenge using a line from ENA’s Extraordinary Attorney Woo is another famous challenge. In the beginning of the video, NMIXX shouts, “Do you know what attorney Kwon Min-woo’s nickname was in law school? It was Kwon-mo-sul-su Kwon Min-woo!” and starts to dance along the lyrics “Come a so-soñar” of their song “Soñar (Breaker).” SEVENTEEN's SEUNGKWAN, LE SERRAFIM's HONG EUNCHAE, aespa's KARINA, and Lee Young-ji participated and actor Joo Jong-hyuk, who played Kwon Min-woo in the drama, also joined and raised a laugh. The drama lines challenge is K-pop’s attempt to reach out to the wider masses riding the wave of popular dramas.


POV
POV stands for "point of view" and refers to the technique of filming from a first-person perspective. On TikTok, it is used to describe the point of view or perspective in a particular situation in the content. First-person perspective content makes viewers feel like they are directly involved. ENHYPEN uploaded “POV: three types of boyfriends in the car” and “POV: four types of boyfriends on a date” as part of the promotion for the album ORANGE BLOOD. With the first-person perspective making the viewers feel like they were sharing a piece of their everyday life with a boyfriend, the videos went viral and the former garnered 16 million views as of January 31, 2024. NewJeans’ DANIELLE created an “Oh My God’ moment, just as the title of their song suggests, with a TikTok meme called “Splash water on my phone screen” that takes place from the first-person perspective of a phone and tells a story of an accidental water splash on the screen making a wish come true. Leaving comments on Phoning, liking “OMG”, and purchasing their album remind us of their fandom Bunnies who are 200% into NewJeans’ comeback. In its What’s Next 2024 Trend Report, Tiktok Korea selected the first-person POV video of packaging stationery without showing one’s face as one of its top Trend Signals. K-pop fans are also jumping on the bandwagon. There are nearly 50,000 posts for #포카포장 (photo card packing) and 30,000 posts for #포장 (packing).


A day in the life of K-pop stars
“It has become natural to use short-form videos to record our day-to-day lives and thoughts.” Jung Jae-hoon, Head of Operations for TikTok Korea picked “recording daily lives” as a trend for TikTok in the first half of 2023 during TikTok’s 2023 press conference. TikTok has evolved from a video-sharing platform where people participated or watched popular dance challenges to a social media environment where people share their moments from their everyday lives. The official channels of K-pop artists are also aligning their content with the new TikTok ecosystem. LE SSERAFIM shares bits of their daily lives through recaps (short for “recapitulate”), a form of content that summarizes a certain period of time, made with pictures and videos of backstage or everyday life taken by its members. The recap of the first half of 2023 was a fun edit of a visit to a Japanese convenience store set to the lyrics of “Levitating” by Dua Lipa shot from HUH YUNJIN’s point of view and the recap of the second half of 2023 captured LE SERRAFIM’s perfect time spent to the tune of “Perfect Night.” Aespa utilized geolocation services provided by TikTok via #ae_SF_log (aespa Short Form log) to tag areas visited by its members and uploaded reconstructed videos of the members spending their leisure time in a compact less-than-a-minute format. Birthday messages are also recorded differently now. In the past, it was the norm to upload an image in celebration of K-pop artists on their birthdays, but recently, short but compelling content celebrating birthdays are often created using TikTok’s short-form videos. &TEAM has created content using music that matches its members' birthdays and ages, such as Anne-Marie's "Birthday," One Direction's "18," and ABBA's "Dancing Queen." The nonet has also created content focusing on each member, such as NICHOLAS’ birthday runway as the team’s trendsetter and EJ receiving secret birthday messages from the other members to the leader. K-pop artists’ documentation of their daily lives, which were previously produced as longer videos, are now transformed into new formats that fit the grammar of TikTok.
Copyright © Weverse Magazine. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction and distribution prohibited.
Read More