When it comes to K-pop—and, more broadly speaking, Korea’s cultural market—the term “global” carries special significance. For instance, when a Korean movie wins an award at an international film festival and becomes a recognized part of film history, or when the world starts to pay attention to some artist or their generation, it sets off a kind of buzz on a different level than when that movie becomes a hit domestically by crossing the symbolic threshold of 10 million sets of eyes. And the more that recognition reaches beyond the artistic realm of festivals or critics, and into the minds of the popular masses, the greater the impact it has. Squid Game and Parasite are prime examples. There’s more to breaking Netflix viewership records and winning Emmys and Oscars than just using them as a measuring stick of success over others—it brings about real change, too. Say a Korean film gets a wide release and becomes a number-one box office smash hit in the United States. Something like that would naturally lead to a wider variety of more daring experimentation throughout the industry. We’ve arguably seen Netflix experimenting over the past several years for that reason, though it hasn’t always resulted in a completely positive outcome.

On the other hand, when taken from a purely market- and finance-based perspective, K-pop’s efforts to expand its fan base into the global market has seen unfathomable success over the course of several decades—and even just over the past 10 years alone. As far as international success goes, in the days before BTS completely blew the doors wide open, there were plenty of instances where Korean singers tried, often successfully, to find global fans. Sometimes they were one-hit wonders or especially unique cases, while other times, like with BoA, it was achieved through a carefully planned localization strategy. In some cases, it was a combination of both. And yet, the prize of commercial success in markets outside Asia—and especially in the US—seemed to be out of reach, buried behind linguistic, cultural, and stylistic barriers. But BTS’s breakthrough and subsequent success story shifted the old perception of K-pop as a subculture born outside the margins of mainstream music and confined to a niche corner of the market to that of a genre with unique aesthetics and a system with its own way of developing music. Most notably, the trainee system—though clearly capable of resulting in remarkable performances onstage in the long run—was once seen as an odd peculiarity of an approach to discipline and education possible only in Asia. But the results now speak for themselves—so much so that it’s possible to see people commenting that K-pop stars are practically Olympic athletes in their own right.

It’s from here that new approaches to sustainable growth and development in K-pop branch out. Let’s look at the most recent case: KATSEYE. The girl group represents the product of the first lap of the latest version of a process documented through shows like I-LAND and R U Next?: establish a trainee pool, film a competitive reality show, and launch a new group, while creating talented and well-known trainees in the process. The Korean label worked with a major US label to hold auditions on a massive scale and twenty trainees ultimately competed on The Debut: Dream Academy. The hopefuls hailed from all around the globe, including North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and the final six-member lineup reflects that diversity. We didn’t simply accept a group like this overnight, though. The concept of members with no Korean citizenship or heritage started with Chinese and Japanese idols and, after navigating a middle point where outward appearance assured no difficult questions around race, culminated in Fatou joining BLACKSWAN in 2020. Things became more complex as questions arose around whether K-pop necessarily means members with Korean heritage or nationality, or even songs with Korean lyrics. We’ve come a long way in our understanding since the experimental group EXP EDITION in 2017: There’s now more than 10 “localized” groups making headlines as we speak.

The recent Apple TV+ series K-pop Idols seems to capture the current state of this elevated level of understanding. The series shows how the K-pop umbrella has room enough under it to simultaneously include pop stars based in Korea like Jessi, groups formed in Korea but made up entirely of foreign members like BLACKSWAN, and more traditional idol groups like CRAVITY. This supports the latent conclusion that in trying to define K-pop and its potential, it’s difficult to limit it as something restricted to Korean people and their language. But convincing a global audience of this takes more than merely replicating and relocating an existing formula. And that’s why, for Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, Netflix takes a docuseries approach to the whole project that ultimately led to KATSEYE, right from its global auditions. The series is directed by Nadia Hallgren, widely acclaimed for her documentary Becoming, which follows Michelle Obama during the book tour for her autobiography but examines her life as a whole. In an interview with TIME, the director mentions she signed onto the project because of “a particular interest in human potential and what it takes to perform at the level of elite performers.”  And what about her thoughts afterwards? “You can have all the talent in the world, you could have the best training and the fancy schools, if you have access, but can you mentally push through to get to the end? I think that these girls demonstrated this in a way that most adults I know can’t do. And I’ve worked with a lot of high level people. That’s really a big takeaway that I hope people get from the show: what people will endure to fulfill the dream they have of being an artist.”

As hinted at the beginning of Pop Star Academy, the answer to the question of what comes after BTS is not, in fact, any need to remove the K from K-pop. As with the conclusion director Hallgren came to, it’s about having confidence in the belief that something that moves the heart of one person has the power to resonate with people worldwide and move them as well. KATSEYE’s debut EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), debuted at number 119 on the Billboard 200 chart dated August 31. “Touch” entered global Spotify charts around the same time. It’s a rare feat for a group that’s literally just stepped out onto the stage. So what else might be possible in the future? Well, just look at &TEAM. They got their start on a reality show that introduced a fictional universe that extends along the one created on I-LAND, and they now have their sights set on pushing their music beyond Japan and out into the wider world. With the group currently approaching their second anniversary, their recent single “Aoarashi” topped the Billboard JAPAN Hot 100 and Oricon Singles charts. It’s not hard to see that there’s already a well-established ecosystem with roots in K-pop thriving in the country. Is it so ridiculous to imagine KATSEYE and their Dream Academy becoming the starting point of another such ecosystem right in the US? At the very least, it’s time to rethink what the K in K-pop stands for.