K-pop is capturing your kids – here's why you should welcome it
It is a long way from the Netherlands to London’s O2 arena, but Megan Jansen wasn’t feeling like a foreigner. “I said to my sister, finally I am home,” the 23-year-old Dutch psychology student declared, as she mingled with the throng who had gathered outside the venue hours in advance of the weekend’s SMTown Live concert . SMTown Live is a kind of enormous travelling K-pop circus featuring a panoply of acts from South Korea’s major SM Entertainment label. Its 2025 world tour has a line-up that ranges from veteran boyband TVXQ to newly minted girl group Hearts2Hearts. It also marks 30 years since the agency formed, a significant anniversary for the South Korean music industry that, with its famously demanding training system and huge online fan communities, has since 1995 grown into a global powerhouse. Jansen and her sister had travelled to the UK with three friends to mark this moment, jumping at the chance to attend the first SMTown show on European soil in 14 years. While ...