English's expanding linguistic foothold in K-pop lyrics

Abstract

Korean popular music (K-pop) has expanded its cultural reach among Western audiences over the past 20 years (Lie, 2015), and groups like BTS and BLACKPINK have achieved unprecedented global success recently (McIntyre, 2022). As K-pop evolves into a global cultural export, scholars have paid more attention to the code-mixing of English within its lyrics (Yeo, 2018; Ahn, 2021).