Any Kpop group attempting to have the same US impact as BTS will fail if they are attempting to capitalize on the US market from a Korean brand perspective.

BTS gained international fans, much of whom aren't Kpop fans to this day, through hustling on social media, while the same efforts made them shunned in SK.

It's not exclusively Western to hustle, but it's very much an ARTiST struggle and very much the opposite of being idols.

Idols are products created by a company. Whether we're talking about Disney or a Korean company, talents are exploited for profit and marketed as a brand with an image & sound package.

Hannah Montana or an idol group - no difference.

Miley made her own music - while keeping the direction of the company who controlled her image as a teenager. Idols self-producing is a shallow feature when the content is sanitized.

This will NEVER be able to capture an audience as large as BTS' fan capital.

BTS appealed on multiple levels to an international audience - their image was rough bc it was their own personalities, their dreams were casual, their message was real & relatable and their passion was admirable.

You can't reproduce this, you can be this or not.

And Kpop, as an industry, simply does not have the goal of being controversial and down-to-earth. It's an industry building images of sanitized pretense of unattainable luxury and sexual free-for-all.

This will only appeal to teenagers and creeps.

And good luck building a self-sustaining fan ecosystem out of teens.

ARMY consists mostly of adult and mostly educated folks of diverse background who operate with military precision.

Not to shit on teens, it's just that our general socialization of teens is piss poor & a majority are not challenged to have a greater interest beyond superficial and hormonal phases. When you only sell makeup kits to girls, they'll assume that's what being a girl is about.

Goes for boys, too. And selling them idols who portray virgin sluts & asexualized sex gods, they will assume that's what they're supposed to enjoy instead of seeing issue in the tropes.

This is where ARMY's age, ethnicities, skin color, sexuality, gender and occupations matter.

Our mum, dad, elder brother, elder sister ArMY acting a certain way shows our teens how to be a fan correctly.

And you can't cater to a responsible mum or dad just with fake luxury and sex appeal bc they see the marketing tactic.

So yeah, no Kpop group can accumulate an ARMY as long as Kpop companies refuse to change their profit making strategies. Big Hit's success can be the turning point, or an outlier in history. I doubt the Big3 has the capacity to change, but brand new, hustling companies might.