Pop Culture Happy Hour - KPop Demon Hunters

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

The Netflix animated movie KPop Demon Hunters is a phenomenon, with a soundtrack that's climbing the Billboard charts, and a fandom rivaling that of just about any K-pop idol. The film is loads of fun, it's packed with some of the catchiest bangers you'll hear all summer. It's about a superstar girl group called HUNTR/X, who also keeps busy protecting humanity against an army of demons. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureTo access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The animated movie K-pop Demon Hunters is a phenomenon, with a soundtrack that's climbing the billboard charts and a fandom rivaling that of just about any K-pop idol. All of which makes sense, the film is loads of fun and packed with some of the catchiest bangers you'll hear all summer. I'm Stephen Thompson. Today we are talking about Netflix's K-pop demon hunters on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Regina Barber. She's a host and reporter for NPR's science podcast Shortwave. Hey, Regina. Hey, Stephen. I'm so excited for this. You have no idea. So glad to have you. Also with us is Jayha Kim. She's a syndicated columnist whose work runs in the Chicago Tribune. Welcome, Jayha. Thank you so much, Stephen. I can't wait to start talking about this movie. It is a pleasure to have you both. So K-pop Demon Hunters premiered on Netflix back in June. It arrived without much fanfare, but soon it wasn't just climbing the Netflix charts. It was also storming the Billboard Pop Charts. This week, it climbed to number two on the album's chart, almost entirely on the strength of its massive and still growing streaming numbers. As for the plot of K-pop demon hunters, you can probably guess quite a bit of it from the movie's title. There's a superstar girl group called Huntrix,

whose members, Rumi, Mira, and Zoe are played by Arden Cho, May Hong, and Ji Jung Yu, respectively. Huntrix is one of the hottest K-pop groups around, but its members also keep busy by protecting humanity against an army of demons led by a treacherous being called Gima. Soon, Huntrix faces a new rival on the K-pop scene, a boy band called Saja Boys, whose members are all, you guessed it, demons. Of course, there are even more complicating factors than that, starting with the fact that Rumi from Huntricks is secretly half-deemon herself, and that the leader of the Saja boys, Gino, played by Anjou Sab, might have a few divided loyalties of his own.

The singing voices in K-pop Demon Hunters generally belong to ringers such as E.J. Audrey Noona, Ray Ami, and Andrew Choi. And many of the songs have already become pop hits in their own right, like Golden. K-pop Demon Hunters was directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans. It's streaming on Netflix now. Regina Barber, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of the movie? My daughter is into K-pop, and my partner was like, oh, have you seen this thing that's going to be on Netflix soon? Maybe we should just all sit and watch it. And we're sitting there and we're like, oh, this will be fun.

We like cartoons. And then literally like minute 15 and a half or something, we're just like, what is this movie? We were like loving it. The song, you know, Soda Pop, my daughter was like, Song of the Summer. Literally the first time you hear it, you think that. You think that instantly. And you don't even need the visuals, but the visuals just like blow up. it like three times better, right?

Literally. Literally. Abs, hello? Yes. At the end of it, we were all like, what was that movie? That was so good. And at the end, I was work slacking PCH-H, pop culture happy hour. I'm like, we should cover this.

Like, I loved it. It's hard not to have that takeaway. I have to say, I paused it at the eight and a half minute mark to be like, wow, this goes so hard. It's so hard. I'm dressed up like Zoe right now. Like, for real. She really is.

She looks exactly like her, to be honest. I do. Yeah, this is going to inform a lot of Halloween costumes in a good way. And we're going to get to the soundtrack. But, like, this album enters the Song of the Summer conversation in a big, big, big, big way. And I cannot overstate how welcome it is in that conversation in this particular crop of mostly dismal songs. Jayhakim, what do you think? I love this movie.

I mean, I watched it because I had to for work, because. as I was interviewing Arden Show for an article, I was like Regina. After I watched it the first time, I watched it the second time. And then I was telling everybody about it. So then I watched it with them for a third time. Because, you know, you catch something that's different each time. And as somebody who covers a lot of K-pop, I was pretty amazed at how many things they got right. One of the things that I thought was exaggerated, it wasn't that there are demons because, hey,

who amongst us doesn't have a little demon in us, right? We all have those thoughts. I love that part. There are so many metaphors. Exactly. I love it. But in the beginning, when the girls are sitting there on their airplane and their private jet, and they're eating all this food that looks like no K-pop artist would ever be allowed to eat,

like just pigging out. And I love that for them because, you know, you hear so much about how much, especially the women in K-pop, how they have to diet and how they can't eat this and that. And even the guys, you know, they go do their mandatory military duty. They come back buff and then they are forced to kind of lose the weight again. So I'm like, no, let them eat because it looks. It looks good, right? But they also explain it.

They say, like, we're going to burn 10,000 calories tonight, so we need to carboload. Yeah. Yeah. I loved that, too. And the food looked so good. I'm a big cartoon food person. Like, you know, I just love watching, like, all the food in Ghibli movies. But the food looked great.

The ramen looked great. They had these, like, pouches, these, like, medicine pouches. And for some reason, I wanted to drink the juice out of the juice pouches. Like, that's how good this movie was. It was like in a K-drama, even though this is a film where, you know, I'm, I'm, Waiting for the product placement, I'm like, is there going to be like a subway ad? You know, where is it? It was so well done.

It was so much fun. I really had a very, very, very similar reaction to this film. First of all, it immediately hooked me in. If you are in any way on the fence, you don't have to watch this movie very long, A, to get sucked in, and B, to know whether you will get sucked in. To me, this film's greatest accomplishment among many. And it is, it's a fun and funny and lively film. It's a lean 90 minutes. It's beautiful to watch.

It's beautiful. It is. It's beautiful to look at. But where this film completely soars for me is in the songs. It is impossible to overstate how important it is that this film get its songs right. And I have seen a number of films in recent years looking at you trap, looking at you opus, where the film is built around this idea that some performer or some song is enormously compelling. And then the song isn't.

And that deflates a film like that so much. If these songs were not superior K-pop songs, this film would fall really flat. But these are magnificent songs. They're so fun. We've already mentioned soda pop. Soda Pop is a Saja Boys song. And it is so catchy. You completely understand how this song would kind of capture people's imaginations.

and all of a sudden, everybody would welcome this as this hot, new idol band. Like, this is suddenly, like, my new thing I'm really excited on. Because if you heard that song, you would feel that way. There's a moment in the movie where the demons are like, I don't know if this demon boy band thing would work. A demon boy band? What makes you think that could work? And then the moment, they don't even start singing. They just look like.

K-pop guys. They do. They just walk out. They just walk out. And they kind of pose. And then the other demons are like, oh, no, this is 100% going to work. You feel like you're that demon. They're like, this is going to work.

Yeah. I mean, in the movie, you kind of feel for the lead singer of the demon boy band. And like, it's so easy to like them. I was watching all these TikToks that are just like, Saja boys take my soul. You know, like, I can't stop this. Well, you know, one of the things that I loved about the songs was their mixture of like real K-pop songs where they have song-song in Korean, but also with English. And the thing that sets it out as fiction is, okay, the English is so good here, because

in Korean K-pop songs, it's usually the English is a little wonky. Sure. It's like, you know, it's a verb is missing, you know? A lot of times the English in K-pop songs is basically you could take all the lyrics and break them up into hashtags. Exactly. And you're right. They're a little more fluent.

And can I just tell you? Like, soda pop when you hear it, it's like, you're like, you're, you're a beautiful pop song, you know, very jubilant and like catchy. But if you listen to the lyrics or read the lyrics, it's also just a little bit dirty, which is also very K-pop. Yes. Because you have the double entendras, you know, so that the tweens, the 11-year-olds won't understand what they're saying, but the adjumas, you know, the older women in the audience, they're like, oh, yeah, got it. And they're represented in this movie. They are in the front row. Like, every kind of fan is represented. And I think they actually show fans actually being fans. They have like grown men

crying. They have like people in their 20s. They have people in their 60s dancing. You know, it's, I loved it so much. I also really liked as a middle age Asian woman. The, you know, mother figure, she still looked really good with just a little bit of gray hair. Loved it. Celine? Love it. Yeah. Yeah. Something to look up to. So Celine is kind of a mother figure too roomy. Yes. Yeah. I love that this movie was so inclusive. You know, not just in having demons and humans or whatnot, but the fans, because what you hear about K-pop fans is always that it's like, oh, you know, it's screaming 12-year-old girls at the concerts. That's all you hear.

And then you actually go to a concert and you're like, whoa, you know, there's men, there's women, there's all sorts of different races. Yeah. It's not just Asian girls there, you know? No, definitely not. Yeah. And we know that now because of the pop charts and the videos and the TikToks. Everyone's loving this.

Well, and so many of those stereotypes are meant to shrink movements. Yep. They're meant to diminish. They are meant to sort of put aside like, oh, this is just that. This is just this tiny thing. This is just this niche. This doesn't have to be taken seriously as something worthy of critique. This is just fluff over here for the kiddies.

And this movie embraces this world and understands this world and embodies this world. And I just imagine this film being such a gateway into K-pop for so many audiences because it's, It's so fun, and these songs are so great. And because people thought K-pop is cringe. I don't want to like K-pop because, oh, you know, hey, it's bad. And then you hear these songs, and it's like, you're tapping. It's like Rumi when she doesn't want to like the Saja Boys, but it's like, she can't help moving because it's so good. They're like, it's infectious.

I also really do feel like this film has kind of entered the conversation around the song of the summer for 2025. And I'm on the Billboard Charts Beat. And it's wild how few like new joyful pop songs have really broken through in the summer of 2025. In the summer of 2024, you had Brat, you had, you know, Sabrina Carpenter. You had a lot of these big, fizzy, fun pop songs. And those songs, you know, are certainly still coming out. But to me, this is that infusion of joy and playfulness that the pop charts really needed right now. I wanted to ask you guys, I have a favorite song.

from this film. Just one? I think I have two. That hasn't come up yet. And I'm wondering, because Golden and Soda Pop are definitely two kind of break through songs from this film. Golden is the song that they're submitting for Best Original Song consideration for the Academy Awards. And we might actually see K-pop represented at the Oscars for the first time. But for me, there's another song that I love even more.

And I'm wondering what y'all's favorite songs from this film are. Before I get to mine. Is it your idol? because I love your idol. I like that one? Yeah, you gave me your heart, now I'm here for your soul. I'm the only one who love with my voice gets underneath you. Listen because I'm reaching to the choir.

You know, they sing, you gave me your heart and now I'm here for your soul. It's like, oh, that's so creepy, but it's so good. And that's the song that all the real K-pop idols, the boy bands, are doing their own interpretations of. They get dressed up wearing their, like, black outfits. It's with the gut, the traditional hat, the got. And they look fantastic. And I was like, whenever have, you know, superstar bands copied an animated character. But they're all into it.

I don't know. I never thought I'd see this day. And it's kind of cool. It's infectious. Yes. And I think it's so impressive that the songs that they have written for Huntrix and the songs that they have written for Saja boys are kind of on a level playing field. Like, they are both great. Yes.

You understand why people love the music of both of these groups. And so when they're pitted against each other in competition, you don't have a situation where one of them is so clearly superior to the others. Or that situation like Glenn Weldon always talks about about pitch perfect two, where he's like, Das Sound Machine is better than the acapella group that's supposed to be beating them. But here they really are on a level playing field. And I actually was not talking about your idol, which is a terrific, terrific Saja Boy's song. But for me, the culminating song in this film, it is so important that the last song in a movie like this hit really hard. Because if it doesn't, it's going to deflate you at the end of this film. Sometimes when I'm really enjoying a movie, I start to almost sort of have this like scorekeeping in my head where I'm just like, please stick the landing.

Please stick the landing. The last song in this film is called What It Sounds Like. It's so good. It is so triumphant. And I cried so hard. Oh, I held it in, but I shouldn't know. I'm not one who's very good at holding it in under the best of circumstances. But to me, this song not only moved the plot along, not only was like a big culminating, triumphant song.

It also felt in its own way, like this might be the song that has the longest shelf life from this film. It felt queer-coded in a way similar to, like, the... the most loved songs from the Frozen movies. It reminded me of let it go. It reminded me of show yourself from Frozen 2. Would you be surprised if you saw a production set to what it sounds like at a drag show? That would be fantastic. Because I would not.

Yeah, I would go. And to me, it kind of feels like a payoff to some of the subtle queer coding of like Rumi's arc, of like, I'm keeping this secret from the people closest to me, but now I'm living my truth. that stuff felt so universal and just glorious. The whole movie is about these things that we feel shame for. And when Mira is like, you didn't deserve a family. And I, you know, I felt that really strongly. And I was like, oh, family.

And like, do I belong? And Zoe's like from these two different worlds, which I also kind of have an issue about. But she was like, you're too much. People around you, you're just too much for them. You're too much and you're not enough. And I almost started crying. And I was like, this is such a good. movie, the writing is so good

where it picks exactly the things people are really struggling with which isn't fair to themselves. They need to be nicer. And like at the very end when people are like giving themselves and in like this is what it sounds like when it's like you're not doing this alone, you have friends, like you should be able to trust the people closest to you

and you won't be let down. Don't assume that they're going to go against you. It was so beautiful and like this movie is so great. You could tell the love and care that went into this production. I mean, they were saying that it was seven years in the making, and you can tell. It's not one of those slap-dash things where it's like, woo, you know, have a cute girl band, have a cute boy band, and then have them fight. There is so much meaning. It's not just K-pop. It's not just pop culture. It's not just about, you know, the differences between different types of people, which I guess demons can sort of be different types of people. They were people at one point. But there's so much significance to the Korean part of the K-pop. This movie, even though it's an American

film, it was a love story to Koreans as well, which I really appreciated that. I hope that people who watch this movie will listen to K-pop with little more than just like, oh, you know, it's just something silly that little kids like. It's like there's a whole history to it. I mean, K-pop literally stands for Korean pop music. And now, of course, it's kind of code for Korean idol music, which is a little bit different, but there's a whole history to it that I hope people appreciate. Well, that kind of brings me to my last question here, right? where do you think audiences for this film should go from here if they're interested in exploring K-pop more deeply? If they're interested in exploring certain animation styles more deeply,

where do people go? Like, if they've fallen in love with this movie, they're streaming the soundtrack, they're listening to this conversation excitedly because they're like, why hasn't pop culture happy hour covered K-pop demon hunters? Where should newbies go from here? Musically, I think a great start for them would be twice, who three of the members, you know, saying takedown twice version in the track. They're, you know, an amazing K-pop group. And I think that a band like that can help open doors into the K-pop that isn't just being produced right now, but that has a history from a few years ago.

And, you know, I hope that they do check into, like, there's this whole thing on social media about, like, you know, who are the Saja boy supposed to be? You know, are they supposed to be, BTS, Monster X, you know, Astro, Wanho. So I hope that they take these people that these bands that everybody's talking about and actually go and listen to some of the music. And I think they'll be pleasantly surprised. My mom is from Taiwan. I've watched like Taiwan dramas that are like funny, romantic comedies, but I've never watched a K drama. So I think like I recognized the scene in the movie where he like bumps her.

It's very similar to the like Taiwan drama I watched, right? So I'm like, oh, if I like this, maybe I should go and find out what the best K drama in the last 10. years was and just binge that, you know? Like, that's what I think. Yeah, go much squid game. They have that same sweet sentiment. Right, exactly. Very, very similar.

Yes. Yeah, it is safe to say we enjoyed this movie pretty much without reservation. Yeah, no reservations. We have nothing to fight about. Yeah, most people listening are going to feel the same way if they don't already. This film is so fun. We want to know what you think about K-pop demon hunters. find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH.

That brings us to the end of our show. Jayhakim, Regina Barber. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. This is so much fun, you guys. Thank you so much. Also, just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio,

and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Myr. Mike Katzv and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.