CECI HEINEN: Hello, everyone! My name is Ceci Heinen from the Minnesota Daily, and you are listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.
In summer, most of us take a break from our University communities, but not K-Move, they remain stronger than ever. K-Move is the University of Minnesota’s K-pop dance group, and they continue to plan, practice and perform K-pop dances throughout the summer months!
To those of you who are not familiar with K-pop, let me break some things down. K-pop stands for Korean Pop and is a genre originating from South Korea typically characterized by group performances, elaborate music videos, polished choreography and audio tracks that blend together countless genres of music.
Some of the top male K-pop bands include SHINee, BTS, Seventeen, EXO, Stray Kids and ATEEZ. And female K-pop bands include BLACKPINK, TWICE, Red Velvet, LeSSERAFIM and Girl’s Generation. And trust me, I could stand here naming groups until next year. It truly is a massive genre.
K-pop is widely loved across the world with an estimated 350 million to 2 billion fans worldwide. And many of those fans are located right here at the University of Minnesota. K-Move is an all-inclusive dance group that takes professionally choreographed K-pop dances and makes them their own. While many groups and clubs have some sort of prerequisite for joining, aka a major specific club or sports club, K-Move welcomes all people regardless of dance background. All you need is a love for K-pop and dancing.
Former Minnesota Daily reporter, journalism major and math minor Izzy Curry shared how she found K-Move through her backpack keychains.
IZZY CURRY: It was my first day at Journalism 3101. And someone was like, “Hey, I noticed your key chains and do you know, K-pop, do you like dancing?” And I was like, I used to try to do K-pop dances, but I never got into it.
But she was like, you could try. Anyone’s welcome. We’re doing a random dance play event at the Rec Well in a week. I met all these people, and I just kept going to these events and being asked to join dances in the Discord. And I just ended up really liking it and finding it as a good use of my time.
HEINEN: Curry quickly rose through the ranks of K-Move and is now the social media manager and a board member. She described how K-Move has been a meaningful experience for her and has felt different than other U of M clubs.
CURRY: Being half Indian half white like all the culture clubs didn’t really fit. I didn’t really have major hobbies and I didn’t feel too close to my major enough to be in like a journalism student group or a math student group or women in STEM student group. So finding something I enjoy doing in my free time, like listening to K-pop and watching all these K-pop dances, it’s really nice to just be able to connect to people about that because I’ve always been into it since I was in middle school.
And now I’m with all these people who are like, “Oh, I also grew up on this and I also like this one song when it came out in 2020 even though we weren’t friends then.” We’re all inclusive, anybody can join K-Move anyone can dance if you don’t want to dance you don’t have to you could just be an onlooker be a supporter. It’s such a good group of people.
My entire first year of college, I didn’t have any friends. I was strictly academic, no social, and then once I joined K-Move, it’s like this is what college is about. I’ve never had such a big friend group until now, and it’s been the best experience since coming to the U, honestly.
HEINEN: K-Move has even drawn in people who don’t attend University, such as Abby Whiting, who found the club through social media after she moved to the Twin Cities and decided to give it a shot. Despite her not being a student, she still found an overwhelming sense of acceptance and community within the group.
ABBY WHITING: I’ve always loved dancing. I have never really taken any classes or anything for dancing but I’ve been really into Just Dance. I knew that was something that I really love. When I graduated high school and I moved down the cities I got into K-pop and wanted to learn K-pop choreography and found K-Move and just joined it.
I love meeting new people, and I love discussing my love of K-pop with the whole other group. Everybody there is so welcoming and even if you’re not like a super skilled dancer, they’ll teach you. They’re very patient with your skill set. You don’t have to be a professional dancer to join K-Move, you just have to have the love for K-pop and dance to be part of it.
HEINEN: I’d even hesitate to describe K-Move as a student group, despite it being associated with the University. It truly seems to have no boundaries; the only requirements are an interest in K-pop and dance.
A testament to the community and bonds that are formed within K-Move would be Tiana Turner and Adrian Saechao, two former Gophers who decided to stay in K-Move after graduating from the U. Turner, K-Move’s treasurer, spoke about why she felt compelled to stay involved in the group after graduating.
TIANA TURNER: Well, what makes me want to stay in the group is I love the people that are in it. Like they’ve just become my closest friends. So I would like to continue to spend time with them. Plus, I just really do like dancing. It’s one way to stay very active and keep me busy. So I just have a lot of joy coming from it. I want to stay with it for as long as I can, if possible.
HEINEN: Saechao has a similar backstory with K-Move and his reasoning for sticking with the group post-grad.
ADRIAN SAECHAO: Everybody was welcoming. And I’m happy to say that the people who I met that day are still my friends to this day. I’ve come to find that when you meet the right people, in this group, these individuals will just have your back with anything, invite you to, you know, these events that you thought you’d never get invited to, and break you out of your comfort zone.
I love the energy that every choreography brings. It’s very enjoyable to know that this is something that everyone else has an interest in, K-pop, and we’re all here with just one goal. And we’re not necessarily pushing each other to that high limit of you know, competitive dance. I have had almost nothing but great experiences with people building each other up, you know, people having each other’s back.
Everyone who teaches is patient because we’re not all not that great experienced dancers. Not all of us have been dancing since we were kids so it’s been an experience where I’ve enjoyed growing together as dancers.
HEINEN: Saechao defeats the idea that you have to be a dancer all your life to be a part of a dance club. K-Move does not work like that. For them, dancing is sort of a universal language. Even though many of them don’t speak Korean, they can still understand the K-pop idols based on their movements. K-Move forms a tight community by doing these dances and going through the ups and downs of learning a difficult choreography.
K-Move has forged a unique dance culture that is centered around Korean pop music despite being a club of college students. It begs the question: why is K-pop something that even warrants a dedicated club? What is so special about it?
Curry described how the visual aspects and a sense of boundaryless expression drew her into K-pop during quarantine.
CURRY: I was just so interested in the beauty, they’re very beautiful people in like these beautiful outfits, they got beautiful skin, beautiful features and beautiful voices. And just the colors and the physical appearances and the way they dress was so different from western artists.
During a time when I feel like people were discovering themselves during the pandemic and like everyone was just being very open about their sexuality and who they are. I was just so interested in the way that these boys could be in full makeup, full glamorous outfits not necessarily feminine or masculine and just sing and dance and do all these amazing things as a performer.
And I was just so interested in that I feel like a lot of people were also interested in that too as a global skill. I feel like different parts of the world are very like “Oh this country looks like this,” but K-pop was like, “Yeah we do kind of everything.”
And we sing in both English and sometimes we throw some Spanish and Japanese and Korean and Chinese and there’s just so much. I remember just being so interested in the different colored hair, the makeup and the outfits and it’s just a fun time.
HEINEN: One band that Curry was particularly drawn to is BTS. BTS is a K-pop group composed of seven members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, V, Jimin and Jungkook. Many of you may have been hearing about them recently as all seven of them have just reunited after two years in mandatory military conscription with the South Korean military.
An article by 90 Day Korean described what the requirements for this service are. Military service is compulsory for all able-bodied males ages 18-35. While many go into active duty enlistment, there are also positions in social work, research and industrial technical personnel. BTS’s return has brought them back into the news cycle, but they really never left the music scene,e according to Turner.
TURNER: Even though BTS was in the military, they were still active, which I found very surprising. They were still dropping songs, they were making random appearances and stuff, and doing events. They just weren’t as busy and active as they normally were. I wouldn’t say they really died out or anything, if anything, they got more popular because now it’s like everyone’s just so excited that they’re back.
HEINEN: Despite their military service, since 2022, all seven members have each released their own solo songs and albums during their time away from the full group.
BTS has been able to build up an incredibly strong fanbase before their enlistment, they’ve been a global sensation basically since their debut in 2013. They have won an estimated 442 awards making them one of the most decorated artists in the world.
And, their die-hard fandom is ironically named the BTS ARMY, and they have stood steadfastly behind BTS while they were away in the literal army. There’s something about BTS that draws millions of fans to go to their concerts, to buy their albums, to listen to their music and to stick with them during a two year hiatus. K-Move member Saechao discussed how BTS’s willingness to tackle big issues with their music is what makes them so memorable and loveable.
SAECHAO: There was an era where BTS tackled the issue of mental health. It was stressed in all their songs, the feeling of loss, the feeling of greed, the feeling of losing yourself, the feeling of finding yourself or getting to that point. That was their message for a good portion of their career. And that’s why I believe a lot of fans connected with them. A lot of fans gravitated towards this group.
HEINEN: This message is apparent through many of BTS’s album names such as “Love Yourself: Answer,” “You Never Walk Alone,” and “Face Yourself.” They have managed to express such deep messages to fans worldwide, despite the ever-present language barrier. Curry spoke about how this barrier really does not diminish the message and power of BTS in the end.
CURRY: I think BTS just said this in an interview too, they’re like, “Hey, even if you can’t understand our music, that’s okay. We are bridging gaps beyond the language barrier.” And I think that’s so true. Ever since getting into BTS and K-pop music is different now I feel like I’ll listen to anything it could be any language.
It just introduces you to appreciate sound rather than lyrics. This is self-fulfilling already, I don’t need to know exactly what they’re saying in order to have a good time. I think that language barriers non-existent in K-pop.
HEINEN: This idea of liking the sound more than the lyrics seems to resonate with many people, seeing as BTS and K-pop have over 800 million fans worldwide. Whiting expressed how welcomed she felt within the K-pop community and how accepting K-pop is to all fans regardless of their identity.
WHITING: It’s so accepting of everybody, it doesn’t matter what race, disabilities, if you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community, they are very positive. They don’t make you feel bad about yourself,f and K-pop idols I’ve noticed compared to celebrities in America are actually very, very nice. They’re very understanding. They won’t judge you.
HEINEN: This overwhelming sense of understanding and acceptance ties into why so many students are dedicated to K-Move as well. K-pop music seems to have a unique ability to bring people together and keep them together.
Saechao has been a fan since 2016, and he has stuck with BTS through thick and thin. So he knew they would enlist eventually, and he actually expressed how he was glad their break from music allowed for other K-pop groups to step into the limelight. Especially at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, an award show typically dominated by BTS.
SAECHAO: There’s so many groups that took advantage of the opportunity that BTS was gone. All the award shows in South Korea, who was the one always dominating all the award categories? It was BTS even after their military enlistment they somehow were still winning those awards. And I will say I was happy to see that there was, opportunities for other groups to finally shine.
Me being also a Seventeen fan, seeing them win Artists of the Year was a pleasure for me. Because I’ve always made it a statement, if it weren’t for BTS being that popular, I think Seventeen would be winning all these categories as well.
HEINEN: Now that they are back in South Korea and their re-debut date is set for 2026, fans are finally getting hyped about their comeback. I’ll just say that when they do drop another album, the music world will be taken by storm. The ARMY is waiting, they have been waiting for two years, and they are ready to rumble.
BTS has brought together so many individuals and created a massive global fanbase. They have inspired many of the K-Move members to continue to follow their passions for dance and music. I think it is important to hear from the members of K-Move what this musical group has given them.
SAECHAO: They made me realize and find my passion in music. Finding this group made me realize it’s okay to be who you are. You don’t have to fit the norm or what’s considered popular. Made me realize I love music. I love singing. I love, you know, aesthetics that artists portray themselves as.
It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to showcase maybe a more feminine side that I was having to keep in the closet for a while. And it was something I definitely needed during that time when I was going through loss, depression, anxiety, loneliness. And I was able to find community, friendship and bonds because of their music.
TURNER: I actually have a tattoo on my arm right that says “Love Yourself.” I got that inspired by them because that’s literally their message.
CURRY: I guess to get a little bit sentimental in 2018, my dad passed away from cancer, and I just started really getting into music then. I was just rediscovering music, it felt like for the first time, I just felt deeper about it in a way. So when I discovered K-pop and BTS, it just it hits me so deeply.
Not in an emotional way, just when I feel music, it’s such a different experience now, it’s just like in my chest. It’s so welcoming, it just lifts me up. It’s such a deep, deep experience. I see so much hope and their music is so raw and so deep and there’s so much layers to it and even if I don’t understand what they’re saying, it’s just like it’s such a good time.
I hope they continue making music that hits me like that because it’s brought me to other groups that made me feel like that also. If people just got over the surface level of K-pop and just kind of like to start discovering other little songs, you will find such gems. It’s insane how a language barrier divided you from that feeling of this song makes me feel whole.
WHITING: They definitely have a bigger impact of who I am as a person. I don’t feel like I have to hide who I am anytime I listen to their music because they’ll accept me. If I knew who they were personally, they would just accept me for who I was. And I wouldn’t have to change anything about myself to please anybody.
HEINEN: I don’t know about you guys, but I just love hearing about why people love what they love. Maybe that’s just the journalist in me, but these stories and this message that BTS has brought to these individuals is truly unmatched and incredible.
I asked each person one last question which will also serve as a vocal manifestation on my part. If BTS were to find this podcast episode, I am manifesting that they will because that would be awesome, what is one thing that you would tell them?
TURNER: I would just say thank you. I love you. Keep doing what you do, don’t listen to the haters or those crazy fans out there that’s waiting outside your apartments, that’s weird. And just keep doing what you’re doing. Have fun with it.
SAECHAO: Thank you for being you. You simply being yourself made a lot of us happy, made a lot of us want to be happy with ourselves. And I’m grateful for that.
WHITING: Keep doing you, boo, we love you no matter what kind of thing you get into. Fans love you for who you are, and like you said, love yourself because you sure have millions of people who do.
CURRY: I think I’d want them to know that they taught people to be themselves. And by being themselves, so many doors have opened up for me. Keep making music that you want to listen to and follow your bliss, be yourself. It’s such a good message, it’s so corny, but it’s so true.
HEINEN: Well BTS, if you are listening, I hope these messages from your fans have given you even more fuel to your fire to keep doing what you are doing.
You’ll definitely hear BTS at K-Move practices and performances, but like the genre itself, their dances are inclusive and expressive, including dozens of K-pop bands beyond the most famous. If you are a student at the U, or even just a lover of K-pop, K-Move might be the place for you!
I hope this episode has taught you all something about K-pop and its value because sometimes it gets a pretty bad rap. But it truly is a one-of-a-kind music genre that genuinely changes people’s lives. Maybe this episode will inspire you to finally give BTS or K-pop a chance! Take it as a sign, it’s calling to you!
Well, that is all I have for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have any questions, comments or concerns don’t hesitate to drop an email in our inbox at [email protected]. I would love to hear your thoughts.
My name is Ceci Heinen, and this has been In The Know.
