Can the 'BTS effect' and K-culture fandom do for Korea what anime and games did for Japan?

A teenager who discovers BTS today may grow up to book trips to Seoul, buy Korean products and carry a favorable image of Korea well into adulthood. That is the long-term bet behind a recent analyst report from NH Investment & Securities, which argued that young BTS fans could eventually translate their fandom into lasting economic gains for Korea, enough to buoy the country's GDP decades from now. There is a precedent nearby, which may at first sound ambitious. Japan spent decades turning anime, manga, games and characters into soft power, as generations raised on Nintendo, Pokémon and Studio Ghibli grew into adults who feel Japan is familiar and culturally close to them. Now, Korea is facing a similar moment, but one question remains: Can BTS — and K-pop, more broadly — build the kind of generational longevity that Japanese pop culture has enjoyed so far? 'K-imprinted' generation The NH Investment & Securities report, released May 24, projected that BTS's global fandom, collectively known as ARMY, could boost Korea's annual GDP by 0.1 to 0.35 percentage points through increased tourism by 2040. The estimate is based partly on the demographic composition of the fandom, as a 2022 fan-conducted census cited by the report found that 84 percent of global ARMY members were under 29, suggesting that many are still years away from their prime earning and spending years. The argument is primarily built on the premise of the cohort effect — the idea that cultural preferences formed in youth can shape spending behavior later in life. In fandom economies, the report argues, demand created by specific artists can extend well beyond albums and concerts, altering a fan's broader consumer path. It divided fandom consumption into four stages: imprinting, fandom activation, peak consumption and legacy consumption, with each stage roughly a decade apart. For BTS, the report argued, the imprinting stage took place through the early and mid-2020s, while the fandom activation stage is now beginning. If that trajectory holds, BTS-related consumption could peak in the 2030s, when these fans will have greater purchasing power. "Because the K-fandom age group is still concentrated among teens and people in their 20s, with relatively low income levels, the degree to which fandom consumption may affect GDP remains limited," noted Jung Yeo-kyung, a researcher at NH Investment & Securities and the report's primary author. "In the 2030s, when the K-imprinted generation gains purchasing power and returns to Korea, the impact of the K-fandom economy on GDP is expected to become more visible." 'Cool Japan' strategy One of the clearest examples of pop culture shaping a generation's perception of a country is Japan, whose global image has long been defined partly by its pop culture including anime, manga, games and character franchises. Japanese pop culture established its commercial presence overseas in the 1980s and 1990s through cult anime such as "Dragon Ball" (1986) and "Akira" (1988), as well as video games from Nintendo, including its first major home console game, "Super Mario Bros.," launched in 1984, and "The Legend of Zelda" in 1986. The momentum continued into the 2000s with enduring intellectual property (IP) including Pokémon. Japan later incorporated this cultural impact into its "Cool Japan" strategy in the 2000s, after decades of anime, manga and games made the country feel familiar to global audiences. That soft power pulled in economic value as well, as spending by foreign visitors quadrupled over the past decade through 2024 — also partly fueled by a weak yen — making tourism the country's second-largest export category after cars. "Countries with export-oriented industrial structures have been making efforts not only to build their national images but also to commercialize their nations alongside their products," wrote Kang Sung-woo, a research professor of foreign affairs at Chung-Ang University, in his 2016 paper "'Cool Japan' as Ja...