I had heard that many employers paid low wages or didn’t pay at all some workers reported verbal abuse and sexual harassment. In the winter of 2012, I was writing a story about Latina day laborers in Brooklyn who cleaned Hasidic homes before the Sabbath-when women’s work accumulated to the point where outsourcing became necessary. I first glimpsed the swell of hallyu, the Korean wave, a decade ago. To continue ignoring the BTS phenomenon was to risk missing something bigger than Beatlemania. The group was everywhere, and everyone seemed to be into them. But, earlier this year, BTS became inescapable. I absorbed Western critiques of K-pop’s girl and boy bands: that they’re fluffy, manufactured, and exploitative of their members-as if the same weren’t true of New Kids on the Block. When reporting on South Korea, I resisted the expected topics: Korean skin care, plastic surgery, dogmeat, and, yes, K-pop. I’ve long been hesitant to write about BTS.
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