Active and enthusiastic fans of Korean pop music or K-pop stans have put down their peace signs and coloured wigs and taken up activism, disrupting the Trump campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In a show of overt racism in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, US President Donald Trump picked Tulsa, Oklahoma as the venue and Juneteenth as the date for his campaign; allegedly out of spite.
This decision sparked outrage as Tulsa is the site of one of the worst race massacres in American history. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre took place when white protesters murdered hundreds of black people, buried them in mass graves, and burnt their booming businesses dubbed “Black Wall Street” to the ground.
Trump announced that his campaign would take place in a 19000 seat stadium in Oklahoma. But on the day of the campaign, the stadium was noticeably empty, with only 6200 people in attendance. What happened?
K-pop stans!
@meandyke DO Y’ALLS THING I BELIEVE IN YOU ##BTS ##bangtanboys ##bts ##btsarmy ##army ##bighit ##bangtan ##jungkook ##taehyung ##jimin ##kpop ##stantwitter ##kpopstan
♬ original sound - meandyke
This group of active supporters of Korean music all over the world apparently registered for many free tickets. However, the K-pop stans had no intention of attending the campaign. The plan was conceived and hatched on the internet by K-pop stans across different social media platforms.
Trump went to his social media page and bragged about how many people were going to attend the campaign. But he got a rude awakening when large portions of the stadium were empty.
This is not the first time K-pop stans are trolling the president and other racists online. They drowned the White Lives Matter trend with spam videos of BTS and Blackpink concert clips. They also trolled trump on his birthday just for fun.
Is this activism? Is it disruptive and mischevious? Maybe it’s both, and quite entertaining on top of all that. Maybe we could learn a thing or two about activism from K-pop stans.