Experience the Korean Wave and perfect your K-pop dance moves

Editor’s note: Today’s post is authored by Rosalie Kim, Lead Curator of the Hallyu! The Korean Wave Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, now exhibiting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

The Korean Wave, also known as “Hallyu,” refers to the meteoric rise of popular culture from South Korea that challenges the global current of pop culture today. Spearheaded by K-drama, cinema and K-pop music, its first wave rippled across Asia in the late 1990s before going global in the mid-2000s thanks to a young tech-savvy audience making use of emerging social media platforms and smartphones.

Between September 2022 and June 2023, the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, London, inaugurated Hallyu! The Korean Wave, an exhibition charting the making of this cultural phenomenon by contextualising it against the backdrop of Korea’s modern history. It showcased the crucial roles of fandoms and technologies behind its success alongside its impact on the fields of K-beauty and fashion.

In particular, the exhibition featured an exciting interactive dance installation created in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab. This immersive installation saw visitors learning the sleek moves and choreography that are the hallmark of K-pop. They then became part of a collective K-pop dance experience, capturing the vibrant and energetic world of Korean pop culture.

A touring version of the exhibition, including the dance interactive, is traveling around the world in the next two years, opening this week at its first stop, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. If you cannot make it to the exhibition, you can explore K-Pop wherever you are through a new interactive experience called K-Pop Dance Challenge. This fun new experience is powered by machine learning and developed by the V&A and Google Arts & Culture.

In K-Pop Dance Challenge, follow Chung Han-byeol, professional dancer at BB Trippin, the renowned choreographer for K-Pop idols like ATEEZ, Jessi, Ailee and Wanna One, to learn point moves and become part of your own K-Pop music video to PSY’s “That That” (prod. & feat. SUGA of BTS).