K-Pop fans are often dismissed as teenagers with no idea of how the world works. This ideology is wrong and extremely harmful to the community that participates in activism on different types of inequalities. K-Pop fans are powerful activists in word, work, and number. They are tackling Climate Change and urging companies not to go through NFTs or Non-fungible tokens as digital photo cards.
The Korea Times covered the symposium on “Sustainable K-Entertainment” at the National Assembly in Seoul. On behalf of 10,000 KPop fans that live all over 83 countries, Lee Da-Yeon delivered her speech that met all of the important points. Lee is a part of the climate change activism movement Kpop4Planet. She pointed out reducing plastic usage on singers’ albums and merchandise. There are ways to limit the carbon footprint in concerts. On their website, this plan is to create a zero-emission concert. There’s also the hope of having singers participate in climate change action programs.
The highlight of it all, and perhaps the most dreading statement, was “There’s no K-Pop on a dead planet.” Professor Cedarbough Saeji of Pusan National University suggested some ideas: phasing out plastic glow sticks and renovating older venues to reduce heating and cooling. The other idea is to ban single-use plastic bottles.
Kakao M Entertainment’s Vice President Cho Han-Kyu stated that holding a carbon-neutral concert without affecting the quality is an issue. There is a need for in-depth discussions to attain this goal.
Several KPop acts are participating in the fight. Singer Chungha’s album Querencia has an environmental-friendly physical version. Koreaboo reported that Red Velvet is named South Korea’s public relation ambassadors for the National Climate Council. Blackpink spoke on the perils of climate change for the United Nations climate change conference.
Hence, the idea of changing merchandise to be environmental-friendly and lessening carbon footprint is attainable. Fans and artists are slowly working together in preserving K-Pop’s tradition and, at the same time, helping the planet.
