[WHY] Boy meets girl in K-pop: Are coed moments making a comeback?

A still from Netflix's ″KPop Demon Hunters″ [NETFLIX]

 
[WHY] 
 
Netflix's smash hit "KPop Demon Hunters" is packed with fantastical elements like demons, superpowers, mystical creatures — and a joint fan signing event by a girl group and a boy group.
 
For many K-pop fans, the sight of a popular girl group member and a rookie boy group member sitting side by side, whispering to each other with a seemingly intimate vibe during what is supposed to be a fan event, feels even less plausible than yellow-eyed demons. And, as some have pointed out, the idea has only become more unthinkable over time.
 

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On Nov. 5, 2015, girl group f(x) won first place on Mnet’s weekly music show “Mcountdown” with “4 Walls” (2015). As member Luna wept onstage, boy band SHINee’s Key quietly walked over and embraced her in comfort. Nearly a decade later, that clip resurfaced on social media in a compilation video captioned “old times when [K-pop] idols interacted like this.”
 
“Today in K-pop, you will get 1 million death threats, 100-page apology letters, 1,000 protest trucks and death wreaths,” one X user quipped on July 27, drawing more than 70,000 likes.
 
Is the statement true? Well, public displays of friendship between male and female idols have long been fraught, even well before the mid-2010s. But there’s also truth in the observation that such interactions have become even scarcer in today’s K-pop scene, especially for those who debuted in the early 2010s and after.
 

SHINee's Key, left, and f(x)'s Luna hug each other during the ending stage of a weekly music program in 2015. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
However, there could be signs of a thaw, some suggest.
 
Twice’s Jihyo and Seventeen’s Mingyu traded playful banter in a recent YouTube video, nodding to their longstanding friendship. At KCON LA 2025 on Aug. 3, Yuqi of girl group i-dle and Zhang Hao of ZeroBaseOne reprised Trouble Maker’s “Now” (2013), a famously sultry duet.
 
“Getting a mix stage is way riskier [compared to the past] but they went for it, instead [of] resting in their comfort zone,” read one comment under their performance video.
 
“Omg finally, I hope more collabs like this happen in [the] current gen,” read another comment. “It’s giving the previous K-pop gen vibes.”
 
So, is K-pop becoming more open to coed moments again? Before answering that, perhaps a more fundamental question is this: Were those good ol’ days ever really good in the first place? 
 

ZeroBaseOne's Zhang Hao, left, and i-dle's Yuqi perform Trouble Maker's ″Now″ (2013) during KCON LA 2025 on Aug. 2 [CJ ENM]

 
Did mingling become taboo over recent years?
 
The short answer is, not really, as public mingling has always been somewhat risky for young K-pop idols, mainly as an extension of the industry's notorious dating ban.
 
In 2001, Joon Park of first-gen boy band g.o.d. nearly got ousted from his team when his romance with actor Han Go-eun became public.
 
“I’m 32 years old, okay?” he famously told reporters in a press conference addressing the issue.
 

Boy band god's Joon Park during a press conference in 2001 [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
Fast-forward to 2011, girl group Dal Shabet faced a torrent of hate following a joint performance with boy band B1A4, leading to member Serri publicly addressing the issue by saying, “Please don’t spread false rumors, BANA,” mentioning B1A4’s official fandom name — which only intensified the rage, forcing her to offer an apology.
 
While there were variety programs like MBC's "We Got Married" (2008-2017) where celebrities played pretend married couples, fans' reactions were almost always overwhelmingly negative in Korea. When Super Junior's Leeteuk announced in 2011 that he was "getting married" on the show with actor Kang So-ra and asked fans, "You will congratulate me, right?" the answer was, unsurprisingly, a resounding "No!"
 
That sentiment has carried into the 2020s. In 2020, Apink's Oh Ha-young had to clarify that her joining FC Rumor, a women's football team of Korean celebrities, had "nothing to do with a men's football team at all, and we've never played a game with them or interacted with them," as it sparked rumors that the team was intended as a way to mingle with male celebrities such as Seventeen's Seungkwan and Astro's Cha Eun-woo, who were in a men's football team of the same name.
 
 
Still, rules did change
 
History shows that backlash has always been fierce. What has changed, fans say, is the frequency of male-female interactions in public.
 
“I do feel like the number of K-pop idols publicly acknowledging groups of the other gender has decreased over time,” noted Hee-won, a longtime K-pop fan who has followed various groups for about a decade now. She requested anonymity, noting that her rare surname could make her easily identifiable.
 
Fan scrutiny, of course, played a significant role, but the changing media landscape also contributed, she suggested.
 
“These days, there are so many gossip accounts that deliberately stir controversy, often by taking screenshots out of context,” said the 25-year-old. “Any hint of dating rumors can seriously damage an idol’s career, so idols tend to act with caution.”
 
Fans on online communities like Reddit echoed the observation for years now, pointing out that not only boy-girl interactions but also exchanges with celebrities outside of one’s own idol group appear to have become increasingly scarce, many pointing to the decline of variety shows, once a key space for inter-group interactions, and the rise of fan-driven content, as possible reasons idols are seen together less often.
 
Social media has also changed the rules of the game, said Lie Jae-won, a visiting professor of the Culture and Technology Department at Sungkyunkwan University and author of "AI and Idol."
 
“As the line between professional and personal life blurs and more of idols’ daily lives become public content, idols have no choice but to become more cautious [in public interactions],” Lie noted.  
 
 

A thumbnail image from a YouTube video on Twice’s channel celebrating the 20th anniversary of Jihyo joining JYP Entertainment [JYP ENTERTAINMENT]

Are the walls coming down again?
 
Yes, mainly in the safe confines of promotion. But in a broader sense, not really.
 
Despite constant online scrutiny, boy-girl interactions never disappeared, both on stage and behind the scenes. In recent years, however, the so-called challenge culture, where idols do social media-friendly dance moves in short-form videos, has begun to offer a new window for mingling. Ever since the viral success of Zico’s “Any Song” (2020) challenge campaign, it’s practically a ritual for idols to appear in each other’s short-form dance clips, regardless of gender.
 
Many fans, predominantly international ones, have been celebrating the seemingly blurring line between girl groups and boy groups. In a recent example, an Aug. 6 video of Tomorrow x Together's Beomgyu and Le Sserafim's Yunjin dancing together garnered English comments pointing to the pair's chemistry, like "This is the first time ever Beomgyu [interacted] with a female idol like this, I love their friendship."
 

A screen capture from a dance challenge video of Le Sserafim's Huh Yun-jin, right, and Tomorrow X Together's Beomgyu, uploaded on the girl group's social media channel on Aug. 5 [SCREEN CAPTURE]

 
But look closer, and little has changed in how these exchanges are perceived in Korea.  
 
Third- and fourth-generation idols like Mingyu and Jihyo may feel relatively freer after a decade of proven careers, just as Key and Luna did in 2015, who respectively had seven and six years already under their belts back then.  
 
But rookies, still reliant on fan loyalty with a lot to prove, remain under a microscope.
 
“Whether idols act cautiously in interacting with other idols of different genders really depends on how long they’ve been in the industry, I think,” Hee-won said.
 
“With rookies, fans might think, ‘Why don’t you train more if you have time for hanging out with friends?’ when it comes to new groups that have a long way to go in terms of public awareness or skills, especially because fans are out there doing their best to promote and root for them.”
 
Girl group H1-KEY’s Hwiseo, for example, had to clarify during a livestream May last year that she was not dating Kamden of boy band Ampers&One, after the members addressed her in her real name instead of the stage name, and the sound of her exchanging greetings with the boy band members while staying at a same hotel for an overseas event, sparked rumors. H1-KEY debuted in 2022 and Ampers&One in 2023.
 
 
How did it come to this?
 
The answer lies in K-pop’s lucrative business model, which monetizes emotional attachment.
 
“Today, fans aren’t just giving emotional support — they are spending huge sums, which makes fans more outspoken in their complaints, amplifying conflicts,” noted Lie.
 

A hand-written apology uploaded by Karina of girl group aespa, left [NEWS1, SCREEN CAPTURE]

Such parasocial intimacy between fans and idols catapulted K-pop into a global phenomenon, leaving little room for human relationships.
 
A 2019 study from Sookmyung University, “Gender Differences in Idol Fans' Entitlement,” found that the more fans’ needs are met by their idols, the more demanding and dependent they become. And such scrutiny disproportionately hurts female idols, who face harsher backlash and tighter image control.
 
“As ideals and images are forced on K-pop idols, and especially girl groups, it is crucial to recognize the fan-idol dynamic that causes such an enforcement, set boundaries and offer regular mental health checkups for idols,” the study suggested.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]