Growing up in Toronto, Maggie Kang felt she needed to conceal her obsession with H.O.T., the mid-1990s idol group whose tightly synchronized choreography, chantable hooks and lurid crimson hair — sometimes topped with ski goggles — helped define the template for modern K-pop.
“I had to hide that I liked K-pop,” says Kang, co-writer and co-director of KPop Demon Hunters. “Even my Asian friends thought it was lame. But it was just part of me — it wasn’t escapism, it was identity.”
These days, Kang no longer is hiding. On March 15, her hyperkinetic animated Netflix hit — in which a K-pop girl group, Huntrix, juggles global superstardom while slaying soul-eating demons disguised as a rival boy band — made history by winning best animated feature at the Academy Awards. Its self-affirmation anthem, “Golden,” currently being belted by 10-year-olds and their parents from Los Angeles to Osaka, became
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