If you doubt that the world of South Korean manufactured pop is significantly different from its western counterpart, then a description of female quartet Aespa – or rather the world around them – should put you right.
Their name may sound like an upmarket brand of air-freshener, but, according to the Seoul-based entertainment company that launched them in 2020, it melds the words “avatar”, “experience” and “aspect” in a way that’s intended to symbolise the ability to “meet another self through an avatar”. Aespa themselves are enmeshed in a kind of K-pop equivalent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which bands are promoted as superheroes with interlinked storylines. In the case of Aespa, this involves each member having an online avatar or “ae” that is supposed to exist in another dimension called the Flat, but which can cross over to the real world via something called the Synk. In between the real world and the Flat lurks another virtual realm called the Kwangya, lawless and inhabited by Aespa’s mysterious mortal enemy the Black Mamba, who may or may not have hacked into the avatar of one of the band’s members, Karina, thus corrupting the real-world Karina.
