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Journalism of Courage
We ran away to become K-pop idols. Not to become back-up dancers.” It’s a distinction the 15-year-old makes with force, a rare moment of assertion in the conversation, as she sits down in the verandah of her house, under the strict gaze of her family, to talk of why she and two other girls ran away from their villages in Murshidabad six months ago.
That September afternoon, while her father was working in the betel vineyard on the outskirts of the village, the girl, along with her 13-year-old cousin and a 16-year-old school friend, paid Rs 15 for a toto (a local four-wheeler) to take them to the ghat by the Hooghly. There, they paid Rs 10 for a ferry ride to Murshidabad, where they went to the nearest railway station and sat in a train to Sealdah. Minutes before the train pulled out of the platform, the 15-year-old sent her father a text from her friend’s mobile phone: “Don’t search for us. We are going to fulfil our dreams of K-pop. We will contact you”. And switched off the device.
What followed was a frantic search by the family and the police. The girls had planned to go to Mumbai and from there to Seoul — that mecca of Korean pop culture. But 48 hours later, they were traced to Shalimar station near Kolkata and brought home to Murshidabad.
“Our school is full of BTS fans,” the 15-year-old says, referring to the Korean boy band that has managed to achieve unprecedented global recognition.
Using a rarely witnessed soft power, Hallyu, the cultural phenomenon called “Korean Wave”, that has popularised South Korean cultural products, has introduced fans across the world to everything Korean, from food and music to Korean dramas.
And then, quietly, fuelled by cheap mobile phones and cheaper data, Hallyu reached some of the remotest parts of the country — from Murshidabad in West Bengal to Karur in Tamil Nadu.
In January 2024, three 13-year-olds from Karur decided to set sail from Visakhapatnam port to Seoul. Around the same time, three teenagers from Pakistan also tried to run away from home to meet members of the BTS band. Both sets of teenagers were rescued by their respective state’s police officials and taken home.
Back in the teenager’s Murshidabad house that’s surrounded by moringa, coconut and jujube trees, the 15-year-old’s father talks of the text message he got hours after the girls fled home.
When the family realised the girls were missing, it assumed the worst since sex trafficking is quite common in Murshidabad and most missing girls never return home. “It’s only when we got the text message that we realised they had run away… Until then, I did not know about BTS or that South Korea was a country,” he says.
The message saw his wife, 38, rushing to the nearest police station, 5 km away. Within hours, a state-wide alert was issued on the missing girls and the local police started tracking the friend’s phone.
Unaware of the storm they had triggered, four hours later, at nightfall, the girls reached Sealdah station. They had among themselves one mobile phone, Rs 1,500, their ID cards, some clothes, loads of gumption and their dream of making it big in K-pop.
“At Sealdah, the girls went to a hotel near the station. The hotel took their ID cards and allowed them to rent a room for a night though they were minors,” says the girls’ uncle, 30, who runs a travel booking centre in the village.
The next day, nearly 24 hours after they left home, the girls checked out of the hotel and switched on the phone. The uncle says, “The phone’s location showed they were headed towards Shalimar station. The local police informed the Railway Protection Force (RPF) at Shalimar station. When the girls got off the train, the RPF was waiting for them.”
Once they were brought back home to Murshidabad, the girls were taken to the local police station for questioning and ended up staying in a government shelter home for over a week, as per rules, while the police quizzed them on their “motive”.
Then, just as now, they struggled to explain why they had run away — or how they planned to get to Korea. The younger girl says she was unaware that she needed a passport, a visa and a guardian to board a flight to Korea.
“They didn’t plan to go to South Korea directly. They wanted to go to Mumbai first to learn singing and dancing, and then get selected to become K-pop stars. They had searched all this information on the cellphone. They said becoming a K-pop idol would help them earn lots of money,” says the 15-year-old girl’s mother, adding the family has since cracked down on the girls’ access to K-pop. “Half the girls in our school hostel are ARMY,” softly pipes in the 13-year-old, referring to the group’s worldwide fandom or ARMY, which is an acronym for ‘Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth’.
The girls studied in a residential school in a nearby village. They ensured they were all home on a break at the same time so they could run away to Mumbai to achieve their K-pop dreams.
When the girls ran away, it didn’t take long for the news to spread in their village of nearly 2,600 residents. Offensive comments by relatives and neighbours followed. “People thought they had run away with a man. We asked them several times if a young man was involved but they kept saying they had left to pursue K-pop. Music and dance is haram (forbidden) in Islam. I also have to get my daughters married,” says the 15-year-old’s mother.
The aunt says, “During the little time they spent at home from boarding school, they would only watch BTS videos. If I said BTS was rubbish, they would get angry. But we never imagined that they would run away from home one day because of BTS.”
The 15-year-old says she discovered the band while scrolling through the family phone in 2020. “The first BTS song I heard was ‘Dynamite’. I like all the band members. I listen to other K-pop groups too,” she says, adding that soon, her younger cousin, too, was hooked.
For rural fans like the Murshidabad cousins, nothing — not even the lack of merchandise and Korean food, an access that fans in cities and towns thrive on — will take the sheen off their Korean pop culture universe.
“We are fine with whatever we get. We don’t discuss Korean food with friends. Even if we want to try the food, where will we get it here?” says the 15-year-old, adding that while they are not a part of any official fan club, they have their social groups in the village and at school where they discuss their love for BTS. Her uncle interjects, “Of course they want to eat Korean food. But their desire is of no use here…”
Some 150 km away, in Katakhali village that skirts West Bengal’s Sundarbans biosphere, lives 13-year-old Subarna Aria Alo. It was a phone advertisement that launched Subarna into the BTS universe in 2018. While searching for the phone online, she discovered BTS member Kim Tae-hyung, better known as V. “My friend told me that V looked cute,” says Subarna, unapologetic about her love for BTS and K-pop.
“They teach us all nice things. That we must love our own self before loving others. They also tell us that if elders ask us not to like them (BTS), then we should listen to our elders. I like their messages. They have inspired me to study hard so I can get a good job,” she says.
Her mother Sakila Khatun isn’t worried about BTS. In these parts, she says, there are vices far worse than a faraway boy band. A social worker who has monitored cases of trafficking in southern West Bengal for years, Khatun says, “I would much rather my daughter be obsessed with some K-pop idols than a good-for-nothing fellow who lures her into sex trafficking using sweet words.”
Like many rural parents who don’t fully understand the K-pop world, Khatun says she learns about BTS from her daughter each day. Khatun has promised to take Subarna to a Korean restaurant in Kolkata one day “so she can eat the food she sees BTS cook”.
A few months ago, Subarna gave her pocket money (Rs 1,000) to a friend visiting a village fair in Basirhat town, around 50 km away. “I asked her to buy me BTS merchandise like stationery, colourful pens and stickers. BTS merchandise is available online, but costs a lot. It takes me nearly a year to save Rs 1,000,” says Subarna.
She has heard of youngsters like her leaving their homes, hoping to meet their heroes in Seoul, but has no plans of doing so. “I will wait for opportunities that may come my way and travel with my parents’ consent,” she says.
Just like Subarna, 21-year-old Simran Bhatti’s K-pop world is limited to a 15-inch screen. The college student, who lives in Haryana’s Kurali village, about 70 km from New Delhi, says, “I discovered Korean dramas in 2017 and then I heard BTS’s song ‘DNA’. But no one in my area knew much about K-pop or K-dramas. Friends in school or the village would make fun of my love for BTS. That has changed a little now.”
A few months ago, she was elated to discover two more BTS fans in her neighbourhood. “One is 16, the other 12. We don’t meet often, but when we do, we behave like typical fangirls,” said Simran.
Like Subarna, Simran wishes she had better access to BTS merchandise and Korean food. “BTS merchandise is expensive. I don’t think my parents would like it if I spent money on it. They are okay with me liking K-pop, but I didn’t think I will be allowed to have posters of young men around the house… Anyway, I share a room with my mother,” she says.
Simran says she understands what drives youngsters in small towns and rural areas to leave home in pursuit of Korean pop culture. “Maybe it is because we only have access to online content unlike urban fans, who have opportunities to attend K-pop events. I don’t think any event has been held in rural areas to attract K-pop fans,” she says.
She then talks about a story every BTS fan has grown up on — how its members rose from humble beginnings to achieve unprecedented global stardom. It is a story that has fostered dreams among fans of a similar fairytale.
But not all dreams have ended badly. In 2021, Sriya Lenka from Odisha’s Rourkela became the first Indian to join Blackswan, a K-pop band, after months of rigorous training and auditions. These days, Sriya, 20, posts photos of herself in Seoul, looking every inch the manicured K-pop artist that she is now.
Though for many others, Seoul remains too far away.
