Looking at Fan Identity: The Bangladeshi K-Pop Fan

Today K-pop has achieved a cult-like status globally. The tangible influence of K-Pop is paraded by the legions of fans mushrooming worldwide staking a claim to the ‘K-popper/K-pop fan’ identity. No longer is K-pop an international subculture, it has broken into the global mainstream, thriving and growing rapidly as more and more fans join the community. This paper explores fan identity and performance, more importantly the idea of fan identity of an ‘international’ fan. Part of an ongoing research that compares and analyzes transnational fanculture, this chapter looks at the Bangladeshi K-Popper. It examines certain fan attributes: from listening to the music, to purchasing albums and merchandise, to bonding with other fans and being part of a heterotopic imagined community, and utilizes the performance of fandom to critically deconstruct their social identities. Using an ethnographic approach, several one-on-one interviews were conducted with Bangladeshi fans, along with a survey and observations of fan events. Given how wide the fan-community is, this paper focuses on a small sample, looking at the fans of current popular groups to see how they define their identities of being a fan in an international community.