For the love of K-pop. In the name of cosmopolitan emotions

Young people’s taste for K-pop must be contextualized as part of the development of an aesthetic capitalism that has transformed the production of aesthetic goods, marketing, and the consumption of difference into vectors that have contributed to the rise of emotional consumerism and aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism. This article therefore looks at the French reception of K-pop by young fans, in order to understand the cosmopolitan emotions it elicits for them and what function these emotions serve. After demonstrating to what extent the characteristics of K-pop favor certain kinds of attachments between fans and their chosen product, this article will draw on semi-structured interviews with 74 young people to shed light on this unique “love” and its modes of construction, before looking at the forms of empowerment derived from this attachment: self-care, affinity selection and the development of new perspectives on the future in a global world.