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Bloomberg

Hawaii-based Christine Kim was an early participant in the KPop Demon Hunters travel trend. In fairness, her trip to Seoul with her husband and children was already booked before the Netflix film came out in June 2025.
The plan, initially at least, was to visit grandparents. But then Rumi, Zoey and Mira, the movie’s protagonists, became her five-year-old daughter’s idols, and the itinerary got rewritten.
They visited a jjimjilbang (Korean spa) and the Namsan Tower – the setting for the rival Saja Boys’ final show in the movie – giving them the ultimate bragging rights for their family trip.
“My daughter seemed to be totally shocked that the places from the movie were real,” Kim says via text. “She was so excited, she was speechless.”
It was not just her daughter who bought into the cultural moment.
“I bought my son a black hanbok [traditional costume] and gat [hat] so he could be a Saja Boy for Halloween,” Kim says.
In case you do not have small children or somehow managed to escape the phenomenon, KPop Demon Hunters is an animated action-musical produced by Sony Pictures Animation that follows K-pop girl group Huntrix, whose chart-topping hits help them take down demons that threaten humanity.
Netflix just announced it would release a sequel that will again be directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans.

A critical and commercial hit that nobody saw coming, KPop Demon Hunters also appears to be a travel catalyst that nobody saw coming.
In July 2025, 1.36 million international travellers visited Seoul, 23.1 per cent more than the year before, according to government figures. That immediate growth was attributed to trips “fuelled by the KPop Demon Hunters craze”. The trend continued in the following months, helping South Korea achieve a record-breaking 18.9 million foreign tourists in 2025, according to data from the country’s tourism board.
Neil Hassall, who runs the Facebook group South Korea Travel Tips and Planning, says KPop Demon Hunters fans have boosted the popularity of his group in a way he has not seen since at least Squid Game. In June 2025, he had 65,000 members, he says; by January 2026, that number had almost doubled to 120,000.
In Seoul, Bukchon Hanok Village – the neighbourhood of traditional homes where characters Rumi and Jinu meet up for the first time – has emerged as a must-visit destination for more than just architecture and history buffs. The movie’s fans have helped make it the setting for one of the top trending Seoul tours on Trip.com.
Searches for the National Museum of Korea on Trip.com also increased 34 per cent year over year in the first few months following the film’s release, as fans flocked to the museum’s gift shop to buy movie merchandise.
Creatrip, a Korean travel platform that helps international visitors book restaurants, K-beauty services and hanbok rentals, has also benefited from the popularity of KPop Demon Hunters. Bookings for jjimjilbangs and seshin exfoliating scrub treatments were up 115 per cent in the summer months after the movie’s release, compared with the spring months immediately prior. During the same months the previous year, they had grown by just 17 per cent.
Bookings for medical clinics focusing on acupuncture, cupping and a type of herbal medicine called hanyak – which Rumi tries to use to heal her voice – were up 409 per cent in 2025 compared to the year before, according to Creatrip.

Pop-up cafes, character meet-and-greets and other experiences directly tied to the film are springing up to meet the moment.
Kuala Lumpur-based doctor Irina Ishak took her family to one such KPop Demon Hunters pop-up in Seoul’s Brooklyn-like Seongsu-dong neighbourhood in December. She considers it a highlight of their trip.
“The kids know all the characters and the moments in the movie,” Ishak says via text. “The pop-up was three floors with character cut-outs and scenes to take a picture at each corner. There were a few interactive corners, like finding a glow-in-the-dark Derpy cat print using a torch. The kids absolutely loved it.”
Creatrip CEO Haemin Yim believes the KPop Demon Hunters fervour is unlike anything Korea has seen in previous tourism waves driven by hallyu, also referred to as the Korean Wave.
In the past, she says, if people were coming for K-pop, their goal was to see concerts, visit K-pop group agencies and go to cafes for “fandom-driven pilgrimage”. But the appeal this film has with English speakers from the US, UK, Canada and Australia has given this wave much broader global traction and deeper engagement with aspects of Korean culture that stretch well beyond singing and dancing.
“Every major cultural element in the film – hanbok, jimjilbang, gimbap [seaweed rice rolls], samgyetang [ginseng chicken soup], K-pop dance, traditional medicine – is something a tourist can directly book and experience in Korea. The film essentially functions as a 90-minute showcase of Korean daily life, except it’s wrapped in a story that 500 million people watched,” she says.

Set-jetting, the trend in which people plan trips to places they have seen on screen, has been dominant elsewhere, to the point of causing overcrowding in some places. For example, Hallstatt, in Austria, has become an overtourism poster child ever since it was rumoured to be the real-life inspiration for the kingdom of Arendelle in Frozen.
In Seoul, the movie fandom has not yet stoked concerns of overtourism, and it may never do so. Whereas most film- and television-inspired travellers focus their attention on a small number of highly recognisable locations, KPop Demon Hunters fans have myriad ways to step into Rumi, Mira and Zoey’s demon-slashing shoes.
Kim, the Hawaii-based mother of two, says the movie is also trailblazing in other ways.
“The artwork is beautiful, the music is great and it filled a void,” she says. “There aren’t a lot of movies with girl superheroes.”


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Promotional material for instant noodles and snacks themed after the Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters is displayed outside a shop in the tourist district of Myeongdong in Seoul. The South Korean capital has benefitted from a tourism wave linked to the movie’s popularity. Photo: The Washington Post via Getty Images

Men dressed as the Saja Boys from KPop Demon Hunters pose for a photo in Bukchon Hanok Village, a Seoul neighbourhood prominently featured in the movie. Photo: The Washington Post via Getty Images

A drone show inspired by KPop Demon Hunters is seen in the sky over Seoul on November 15, 2025. Photo: Getty Images

A scene from KPop Demon Hunters. Photo: TNS

How Gen Z K-pop fans are reshaping South Korean tourism through cultural immersion

Foreign tourists in Seoul pose in Saja Boys costumes from the Netflix animation KPop Demon Hunters. Photo: courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

An instructor and students demonstrate dance moves at a K-pop class at 1Million Dance Studio in Seongdong district, Seoul. Photo: Korea Times/Choi Ju-yeon

K-pop fans Alana, left, and Faye from Australia attend an awards ceremony at Korea University’s Hwajeong Gymnasium in Seongbuk district, Seoul. Photo: Korea Times/Kim Jun-hyung

Taiwanese tourist Yum has her make-up done at Cocorea in Jung district, Seoul. Photo: Korea Times/Lim Ji-hoon

Fans fill the KSPO Dome in Olympic Park, Seoul, for a Monsta X concert. K-content is a big driver of tourism in South Korea. Photo: courtesy of Starship Entertainment

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Lifestyle

Travel & Leisure

Entertainment

K-Pop

While previous ‘hallyu’-driven tourist waves focused on K-pop culture, KPop Demon Hunters fans are embracing Korean culture on another level


While previous ‘hallyu’-driven tourist waves focused on K-pop culture, KPop Demon Hunters fans are embracing Korean culture on another level.


How the KPop Demon Hunters travel trend is shaking up ‘Korean wave’ tourism

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While previous ‘hallyu’-driven tourist waves focused on K-pop culture, KPop Demon Hunters fans are embracing Korean culture on another level

While previous ‘hallyu’-driven tourist waves focused on K-pop culture, KPop Demon Hunters fans are embracing Korean culture on another level