[pessimizer]

> Listening to KPop in a country where it is not a major genre, might still be counterculture.

Abstractly maybe, but in actuality an enormous amount of money and effort is spent to market K-Pop in the US by some of the largest media companies in the world.

[Nasrudith]

And it took an enormous amount of effort to get rock music into and distributed within the Soviet Union. It was produced through the systems of a leading power with organizations that would be illegal locally. I don't see how that changes that the counter culture goes against the general flow until it manages to become it.

[astrange]

They get pretty far by just allowing it to appear on YouTube. Japanese music companies spend all their effort on stopping anyone outside the country from listening by DMCAing all the music videos.