New York (AFP)

Celebrated on social networks for sabotaging the recent Donald Trump meeting, the community of K-pop fans is increasingly asserting itself as an activist, far from the smooth image of this popular Korean music.

#rallyfail (meeting failed), #crowdfail (absent crowd): there are hundreds, since Saturday, to celebrate on the social network TikTok what they present as a concerted operation to disrupt the campaign meeting of Donald Trump in Tulsa ( Oklahoma).

A few days before the event, the head of state's campaign director, Brad Parscale, announced that more than a million people had requested tickets, predicting a triumph.

The very active community of fans of K-Pop, a music movement with worldwide popularity, had relayed the call launched on TikTok to reserve seats for this meeting with the firm intention of not going there.

Today, she claims a victory, even if it is very difficult to establish how this campaign effectively deprived Donald Trump of a full room.

"I reserved two tickets, but I had to go out to fish," Chris posted on TikTok. "Sorry, I was taken. I really had to sort my ice cubes by size," laughed Matthew Kalik. "It took me all day."

Neither the campaign team nor Donald Trump himself mentioned TikTok or K-pop after this half-hearted meeting, but the young socialist democratic deputy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez paid tribute to the movement: " You've just been MOVED by TikTok teens, "she tweeted for the president.

"K-pop allies, we recognize and appreciate your contribution to the fight for justice," added the 30-year-old elected rising figure of the American left.

- "To change things" -

Built on groups of young Koreans inspired by "boy bands", created from scratch by musical labels, K-pop is, a priori, a musical movement without roughness, the opposite of any form of political commitment.

But it has been a long time since the fan community, at the very high level of mastery of social networks, has been serving causes, mainly charities.

A first decisive turn was made with the movement born after the death of George Floyd, supported by a good part of the K-pop army.

In early June, the BTS group, the flagship of the movement with its 26 million followers on Twitter, tweeted its support for the demonstrators and displayed its solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"K-pop fans are, in general, open people, interested in social issues," said CedarBough Saeji, specialist in Asian culture and professor at the University of Indiana.

"And in the United States," she adds, "K-pop is very much supported by people of color, (as well as) by people who identify as LGBTQ."

After his message, BTS donated a million dollars to Black Lives Matter. In a few hours, an association assembled by fans, One in An ARMY, then collected the same amount.

"BTS songs have a role in helping us to have confidence in ourselves, to be kind to others, to support each other," said Dawnica Nadora, One in An ARMY volunteer.

The K-pop community has taken the initiative online several times in recent weeks, notably to counter an attempt by the Conservatives to make the keyword #WhiteLivesMatter (the lives of whites matter) viral.

In a few hours, hundreds of messages containing this "hashtag" were posted by fans but with content denouncing racism and promoting K-pop.

They drowned hostile messages to Black Lives Matter under a deluge of their own production.

"If they feel they can make a difference," said CedarBough Saeji, looking at the presidential election in November, "they will convince themselves that the vote is for something."

© 2020 AFP