K-Pop Demon Career

How KPop Demon Hunters teaches us to move from a “career” to a “purpose”.

Hey there.

This isn’t news to you, but the reason we adults love the multi-Oscar-winning film, K-Pop Demon Hunters, isn’t just because the music slaps.

It does. But, that’s not why this animated film is so sticky.

Like all well-written stories, this property also provides an accessible storyline that parallels something we’re seeing play out in society in real time.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s take it in Soundtrack order.

Your introduction to our Demon Hunting Bad Bs is “How it’s Done”.

We see these women in a private jet on the way to a sold out show.

This is the beginning of your career. You’ve made this your career because you’re the best at it from your school, your internship, or your family. You enter the job market highly anticipated in a hot suit. You arrive dropped from the private jet of straight As from a great school, with a great resume, and killer interview. You got the gig. You grabbed the paycheck with a signing bonus.

You were the top of the heap and you stroll into the office with giddy swagger, looking like you had a “fit check for your napalm era” before you left the house.

You are flinging fresh insights that are well-received, because the market didn’t expect you to come locked and loaded.

Your results match your gumption and effort, because you’ve BEEN putting in unseen hours. It’s like a musician’s award-winning Freshman album. The world – and the Honmoon are yours.

And your company knows it, and welcomes you with open arms. Your first projects are greenlighted and succeed. You’re a breath of fresh air.

Enter “Soda Pop” and the Saja Boys.

The song “Soda Pop” arrives at a moment when our star – Rumi – is starting to show the wear of constant career demands that she herself created by outpacing the competition.

She drops the latest single, “Golden” right on the heels of her groups most successful offering to date. She is riding her momentum and cannot afford to slip up. Not even a little.

But, what our heroine and ingenue doesn’t see is that the career she has put her full voice into is drinking her dry. She’s literally become something that’s being drunk in by those around her and they won’t be satisfied by continued success. They are hungry for drama, and she wants to anticipate their needs by denying her own personal truth if necessary. It is temporary…She thinks.

She can’t deliver the new single in live performances, however, because she’s facing constant drag on her voice by the wear the fight is taking on her.

Where her first round of success was relatively smooth, now she is getting questioned at every turn. There wasn’t this much attention to the “how” on her first success and therefore, there wasn’t as much scrutiny. This tension is taking her voice away from her, literally.

When the demon boy band - the Saja Boys - enter, you might argue that she was already feeling the wear and tear of the career; but what she (and we) don’t see is that there is a dual benefit to the work she is putting in for those seeking to stymie her success.

Our heroine has become her work, and she doesn’t believe her own body and skin over her title at work. She parallels the young employee once again.

Her denial of who she is, and willingness to sacrifice herself serves the very enemy she is trying to defeat. The more hours of her day those watching her can take with questioning her approach, the less she can do, and her willingness to share her work fuels their narrative that she’s not ready.

The very time she puts into work shows it’s not effortless for her – this will be the story they will tell – while these detractors are actively creating those extra hours by using every appearance to distract her and send the spotlight onto how hard she is working.

They are drinking up her time, and making it their literal job to take her soul. They are singing about it every chance they get.

Whether you see Gwi-Ma or the Saja Boys as the competition in the market or at the office, there is a dual exchange going on. The rivalry is fed by her attempt to cover her own exhaustion. Those in power benefit by overtaxing the hunters just like a toxic boss or corporation benefits by the expectations exceeded in each pay ring. If the young employee is working more hours, they are getting more out of her. If her toxic boss is getting more hours out of her without increasing her pay, they are delivering for the company over the value of their own paychecks in the view of their superiors without actually having to do more work.

Younger, cheaper, employees are drunk dry while those feeding toxic narratives like, “we don’t have money for a raise”, “we have more scale to support”, “we can’t keep up with consumer demand” tethers these heroines using their own success as a reason not to allow them to rest or ascension.

You’re always one song away from sealing the Honmoon, one sale away from a bonus, or one distributor away from a promotion.

You’ll never get there - and if you do – it comes at a price you can’t afford.

The refrain of the company (and the toxic demons who serve it) becomes, “You’re all I can think of/Every drop I drink up”, and “cuz I need you to need me/I’m empty you feed me” when it comes to your time, energy, and ideas.

Then, we finally hear live the long-awaited release. Your “Golden” project finally is revealed.

This Sophomore offering will likely outpace your first offering, but it won’t get you the same accolades. The company has now come to expect exceptional work, and it is no longer enough. They are influenced by your own “Saja Boys”, and are doubting your “Golden” abilities.

The profits will soar, and someone else will take the credit while shunting you to another project in need of a fixer. The award will have someone else’s name on it – likely the very demon sucking you dry. The promotion will go to the person who was there for the results of your plan, possibly the person who claims to have helped or corrected you. It will be those who hindered your progress, not you.

And all the while - like Rumi and her friends - you will try to enjoy the results.

You’ll be seen internally as someone who creates success, so you start to encounter feedback that asks why you can’t quite seem to “live like the girl they all see”.  You are basically trying to fit a mold you created, but have outgrown. And no one around you can understand why you can’t stay the same size.

You start being accused of having some unfortunate “patterns” that you need to “put in the past, now”. Even though, these are the exact patterns they were asking you to follow. The patterns that your detractors are riddled with.

You are asked to revise your strategy even as you have always done exactly what was asked of you and so much more.

So, you revisit your “Strategy”.

Bringing in a mentor, you try to learn how to approach the job differently to actually get the credit for the work you’ve consistently achieved. You fear you don’t have the skills to move forward despite your results. You’re being gaslighted into believing you should follow someone else’s path.

You now believe there must be something wrong with YOU.  

At this moment in the film, the music is turned over to an established K-Pop band – TWICE.

The song?

“Strategy”, about how re-evaluating who you are will bring you success by fooling them into going along with you. “My strategy will get ya, get ya, baby.”

Your focus is forcibly shifted from results to internal competition.

So, you start to compete in the race you now find yourself in.

Like Simone Biles, when you started doing gymnastics the company didn’t have metrics for before you arrived, your advisors will tell you that now you have to re-write your strategy to help the system understand what you do. the onus is on you to pivot from achieving more results to educating them on why they should allow you to repeat them, and trying to teach others to do what you do without taking any credit.

You are told you must do more and expect less back from the system. The system is outdated, and you don’t fit. They don’t want to do the work you’ve earned them, so it is you who must prove you can work in the outdated system, instead of the company updating the system to the new capabilities you’ve brought to it.

Your company convinces you that you need a “Takedown”.

They want you to prove yourself again at the same level, by once again doing another impossible project that is way larger than your role and your current paycheck.

“You have to prove you’re ready for the next level.” They tell you, even though, the work you’ve consistently completed has paid the company millions more than any other person at your level.

So, you gear up for a fight you didn’t want and didn’t ask for on a platform you’ve already shown you can dominate. But, this time, instead of doing something for the good of all employees, you must turn your attention against those who are supposed to be your teammates.

The competition is now inside the house. The demons are onstage with you. Others are trying to take your soul to feed their own advancement. With no souls/ideas of their own to offer, they aim to show the company how they can expose those alleged “star performers” and they make this endeavor their actual performance.

They perform the same soul-draining song and when it is well-received - hey, everyone loves to sing the song they know all the words to - the company enjoys the show. They use the fact that the outdated lyrics still feel good to them as an example of how your new work isn’t necessary.

You now look like you’re working too hard and this lack of ease is used as proof that you aren’t possibly as good as they thought.

You’ve geared up for the fight; but – like a political queen thrown into a pit with physical snakes – your skills are not the ones required for this fight.

You’ve prepped for a fight with dignity, armed with research and a plan for consumer delivery. But, your enemy will never allow this new work to be seen. They will instead drag you into a criticism showdown.

If you are willing to become a snake (or a demon) yourself - and come armed with your own criticism of their plans - you will survive; but your prize will be to live the rest of your career as a snake or a demon.

Rumi makes a different choice.

She chooses to be Free of this style of fighting.

She climbs out of the pit and decides to encourage her competition to do the same. She addresses the battle that brought her here and offers the company a better choice. She says, “let’s work together on this to achieve better results instead of fighting each other. Let’s deny shame and embrace reinvention together.”

In the lyrics it’s phrased as, “We could be free, free/We can't fix it if we never face it/Let the past be the past 'til it's weightless.”

This appeal usually fails in the current corporate environment - as it does with Jinu and Gwi-Ma.

Because change comes with breakage. There were indeed patterns in the company that died when you succeeded in a new way. Those who relied on them to be fed are going hungry in a world that requires growth to continue. They often will not let this change go unaddressed. They don’t want to change, so they hope to prove you ineffective, instead. They want to bite or consume you. They don’t need or want success anymore. They just don’t want you to have it.

So, this is where the bad guys – like the Saja Boys – win the day. They take the world championship.

They become the company’s “Idol”.

The lyrics go, “I’m preaching to the choir/Can I get the mic a little higher?”

Like the song of the same name, the company has sacrificed something to stay in the same patterns; but they are relieved that they don’t have to adapt.

They’ve killed the entrepreneurial spirit - or maybe even let go of the results-driver who created their success and raised the morale of those at work. So, they need to justify that action. They are now all invested in your demise.

Now, our heroine is left with a choice.

Rumi can admit defeat and live in the shadow of it. That’s one option.

They’ve seen what she is, and she could become what they believe her patterns make her.

She can keep her head down until everyone forgets this competition/project/failure.

Or, she can find another place to shine.

Either way, she has burned completely out with that company. The Demon Hunters who must be perfect and unmarked are no longer real.

Her light is out, and she is down to the barest element of who she has become. She is refined. She is the most potent she will ever be and she is both her past and her future, her worst and her best, but that means that everything else has been charred away.

“This is What it Sounds Like” is the song for when she chooses to honor that potency. It is the song of a Phoenix rising from the ash.

It’s often the output of burnout.

It’s not pretty to fall to the pit of snakes and demons, to get bitten or burned and to lose a part of yourself. It’s not lauded to fly away from something that has taken so much of you.

To address the fact that you put so much work into fitting into a mold that was made to shape you into something smaller is a humbling experience. It’s to admit that you didn’t honor all of yourself.

To release the expectations of a company that you advocated for, that you built, that you fed with your hours, your income, and your ideas, only to have it disregard or discard you feels humiliating.

“I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back/But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass…My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.”

These lessons have taught our heroine and her cohorts a lesson they cannot unlearn.

The company never cared about you. (Neither did the audience really, they just cared about what you could do for them.)

They never really cared about the results you drove.

They used you while you were convenient, and they can always find the next cheap and easy solution to feel good about what they are doing.

They lied about the size of your impact – their box for you was too small.

They misled you about your freedom to change the culture – they liked the transactional relationships they had before you arrived.

They wanted you to keep making hits, but they didn’t want to pay you for that privilege.

So, you are now more valuable than ever.

Not just to them, but to yourself.

You are now a shape that they cannot imitate.

You are something  better that never existed before.

You are invention, creation, and authenticity.

It is the unique offering that only you can provide that MAKES you, not undoes you.

It is the culmination of each messy and ugly experience that brings you to this level; but the leaders who do not take this road are the ones who are doomed to live in past that is the snake pit. They recreate snake pit after snake pit, never quite understanding how others have a whole zoo, a theme park or a circus.

They are doomed to repeat the constant patterns of using guilt and shame to keep everyone within a hierarchy. It is the real-life example of the endless appetite of “Gwi-Ma”. The results will never be good enough. There will never be enough money or souls to freely feed the machine. These companies will need to drink more empty “Soda Pop” and serve many more “Idol”s to limply exist.

Only those who can detach themselves from that cycle can experience any actual white space innovation, consumer behavior change, or lasting peace.

Only those who can walk away - or regenerate - to do exactly what they were made to do can hope to live their unique path.

It’s at this point, that one moves from navigating a “career” to creating a “purpose”.

“This is what it sounds like.”