As an ardent observer of the worldwide music industry, K-Pop has always greatly intrigued me. Driven by fandom, synergy and commodification, its rise from the heart of Korea into the ears of enchanted listeners across the hemisphere is unheard of. Although arguably trivialised through merchandising and with a simplistic technical and thematic approach to musicianship and songwriting, it’s impossible to ignore its unwavering and burgeoning significance across the global sphere throughout the last decade.

So, what is it that makes it so undeniable? Well, J.Y. Park – the father of K-Pop to many – tells me on the seventh floor of the Fairmont Ambassador Hotel in Seoul, South Korea.

Let’s wind it back a little. It’s just another day at Wonderland HQ; ginger shot consumed, sharp undertones of fatigue lingering, and an inbox full of emails. Suddenly, something pops up. Coca-Cola? Seoul? K-Pop? My attention thickens.

The drinks brand – which I’m informed is the second most known phrase in the world after ‘okay’ (a terrifying and fascinating thought) – have invited me to the South Korean capital to witness the birth of an exciting new collaboration between themselves and the K-Pop orbit. They call it K-Wave, a new drink synergised with an initiative, original song and music video conceptualised by Korean music legend J.Y. Park and his label, JYP Entertainment. I would be attending a media day, discovering more about the partnership, and witnessing the debut viewing of the new track and visuals – whilst enjoying a spot of sightseeing along the way for good measure.

Of course, as an individual with a tendency for curiosity and a passport to fill up, I accept the gracious offer and weeks later I’m watching Gatwick airport shrink into the distance behind the clouds.

I arrive in Dubai, where I am laying over, as the clock strikes midnight. I see a flight to Seoul that leaves at 4:45am. After hours spent searching for the smoking area, burning my tongue on coffee and laughing at tacky souvenirs, I embark towards my gate around 3:15am, eager to be stationed with an hour to spare. As I approach the gate, I receive a WhatsApp.

“Did you make it onto the flight okay?”

Panic gushes through my veins. I find the nearest board and scan it for information; a 3:30am flight to Seoul has closed its gate and is preparing to take off… I’m supposed to be on it. They’ve been calling my name on the tannoy I’ve been told, but the noise cancelling AirPods have done me no favours.

I sprint through the airport, praying to the Gods of the sky that they’ll grant me access. Out of breath and with a stitch throbbing my left torso, I arrive to find an empty desk. A minute or two later, a stewardess appears from a lift and walks towards me. I’m saved!

“I’m on this flight,” I tell her in disillusioned ignorance. “It’s left,” she replies coldly. “You’ll have to go to the Emirates desk and book a new one.” A sinking sentiment surrounds me. I scramble towards the desk and impatiently wait in a queue of similarly stressed individuals. Eventually, I reach the front of the line and plead to the staff for an answer. They can’t get me on a flight until the same time tomorrow. I’m now at the mercy of the Middle East.

The PR team come to my rescue, managing to book me on a flight at 9pm the next day, which will mean I arrive in Seoul just in time for the media day. Relieved but self-deprecative, my next mission is to find my luggage, which I’m informed has been removed from the flight. I pilgrimage through immigration and find a baggage help desk – my bag will be available in two hours. I wait for what feels like an aeon until I’m reunited with my belongings.

It’s now around 7am, meaning that I have 14 hours to kill. I loiter around the outskirts of the airport, taking shelter from the scalding Dubai sun that I am far overdressed for. Time creeps by, slowly, painfully and solemnly. Several breakdowns later and I’m back in the night sky, finally on my way to my desired destination.

Seoul’s weather is a far cry from the glaring sun that I’ve spent the last day encompassed by; it’s foggy and brisk, with a bitter wind biting my tired eyes. I’m met by a Coca-Cola representative who books us a car and we set out towards the Fairmont Ambassador Hotel, a decadent establishment beside Han River.

There’s a brief period of relief to check into my home for the night, and to freshen up before I attend the media day. Exhausted but excited for discovery, I meet my PR hosts and settle in for the presentation, which is taking place in an event space in the basement of the hotel, filled with over 100 local and global press and influencers.

What follows is a spectacle of epic proportion. There’s a live performance from renowned K-Pop group ITZY, and a dance competition between three lucky audience members (I sadly was not chosen to compete). We hear from Oana Vlad (Senior Director, Global Strategy at The Coca-Cola Company), Jung Hyun Kwon (Category Lead for Japan and Korea) and J.Y. Park, who explain the collaboration in detail.

As part of Real Magic, a culture-first platform from Coca-Cola® Creations, a new refreshment K-Wave Zero Sugar has been revealed, in celebration of K-Pop, its fans and Korean culture. The limited-edition flavour is being released in parallel to a new song and music video made specifically for the new beverage, which sees three of K-Pop’s hottest acts, Stray Kids, ITZY and NMIXX, joining forces with J.Y. Park for “Like Magic”. As part of the release, fans have the opportunity to immerse themselves into the visual through an AI-powered experience, performing alongside their idols and being able to download and share their personalised music video on social media.

We are treated to the debut viewing of the new offering from Park and co. “Like Magic” is an effervescent, crowd-pleasing pop track that is textured with diverse performances from the three acts’ individual members. The video echoes the vibrance of the sonics; glossy, cinematic and star-studded.

It’s an impressive showing, with Coca-Cola pulling out all the marketing stops. I’m gifted a customised K-Wave can with my name ingrained in English and Korean – the drink itself is a refreshingly fruity treat. Following the presentation’s finality, I’m ushered into a lift to the seventh floor. There, I’ll be chatting with the man himself, J.Y. Park, as well as Oana Vlad and Jung Hyun Kwon.

Park arrives a few minutes after me, surrounded by an entourage of advisors, assistants and security all looking slightly flustered. I’m invited into the makeshift interview room, shake hands with the father of K-Pop and begin questioning him on the movement, Coca-Cola and his personal career.

“We are looking for all kinds of ideas to surprise our fans in a pleasant way,” he explains when I enquire what drew him to the collaboration. “When we heard about this idea, it was just amazing to have a beverage that celebrates our relationship. It’s a no-brainer. We knew how fans would feel about this project.”

His assignment for the joint venture was rooted in his own expertise – both his curation and eye for spotting talent, and his own musical acumen. “It was not easy because even outside of me, it’s three different artists that have slightly different characters and colours,” he says on the creation of the new single. “So trying to find a common beat, rhythm and melody that all three can express themselves comfortably was definitely not easy. It took some time in the lab but I was able to come up with something that all three groups felt comfortable with.”

Park’s involvement – and the fact that the 138 year old universally-domineering conglomerate chose to partner with the K-Pop community – is perhaps one of the clearest indicators of K-Pop’s world-wide reverberations. “History tells us that Coca-Cola is pretty selective and picky in choosing who they want to work with,” he offers. “Just by having Coca-Cola team up with us – this is global now. K-pop is a global phenomenon. Having this project is a reflection on how prevalent K-pop has become.”

I ask him – as an outsider, somewhat unbeknownst to the essence of K-Pop – what is it about the genre and the movement that has generated such emphatic success, and made it, as he defined, a global phenomenon. “It’s a relationship, a strong bond,” he answers. “It’s because artists commit so much more of their time and energy to their fans. If a K-pop artist wins an award, they don’t go to the after party, they go back to their hotel room and celebrate it live with their fans. If you ask any other artist to do that, I’m pretty sure most of them wouldn’t like it [laughs]. It starts from the commitment of the artist, that’s what moves the fans to commit that much more. It has to start from the artist’s side in order to move the hearts of the fans.”

As an artist with decades of experience and a weighty discography, I’m eager to know how he continues to progress and find passion in his own creation. “I had a very interesting comment from Oana,” he remembers. “She said that Coca-Cola always tries to maintain 80-85% of the same ingredients, and then tries to change the 15-20% to give it a different splash. When I was hearing that, I was thinking – wow, I think I do the same thing. Trying to maintain 80-85% of what I genuinely love from the bottom of my heart, but then trying to add different elements to the core, the nucleus of my music. As generations pass by and cultures evolve, it’s so challenging to lead the trend, because it’s a new generation of kids. That is actually what makes my job exciting; instead of making it difficult, I feel it is a very pleasant challenge.”

Known as much for his work as a promoter and manager of artists under his label J.Y.P Entertainment, Park’s discipline and commitment to K-Pop extends far beyond personal accolades. “My goal is always new songs in October, tour starts in December. That’s always my aspiration. I need to do a good job at running the company for ten months, then I can enjoy my artistry for the last two or three months of the year. I always try to get everything done as the leader of the company and have every project ready, set, go and then I can concentrate as an artist. This year, if everything goes well, I hope to do the same thing. It’s been a good 30 years of my career, I always go back to running the company in January, but this year I plan to extend my shows into January abroad as an artist. Next January I’m hoping I can visit some of the non-Korea fans, maybe America, maybe London, maybe Japan. But that’s only when I do my job well as the leader of the company.”

Impressed by his aura and ethos, I bid farewell to K-Pop’s premium spokesman and move onto the next room, where Coca-Cola’s Global Strategy Senior Director and the Category Lead for Japan and Korea are awaiting my questions. Quickly, I discover the inception of K-Wave and the collaboration. “We were here in 2021 and I was experiencing Seoul for the first time,” Vlad says. “We talked a lot about K culture, felt the energy here and it started with a conversation of – we should try to bottle this and bring it to the world. So it started with a very personal conversation that we shared. The global movement was so noticeable that it was easy to take this as inspiration and start a project together.”

With Park still very much on my mind, I ask the Coke team about his involvement. “He’s the one that recruited the producer of BTS a decade ago,” offers Jung Hyun Kwon. “He is known in Korea as the father of K-Pop, fourth generation. It was a no-brainer for a symbolic project like this to have a partner like that, who would understand deeply about the culture of K-pop and the future of K-Pop.”

“With all the creations, when we identify a partner, it’s important that they share our co-values,” Vlad adds. “I think you saw that even today [at the media event]. He’s very optimistic, he’s all about the fans, and he’s very inclusive – those are values that the Coke brand has. That’s always the starting point when we identify the best partner, in addition to obviously his amazing impact on K culture in general.”

K-Wave is far from Coca-Cola’s first venture into the creative and cultural hemisphere, and by the sounds of it, it certainly won’t be their last, as Vlad concludes: “Coke has always had a really important role in culture. It’s been art, it’s been music, film, fashion, entertainment. At the end of the day, passion points are what our fans and consumers care about, so we want to obviously communicate with them through the things that mean something to them.”

Fast forward an hour or two and I’m sitting in the N Seoul Tower’s restaurant, overlooking the fluorescent landscape of nighttime city. The food is immaculate, traditional, with a cacophony of courses, including coma-inducing steak cooked right in front of our eyes. A celebratory evening leads into the cold quiet of night; I retire to my chambers, in much need of some shut eye.

Morning arrives far too quickly. I drag myself from the king-size bed and down to the foyer to meet the rest of the press party for a trip to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It’s raining, windy and overcast, but the outing still proves to be a fascinating experience, as we are guided around the royal settlement of the Joseon dynasty, built in 1395. Next, there’s an opportunity to dry off and take in some more culinary culture for lunch at Tongin Market.

We then enjoy an afternoon of free time, spent mooching around shops and being snowed on (yes, the rain has turned to snow… talk about pathetic fallacy) before an early evening transfer back to the airport for a 11:40pm flight.

It’s smooth sailing through baggage and immigration, and I board the plane with a sense of triumph. I’ve survived self-constructed adversity and conquered Seoul like a deer in the Korean headlights. I’ve overcome four days in three time zones and on single-digit hours of sleep. I settle in for a relaxing flight. Next stop? Dubai.

12:50am: The plane is yet to move. It’s snowing heavily outside.

1:10am: The pilot informs us that the airport staff need to deice the wings to safely take off. He says it’ll take half an hour. He thanks us for our patience.

1:45am: The plane leaves the holding bay and sits motionless on the airport runway. The pilot notifies us that the airport staff didn’t do a good enough job of the deicing and it needs to be redone. He thanks us for our patience.

2:40am: The deicing continues to occur without too much avail. It’s snowing quite heavily.

3:20am: Radio silence strangles my hope.

3:45am: They’ve still not done a sufficient deicing job. We are asked to leave the plane.

Pandemonium breaks out.

The stewardesses – half walking, half running – lead a stampede of enraged passengers through the desolate airport, clueless as to where we are supposed to go. Eventually, as the sun rises, we are escorted to Arrivals. Delirious and devastated, I sit on my suitcase with my head in my hands.

Once again, I’m saved by the wonderful PR team. They manage to book me on a 11:25am direct flight to London. After changing terminals (an obtusely long way away) and making it through a heavy baggage queue, it’s time to tackle immigration.

The stern looking lady ominously gazing down at me through the glass picks up the phone to her left, says something in Korean, and another worker comes and ushers me off into a side room. It’s cantankerously bright, my mouth is drier than Coldplay’s recent run of albums, and the man who has taken my passport refuses to impart as to why I’ve been pulled in.

It’s a heart-in-the-mouth situation. Am I being detained? If so, why? They refuse to answer any questions. Time stops – a familiar sensation at this point.

Finally, I let out a sigh of relieved anguish as I’m given back my passport and sent on my way, still unsure why I was held. I shake off the frustration and wait around for my flight, which keeps being delayed. Not again, surely?

I’m aboard the plane at last. But once again, the aircraft doesn’t move. Air traffic issues apparently. At this point the exhaustion is too domineering to resist and my eyes droop towards an unconscious state.

I’m woken by a jolt. The Korean Air flight has left the ground, and ascends towards the tempestuous skyline. I shed a single tear of joy.

A 17 hour flight ensues, which leaves me plenty of time for reflection. Whilst my trip has been rife with unfortunate incidents, it’s been undeniably character building, and quite the story to spread around the office. A week of rigid dichotomy; of high class dining and luxury hotels to solemn travelling and two Pret sandwiches in a singular afternoon.

My experience in Korea – with K-Pop and Coca-Cola – was certainly intriguing. K-Pop is a genre and a cultural movement that, although doesn’t reinvent or challenge the popular music canon, has a seemingly limitless commercial appeal, an unparalleled outlook of fan-consumer relationships, and the support of business titans like Coke. It’s here to stay, whether in the depths of South-East Asia, or on our doorsteps as J.Y. Park explained.

I land at Heathrow, Uber home and collapse onto my bed. “Like Magic” rings in my ears. I think to myself – I could do with a K-Wave right about now.