Teaching Korean Religion with KPop Demon Hunters

The US-made animated film KPop Demon Hunters, released on Netflix in 2025, has broken viewership records and won milestone awards. Its breakout popularity has meant greater attention by American and global audiences to Korean culture and religion. This presents a challenge, but also an opportunity to use the current popularity of that film, and the interest it generates, to teach wider audiences about Korean religious culture. This paper explains and argues that KPop Demon Hunters can and should be used as an effective teaching tool. I explain ways in which Korean religion and culture are used in the film. Then I describe examples of the pedagogical application of KPop Demon Hunters, including an account of my public lecture on the History Behind KPop Demon Hunters given at the Ann Arbor District Library and incorporation into other lessons and works on Korean religion by myself and other scholars.