The K-pop-ification of the Divine: Affective Fandom and Colonial Visuality in the “Jesus Birthday Cafe”

This paper argues that the “Jesus Birthday Cafe” (Jesus Saeng-ca), organized by Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, refashions Christian devotion through the affective and participatory grammar of K-pop fandom. Modeled on the K-pop “Idol Birthday Cafe,” the event transforms Christmas into an Instagrammable pop-up devotional space structured around Jesus photo cards, a photo zone, and limited-edition goods. These material forms make faith tangible, emotionally resonant, and culturally legible for a digital-native generation. Yet they also mediate encounter with the divine through commodified signs shaped by a white, Eurocentric, male image of Jesus. The paper contends that the Jesus Birthday Cafe does more than popularize Christianity; it reveals how evangelical belonging is increasingly produced through consumer aesthetics, affective participation, and visual mediation, while simultaneously reproducing colonial Christian visuality. In doing so, it exposes tensions among accessibility, devotion, commodification, and postcolonial critique in contemporary South Korean evangelical culture and practice today.