For 18-year-old La’Mmaria Walker, it was BTS’s “DNA”—the single’s exuberant mix of whistling and guitar strums—that made her a K-pop fan four years ago, when she was in the eighth grade. She didn’t understand the Korean lyrics, but it didn’t matter: “You feel their emotions,” Walker tells Vogue.“That’s what K-pop is for me.” In the years that followed, she became a “humongous” fan, delving into the output of South Korean girl groups BLACKPINK, Everglow, and Mamamoo. She even started learning Korean: “It’s hard, but I got it down to the bare minimum. I can introduce myself and be respectful.”
This past April, Walker and her mother drove 12 hours through the night from Auburn, Washington to Las Vegas for what felt like K-pop’s answer to American Idol: BTS’s super-agency, Hybe, hosted its first-ever global talent audition for all seven of its labels, including BTS’s Big Hit Music. Performers of all genders, aged 11 to 19, lined up in the golden tower of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino to audition in one of three categories: vocal, rap, or dance. According to Hybe, 13,000 people signed up online. The specter of BTS loomed large, as the Grammy-nominated group were soon due in Sin City for their four-night Permission to Dance concert series at Allegiant Stadium.
The U.S. open call “shows the world that this audition goes beyond Asia and K-pop as we search for potential stars from around the world,” Hybe America communications rep John Jernstad says, stressing an interest in diverse backgrounds.
Walker arrived an hour before her audition. “We went to Jack in the Box, got some coffee, and I got dressed in the parking lot,” she says. Her ’fit: lion-printed pants. Her audition song: Selena Gomez’s “Kill Em with Kindness.” She came in with low expectations. “It’s been my dream to be a performer,” Walker says, but “I’ve never sung in front of anyone since my fourth grade talent show.”
Also among those auditioning was Ivan Ly, 18, who flew from Tampa with his cousin. Ly has wanted to try out for a K-pop group since high school, but “I didn’t really know what my parents would think about it,” he says. They flew him to Las Vegas reluctantly. “They said that if I passed, I would have to go to Korea, and that would be very far away.” Ly sang Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”— “not too high, not too low, like, the sweet spot for me.”
At school, he was part of a K-pop cover club that sang at pep rallies; his most memorable performance was “Fire” by BTS, the very song that first hooked him on the genre. The stakes felt higher in the Las Vegas audition room. “I did stutter,” Ly confesses. “My mind was blanked out in the middle of the verse, but they let me try again. I think I wasn’t confident enough, so maybe I didn’t pass.”
In the end, neither Walker nor Ly made the cut (labels began reaching out to potential talent in May), but the audition felt bigger than them. It felt representative of K-pop’s global expansion. “You see everyone of all skin colors, all ethnicities rapping, dancing, singing,” Walker says. “It was amazing.”
