\u201cI remember, growing up, the struggle at Halloween to find a costume that felt \u2018me,\u2019\u201d Wang said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely refreshing and exciting to see the \u2018it\u2019 costume of the year, for people of all backgrounds, being a female Asian character.\u201d <\/p>\n
Due to the film\u2019s late summer release, big retailers have scrambled to mass produce Rumi\u2019s purple wig and gold-black jacket and the black hanbok made iconic by demon heartthrob Jinu.<\/p>\n For Asian Americans, the runaway success of \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d is another watershed moment for representation in pop culture, parents and experts say, as children no longer have to look primarily to Pixar or Disney princesses for costume inspiration. <\/p>\n But dissatisfied with the costumes she found online, Wang got a cropped jacket from Zara and refashioned it with gold stripes, then bought purple hair extensions and braided them herself \u2014 a hair tutorial video she uploaded on Instagram quickly went viral.<\/p>\n Nori loved the outfit for the demon-slaying leader of three-member K-pop girl band Huntrix so much she has worn it every weekend, Wang said. <\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter is definitely aware that the characters \u2018look more like her,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, Rumi is a brave, talented and fierce character who also shows vulnerability in a very relatable way.\u201d<\/p>\n Ella Pereyra, 11, says she was lucky enough to take representation to the next level — she\u2019s the actual model for Spirit Halloween\u2019s Rumi costume. <\/p>\n As a Filipina American girl from New Jersey, Pereyra said she feels proud to see herself on screen and in pop culture. She said she\u2019d already watched the film \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d about \u201ca billion times\u201d when she got the booking call.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel very grateful that they made a movie about people that looked like me,\u201d Pereyra said about playing Rumi. \u201cI feel lucky to play Rumi because not a lot of people can do that.<\/p>\n Young A Jung, an assistant professor at George Mason University who teaches modern Korean literature and pop culture, said one factor behind the mass appeal of \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d might be the complexity of its central characters, Rumi and Jinu.<\/p>\n \u201cGlobal teens and youth groups with complex everyday lives might no longer want to see clearcut Western-style heroes,\u201d Jung said, adding that the movie\u2019s exploration of the shame that K-pop idols feel, and their efforts to hide their pasts, is particularly resonant with fans. <\/p>\n \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d also presents a \u201cremarkably realistic portrayal of contemporary South Korean life and landscape\u201d interwoven with Korean folklore and mythology. <\/p>\n \u201cThe depiction of shamanism and the grim reaper is very concrete,\u201d she said, \u201cand the everyday life of eating ramen and kimbap is very correct.\u201d<\/p>\n The characters and their outfits are themselves rich with symbolism. <\/p>\n Jung pointed out the double meaning of \u201csaja,\u201d which signifies both \u201clion\u201d and \u201cdead people.\u201d In the movie, Jinu\u2019s black hanbok<\/em> and gat, <\/em>a wide-brimmed sheer hat, were historically the formal wear of Confucius scholars, she said. Later, the look became incorporated in folktales as the attire of grim reapers. Even the film\u2019s animal characters, the tiger and magpie, are inspired by Korean folk painting.<\/p>\n Since the movie draws so heavily from Korean traditions, marketing the characters\u2019 outfits simply as trendy Halloween costumes can risk diluting their cultural importance, said Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and culture critic. <\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t want these traditional garbs to become associated with \u2018demon wear,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to see traditional clothing be co-opted and diminished by Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n Some parents say their children were simply enthralled by the bright, pop aesthetic of the movie and too young to understand its layered cultural references. <\/p>\n Jessica Casta\u00f1eda, 27, began looking for a Rumi costume for her daughter, Kasey, almost as soon as they watched the movie together. <\/p>\n Casta\u00f1eda said Kasey, 5, quickly introduced her friends to the movie, and soon they all wanted to dress up as Rumi, Zoey, Jinu and Abby. Last month, Casta\u00f1eda planned a \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d themed birthday party for Kasey that featured Shin Ramyun and soda pops.<\/p>\n The soundtrack was what hooked her, Casta\u00f1eda said: \u201cThe songs are catchy, and she wanted Rumi\u2019s hair.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jean Wang, a Boston-based fashion blogger, was so excited when her daughter said she wanted to dress up as Rumi, the purple-haired protagonist of the Netflix blockbuster \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d that she decided to go all out with a DIY costume. Wang and her daughter Nori, 7, said they feel proud that such a popular <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Zoey,](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2025-07\/250709-Kpop-Demon-Hunters-vl-256p-ea5850.jpg\")
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