Why CORTIS Doesn’t Feel Like K-Pop

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]The K-pop industry is not for the weak. Every move  is watched. Every word is scrutinized. For years, agencies have chased polish, debuting  groups that felt too perfect to be true.

[00:00:13]But last year, HYBE Entertainment debuted a boy  group that didn't really feel like idols at all.

[00:00:19]And somehow, that's exactly why they  blew up. Let's talk about CORTIS.

[00:00:28]Gen Z grew up in the peak influencer era,  an era filled with perfectly curated feeds, filtered photos, celebrities who seemed to exist  in a different dimension. But after years of consuming content that felt curated, something  shifted. A recent study found that 71% of Gen Z users express fatigue with curated content and  68% state that they've reduced the time they spend on platforms that they perceive as inauthentic.  And we've been seeing this happen in real time.

[00:01:02]Now creators are starting to deinfluence you.  People are posting more casually on Instagram.

[00:01:09]BeReal grew from 10,000 daily active users  to over 20 million in just a year and a half.

[00:01:15]And Mariam Webster even named  Authentic its 2023 word of the year.

[00:01:21]Gen Z is craving authenticity. The shift is real  and it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, which puts the K-pop industry, built  almost entirely on selling perfection, in an uncomfortable position. But it also creates  a huge opportunity for a group like CORTIS.

[00:01:41]With the resources to study cultural landscapes  and audience behavior, if Gen Z was shifting towards authenticity, HYBE saw it. But seeing  the shift is the easy part. The harder problem is this: you cannot manufacture authenticity. Gen  Z has spent literally their entire lives online.

[00:02:02]So, they know their way around and can  tell if something is being faked. So, when it came time for HYBE to debut their  first boy group under Big Hit in 6 years, they knew they couldn't just market them as  authentic. They actually had to build a group that was authentic. And they started by testing  the waters with their global girl group, KATSEYE.

[00:02:23]KATSEYE debuted a year before CORTIS. And now  with KATSEYE almost two years into their career, they've become known as one of the most authentic  and raw girl groups out there. Before them, it wasn't really heard of in the K-pop industry  to let their idols curse, talk about tattoos, or even openly date. But KATSEYE  does all of the above and more.

[00:02:51]The funny thing is that allowing KATSEYE to do  such things didn't really seem like the plan.

[00:02:56]KATSEYE was probably going to follow the  same rules that most other idol groups did.

[00:03:01]But everything changed after one live stream in  2024. A clip went viral of the members cursing before the start of a live stream because they  didn't know that the cameras were already rolling.

[00:03:24]The video went viral almost immediately and the  response overwhelmingly positive. Fans fell for KATSEYE in that moment. Not because of  a perfectly executed debut stage, but because they saw who these girls  actually were. HYBE took note and rather than scrambling to do some damage  control, they leaned into it. By the following year, their fan base had grown immensely. The  audience wasn't just responding to better music.

[00:03:52]They were responding to a group that truly felt  real. So with CORTIS, HYBE didn't have to guess.

[00:04:00]Based on the positive reaction to KATSEYE's  chaotic and unfiltered personalities, they now knew that audiences were more likely  to connect with idols that felt more authentic, especially Gen Z audiences. So Hive decided  to chase authenticity from the very beginning with CORTIS and they managed to do this using  three main strategies. First, they made sure that CORTIS would not be a traditional idol  group. Instead, CORTIS was announced as a next generation creator crew. According to HYBE,  CORTIS is closer to a collaborative workshop with all five members contributing to writing,  production, choreography, and visual direction.

[00:04:43]HYBE also recruited members who had already  proven themselves as creatively capable.

[00:04:49]Martin had already produced multiple hit songs  for other artists, including Magnetic by ILLIT.

[00:04:55]James had already choreographed other artists  dances, including Deja Vu by TXT. From writing and producing their own songs to creating their  own choreography to even shooting some of their own music videos, all members of CORTIS have a  part in how they show themselves to the world.

[00:05:12]And that passion resonates as authenticity to  many fans. Another strategy that HYBE uses to promote authenticity is by letting the CORTIS  members weigh in on their online and social media presence. All members are part of Gen  Z with the oldest member James born in 2005 and the youngest member Keonho born in 2009.  Logically, the execs at HYBE are probably not super tapped into what is currently trending among  Gen Z audiences. At most, they can look at the data and see what Gen Z audiences are liking and  engaging with. But there's really no better way for HYBE to reach Gen Z than leaning on their own  Gen Z boy group members. Although it's impossible that every single post is planned by the CORTIS  members, it's clear that their input is taken into account and it's definitely paid off. The CORTIS  Tik Tok account has one of the highest engagement rates of all active K-pop group accounts  with each post averaging a few million views.

[00:06:16]And their YouTube also has a Gen Z vibe to it with  the YouTube video titles seemingly written by the members themselves. Lastly, CORTIS is designed  to feel undesigned. Every single aspect of CORTIS gives off the vibe that they're just passionate  about music and they want to show it to the world.

[00:06:36]Nothing is overly curated. Videos are  intentionally filmed in a loose and casual manner, often showing the real bond between the CORTIS  members. Even the pacing of their videos feels much closer to creator content than traditional  idol media. And that distinction matters a lot.

[00:06:55]Traditional K-pop idol culture was built  around perfection. As I mentioned before, everything from the styling to the media training  to the camera angles, they were all designed to create distance between idols and audiences.  But CORTIS operates in the opposite direction.

[00:07:13]Instead of emphasizing perfection, they  emphasize presence. The goal is no longer to feel untouchable. It's to feel real. Less than  a year into their career, CORTIS has already crossed 10 million monthly Spotify listeners,  a number comparable to major acts like TXT, aespa, and LE SSERAFIM. Their debut EP, Color  Outside the Lines, surpassed 400 million Spotify streams within just 5 months of release. But  arguably the clearest sign of CORTIS' explosion is their online presence. In only seven months, the  group surpassed 10 million followers on Tik Tok, becoming the only K-pop boy group debuting within  the last five years to hit that milestone that quickly. And what's interesting is that their  popularity does not feel confined to one market, which is often what happens when a group debuts.  Their audience is spread globally across the US, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil,  and beyond. Which makes sense for a group whose entire identity was built around internet  culture in the first place. But I guess this also raises a bigger question. If authenticity becomes  something engineered by a billion dollar company, then at what point does it stop being authentic at  all? Because even if CORTIS feels more real than most idol groups, that feeling is still being  carefully curated behind the scenes. And maybe that's the future of K-pop. Not idols built around  perfection, but idols built around perceived authenticity. Where the industry goes from here  is still unclear, but for now, CORTIS may be the clearest example yet, that breaking traditional  idol norms isn't a risk anymore. It's a strategy.