Every so often, traffic spikes for one of the stories on Boundary Stones, a website produced by WETA, Washington, D.C.’s primary PBS TV station. The site specializes in uncovering and amplifying historical nuggets and kernels from the region.
Interest in an article about Korean students at Howard University, for example, has soared recently, said Mark Jones, WETA’s director of digital projects. The article, “Before K-pop there was… the Arirang? The First Korean Students at Howard University,” didn’t make much noise when it published in 2020, he said. An intern, Karis Lee, had pitched the little-known story about the international students’ late-19th-century arrival to one of the nation’s most prominent HBCU’s.
Recently, a colleague who noticed increased traffic asked if the article was being put on the website in a prominent place.
It was not. Instead, the global powerhouse K-pop group BTS, in the buildup to its long-awaited return, had released an animated short. The clip dove into the history of “Arirang,” the title of a Korean folk song that BTS chose as the name of its sixth studio album. Nearly six million people have watched the video since its release, and many of those searching for more information found the Boundary Stones story.
“I don’t think we were necessarily on K-pop fans’ radar before this,” Jones said.
The video, shared on the official BTS YouTube channel, begins by saying it was inspired by an 1896 report from The Washington Post headlined, “Seven Koreans at Howard,” with the caveat that the production is a “modern reimagining” and may “deviate from historical events.”
A vintage rendition of “Arirang” plays as the students sail across the Pacific and perform at Howard University. Suddenly, the scene then shifts to a modern concert.
Lee’s article in Boundary Stones resurfaced The Washington Post’s reporting of 130 years ago. She noted that several Korean students had fled a school in Japan to seek an American education. Howard University, founded only about 30 years earlier with a primary mission to advance the educations of newly enfranchised Black people, accepted the students.
The historian Rayford W. Logan also documented the arrival in the 1969 book “Howard University: the First Hundred Years,” writing that “the Korean Minister personally requested at the meeting of the Executive Committee, that rooms be provided” for the young Korean students.
The 1896 Washington Post article said, “All are sons of noble families, but do not understand a word of English — will be kept at expense of the Minister from Korea.” Their story was “somewhat wild and romantic” by the newspaper.
It was also reported that they “were surrounded by a dozen persuasive damsels, who begged them to sing.”
The students became local sensations for their musical talent and performed for onlookers at social gatherings. The ethnologist Alice C. Fletcher, known for extensively studying Native American cultures, invited three of the students to her home to produce what many consider the first recording of “Arirang.”
The song is an unofficial anthem of the Koreas — blending sorrow and hope. The 1896 recording is preserved at the Library of Congress, which identifies the students as Ahn Jeong-sik, Lee Hee-Cheol and Son Rong.
“That’s always been Howard from the beginning,” said Benjamin Talton, the executive director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and a professor in the history department. “It was founded as a multiracial, multi-coeducational university.”
Talton noted that school records show that nine students arrived from Seoul over the course of a few years. Most stayed about a year, he added.
BTS’s video contained a disclaimer that in part read, The depiction “may differ from reality and is unrelated to any evaluation or interpretation of historical events or figures.” For many at Howard, the disclaimer was sorely needed. The video features the singers performing in front of the school’s crown jewel, Founders Library. But the library was completed in 1939, long after the Korean students had departed.
It also alarmed some that most of the animated people watching the singers were not people of color.
Reinah McNeil, a founding member of Howard’s K-pop dance team, 1 of a Kind, said that was a significant oversight. K-pop is deeply rooted in Black culture, extracting from genres like hip-hop, R&B and pop.
“The story itself shows the importance of why HBCU’s exist in the first place,” McNeil said.
“It was an important story to highlight,” McNeil added. “It was unfortunate how they chose to highlight it by not depicting the Howard student body as a predominantly Black school and not really mentioning Howard University by name.”
Jones, of WETA, said he was surprised when the article’s views increased, as the trailer dropped. Others have documented the history, he added, but most people are not going to the Library of Congress website to find the original recording.
“I’d like to think that we have a role in putting local history stories out there and to make it possible for these connections to be made,” he said.
Jonathan Abrams is a Times reporter who writes about the intersections of sports and culture and the changing cultural scenes in the South.
The post BTS Fans Revisit Howard University History From 1896 appeared first on New York Times.
