CUTIE STREET” proves the destructive power of “Harajuku Kawaii” in Korea.

I didn’t understand why K-pop idols sang in Japan with lyrics changed to Japanese, but now I do, thanks to the cute Japanese kids singing in Korean.

In late March, the Japanese idol group “CUTIE STREET” appeared on the popular Korean music program “M COUNTDOWN. They performed a Korean version of their hit song “Can’t I Just Be Cute? The comments section of the video of the girls performing the Korean version of their hit song “Can’t We Just Be Cute?

The next day, the number of streaming videos surged to three times that of the previous day, and their solo concert in Seoul at the end of March was immediately sold out, with an encore performance scheduled for July.

A great sense of “adaptation

Why has the “Harajuku Kawaii” (cute in Harajuku) that is the selling point of “Cutie Street” been so deeply accepted by the young people of Korea, the world’s premier entertainment market?

In order to decipher the phenomenon of Japanese culture crossing oceans and melting even online conflicts, we interviewed the “Tozure Kenkyujo,” which independently analyzed approximately 8,000 multilingual YouTube comments (as of March 28, ’26).

What can be read most clearly from their YouTube comments section is the surprise and welcome of Korean speakers to their choice of singing language. Recently, K-pop songs have been increasingly dominated by English, but we received more than 1,000 “likes” each, with comments such as “more Korean lyrics than Korean idols” and “more Korean than BTS”. and “More Korean lyrics than Korean idols” and “More Korean than BTS.

What further impressed the local fans was the sense of “adaptation” that went beyond mere literal translation.

For example, the words and names of people from the Warring States period in the lyrics are unfamiliar to Koreans, so they were boldly replaced with “Ancient Greek Mythology: Aphrodite Too,” and the lyrics, which include the names of places in Tokyo, were translated into Japanese. The lyrics with names of places in Tokyo were retranslated into ‘Kyusuto (CUTIE STREET) entering Korea.

This consideration of the cultural and geographical background of the song was praised as “not a literal translation, but an adaptation to fit the situation,” and received more than 4,400 likes. The translation of the song has received great acclaim, with more than 4,400 “Likes!

On the other hand, the phrase “Is it not enough to be cute? is left in Japanese. Interestingly, Korean fans also recognized the phrase in advance, writing it in Hangul as “카와이다케쟈다메데스카? (Kawaii dake ja dame desuka?)” in Korean. (Kawaii dake jada desuka?) in Hangul, treating it as a symbolic keyword.

The boundary design is a combination of meticulous localization that is attuned to the culture of the target audience, and keeping the core of the message in the original language. This was the primary reason for winning the hearts of local fans. So, how have the visuals and concept been received?

We can see the contrast with the Korean idol market. Comments such as, “It’s refreshing to see a girl who only competes on the basis of pure cuteness, which is something you don’t see in Korea. The most popular comment in Korean was “It looks like a cute cupcake dancing.

Interestingly, despite the existence of a Korean word for “cute,” there were 134 comments that praised the Japanese word “kawaii,” which is pronounced “카와이” in Korean. The data suggests that ‘kawaii’ is more than just a translation of an adjective, and that it is indeed accepted by Korean fans as a unique style originating in Japan.

Popular Member Makes a “Comeback

This time, Japanese fans were most excited by the presence of a popular member, Haruka Sakuraba (20), known as “Parutan. She had participated in the Japanese version of “PRODUCE 101 THE GIRLS (a.k.a. Nippu),” a survival audition program that originated in Korea, in the past, but was unfortunately eliminated from the competition.

The “debutantes” who survive the show get a ticket to the Korean stage, but she made it on her own to the Korean music show stage with her own unique “Harajuku Kawaii” group that became a big hit in Japan.

The drama was so moving that there were more than 7,300 comments in Japanese saying, “I never thought that Parutan would go this route to a Korean music show! The Japanese comment, “I never thought that Parutan would take this route to a Korean music show! The Japanese comment, “I never thought that Parutan would go through this route to be on stage in a Korean music show!

When it comes to the narrative context of “coming back from losing an audition program,” out of the 29 comments that included the relevant words, 28 of them were from Japanese speakers. In other words, the character is loved by both Koreans and Japanese, but the depth of the story is completed within Japan.

Lastly, the Tsudzuki Laboratory pointed out a very contemporary phenomenon in the comments section: the de facto co-opting of Japanese and Korean fans.

At the intersection of Japanese and Korean entertainment, anti-commentary comparing cultural superiority and inferiority is apt to occur. This time, too, we found users repeatedly posting negative comments such as “J-POP is 30 years ahead of Korea’s level.

However, the reaction of fans to such noise was clearly different from before.

Of the replies we analyzed, 33.7% (591 replies) were “cross-border replies,” in which a Japanese comment was replied to in Korean and vice versa.

In the threads where anti-comments were posted, Korean speakers logically countered with “Stop it, it’s embarrassing” and “You don’t understand the difference in concept,” to which Japanese users joined in with “How many times are you making the same comment?

Fans from both Japan and Korea replied defensively in their respective languages, and the anti-popularity was pincer-punched. If we look at it as an external and structural phenomenon, we can call it a ‘de facto joint struggle.

It is neither an imitation of K-pop nor Galapagos. The “Harajuku Kawaii” attraction demonstrated by “Cutie Street” may present a new form of solidarity between Japanese and Korean entertainment, easily transcending language and border barriers.