Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami walked the Oscars red carpet on Sunday night already knowing they were making history. The question was just how much history they would end up making before the night was over.
The three singers, who voice the fictional K-pop group Huntrix in Netflix's "KPop Demon Hunters," were set to perform "Golden" live at the 98th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It marked the first time a K-pop song had ever been performed live on the Oscar stage. The performance opened with a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentation and dance before moving into the full track, giving one of the most globally recognised award ceremonies a sound it had never heard before.
"Golden" was already having quite a year before the Oscars. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and charted in more than 30 countries, won a Grammy and a Golden Globe, and became the first K-pop song to receive an Academy Award nomination. Co-written by Ejae, the track carries her fingerprints throughout — an emotional, layered pop song built around the kind of chorus that lodges itself in your head for days.
Rei Ami, the South Korean singer-actress in the trio, brought the performance a visual presence that fans and fashion watchers noted before she even got on stage. Her red carpet appearance drew significant attention, and her involvement in the project has been closely followed by Korean audiences since the film first came out.
Audrey Nuna, the American Korean artist who rounds out the trio, has spoken in previous interviews about what it meant to be part of a project that centres on K-pop culture at this scale. For all three, the Oscars performance was the kind of moment that does not come around twice.
"KPop Demon Hunters" had already won Best Animated Feature earlier in the ceremony, meaning the film entered the "Golden" performance with one Oscar already secured and a second potentially on the way. The film has surpassed 500 million views on Netflix, the first movie on the platform to reach that milestone, and its soundtrack has driven streaming numbers that few animated films ever touch.
For Korean entertainment, a live K-pop performance at the Academy Awards is the kind of milestone that feels both earned and overdue. The genre has spent years building a global audience one fan at a time. Sunday night, it got the Dolby Theatre.