The Korean pop (K-pop) industry had never seen anything like this before. Emerging from behind blood-stained curtains to the eerie sound of traditional Asian instruments was not the sweet-faced singer Kim Yerim that we had known — it was Lim Kim. Those who witnessed this shocking 180-degree transformation in Lim Kim’s music video “Yellow” claimed that she had “come back from hell.” After four years of absence from the K-pop scene, Lim Kim came back an entirely new person, on a mission to break the chains of racial and sexual discrimination.

Lim Kim is a South Korean solo artist. A winner from the audition program “Superstar K3,” she first entered the K-pop scene as Kim Ye rim, a member of the duo Togeworl under MYSTIC Entertainment. Despite earning almost instant fame through several hit songs, Lim Kim quit the label and mysteriously disappeared from the K-pop scene in 2016, leading many to speculate that she had retired from the music industry. In 2019, she finally returned to the public eye, not as Kim Ye rim, but as the artist Lim Kim, with her independently produced single Sal-ki.

Lim Kim walked out of her four-year absence almost unrecognizable. Her soft, laid-back singing turned into electronic hip-hop accompanied by aggressive rapping, and the short skirts and long wavy hair into metal chains and crowns. Abandoning all of K-pop’s favorite clichés, she started singing about things that were quite unheard of in the genre: her identity as an Asian woman, sexual discrimination, and orientalism.

One of the first things listeners notice about Lim Kim’s music is her expression of anger. Mainstream K-pop deals with lots of emotions: love, desire, loneliness – but pure rage is not one of them. In an interview with The Korea Times, Lim Kim explained that the motivation behind her album Generasian came from the frustration she experienced as a female Asian immigrant in the United States (U.S.) and as a female artist in the K-pop industry. Most of her new music indeed deals with breaking the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman and overcoming “domes of male dominance,” as she sings in her hit single Yellow.

This unique message of Lim Kim’s is amplified by her experimental music style, which combines genres of electronic, hip hop, experimental, Korean folk music and dance. This experimentality and boldness of Lim Kim’s music is a perfect embodiment of the message in her music. In Sal-Ki and Yellow, she intentionally mixes up the sounds of traditional instruments as well as visual elements from various Asian cultures. By creating this unique, almost incongruent sound that does not represent any culture in particular, she condemns orientalism and questions the true definition of Asia.

K-pop has become a global sensation within the past several years, with new artists and songs being produced by the day. As is the case with most industries on the brink of oversaturation, everyone wishes to create something new; but most are too afraid to experiment or venture beyond what is considered safe. In such an environment, Lim Kim’s defiance of the cookie-cutter practices of mainstream K-pop shines even brighter. Her music has brought K-pop not only some much-needed originality, but also a promising future for the industry.