The ‘C’ in culture and crisis planning 

Justin Ángel Knighten and Marcus T Coleman Jr argue that K-Pop’s global rise reveals how intentional design and cultural strategy can reshape crisis planning


Image: Freepik

Oh, I’m done hidin’ now I’m shinin’  
Like I’m born to be 
Oh, our time, no fears, no lies 
That’s who we’re born to be 
You know we’re gonna be, gonna be golden. 

This is the hit song playing in Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, one of the most watched films in the streamer's history at over 500 million views. The title track recently won the Oscar for Best Original Song. This watershed moment for K-Pop is by design, grounded in culture so completely that the world had no choice but to embrace it.

While K-Pop performers get the glory, unseen contributors – the people behind the lighting, staging, song choices, album releases, and rehearsals – play vital roles. There is a similar pattern across crisis planning: with the planners working middle roles, often with limited resources and providing strategies and plans through internal execution, while presenting organisations as the ‘stars’ in front of audiences. 
Yet, K-pop’s global rise was not accidental. Jo Hyun-Rae, president of the Korea Creative Content Agency, explained how the culture reaches audiences worldwide: “Through strategic investments and policies, the government and private sector created a thriving ecosystem for innovation and global reach.” 

Korea has had K-Pop since the 1990s, but the genre only achieved its potential after receiving deliberate, sustained support. Crisis planners deserve the same investment, and serious governments should make that bet on resilience. This evolution offers three lessons for many organisations, particularly for crisis planning teams within those organisations. 

Mainstream is a myth

Since the dawn of K-pop’s creation, the industry doesn’t attempt to lead with general mass appeal; rather, it disappears into the specific cultural identity of the audience it wants to reach. 

For instance, the leading boy group, BTS, didn’t go global by releasing songs in english to satisfy an American audience, but their visual and written storytelling through their songs drew heavily on themes of youth pressure, identity, mental health, and self-worth. This allowed them to find communities whose values already resonated with theirs by simply being themselves. 

Crisis planners face the same choice every time they design a campaign, a tabletop exercise, or a community engagement strategy. Top-down, one-size-fits-all planning and messaging consistently underperforms focused, community-informed planning. Research from public health and communication frameworks continues to prove it.

Taking this lesson, recently, our team co-created a preparedness campaign with, for and by Asian American, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian communities at FEMA. Instead of producing a national public service announcement, we collaborated with organisations, including the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans – ones who had established years of community trust, making the campaign credible and, ultimately, effective. Building real understanding within a specific community before asking that community to act is what makes for effective crisis planning.

The language of the people

Most K-Pop is in Korean but reaches hundreds of millions who don't speak it. If we were to take BTS as an example, yet again, with most of their catalogue in Korean, they were able to garner millions of individuals around the world – through a tactic that isn’t a secret: shared visual vocabulary, emotional resonance, and values. When they released ‘Dynamite’ in English, what they affirmed was that singing in another language did not replace their identity but instead extended it, offering English-speaking audiences a space to connect and belong in their own language.

Few practitioners understand this better than Sherry Capers and Liana Aguilar of Miami-Dade County’s Office of Emergency Management, USA. The county’s diverse languages and cultures require an emergency system that reaches everyone, similar to places such as London, UK; New Delhi, India; and Seoul, South Korea. 

Working with Sherry’s and Liana’s teams, we found that planning for language accessibility involves more than translation; it’s about understanding community needs, communication preferences, and trusted messengers. That work contributed to Miami-Dade Communities Organised to Respond to Emergencies, a neighbourhood-level infrastructure built on exactly that principle: meet each community in the language it actually uses through the voices it already trusts. 

Culture is thicker than language

K-Pop sees culture as a means to create belonging through gatherings and celebrations. The industry incorporates cultural roots into every aspect, from concerts to album visuals, rather than treating them as an afterthought. 

This is reflected in effective planning practices as well, especially in response to a crisis. When José Andrés arrived in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, he didn’t show up with a standard relief menu. He cooked black beans the way Haitians eat them, guided by the community itself. 

Crisis planners face a clear lesson: when individuals feel acknowledged and supported during a crisis, they tend to recover more quickly. This principle should be integral to disaster plans, from communication strategies to inventory decisions.

Taking these lessons from K-Pop, crisis planning must build trust within communities, one relationship at a time. Not through hype or scale before substance, but through shared identity, language, and culture that communicate: we see you, we know you, and this was built with you.

The playlist doesn’t end here. Enjoy the beats, serve your community, and go be golden.

Justin Ángel Knighten is a crisis management strategist and practitioner with experience across public health, emergency management, and community resilience and a Sustainable Future Fellow at the George Washington University Alliance for a Sustainable Future, USA.

Marcus T Coleman Jr is Vice President of Community Resilience Strategy at United Way Worldwide, USA, and a Global Ambassador of Harvard University's National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, USA.