Abstract

This paper examines the K-pop virtual idol group PLAVE as a diagnostic case for understanding K-pop’s logics of authenticity, fandom labor, and visibility. Drawing on topic modeling of over 150,000 YouTube comments, supported by close readings of fan discourse and platform behavior, the study proceeds in three movements. It first shows how PLAVE’s avatar-based performances generate affective resonance despite ontological ambiguity, with fans recalibrating authenticity through emotional response, interpretive labor, and collective meaning-making—foregrounding sincerity over physical presence. It then examines the challenges this mode of authentication produces, from controversies over generative AI imagery to tensions around cultural legibility and global visibility. Finally, situating PLAVE within debates on techno-orientalism, post-human performance, and K-pop’s shifting global dynamics, the paper argues that PLAVE does not rupture K-pop’s logic but intensifies its core mechanisms. Their abstraction, moral entanglement, and narrative insulation reveal K-pop’s dependence on emotional legibility rather than bodily visibility. PLAVE thus serves not as a novelty, but as a crystallization of the industry’s present condition—where belief is no longer anchored in sight, but in shared affective structure.