Scrolling through Twitter for information about the band’s solo projects, she saw a reply that said “Listen to Icy by Itzy”.

Intrigued, she clicked on the link. It changed her life.

“I’d never listened to K-Pop before that point but I immediately became a fan,” she says.

“And now Itzy is the reason I have my job.”

Today, Clare is the marketing and social media manager for K-Stars, the UK’s first and biggest shop devoted to Korean pop music.

Based in Manchester, it started as a small business in Manchester’s Affleck’s Palace in 2019.

“You’d order things by PayPal, and then the CEO would pack them up by himself and ship everything out,” Clare recalls.

Now it’s a two-storey emporium, based on Deansgate, with a staff of more than 20 dedicated K-Pop enthusiasts.

It’s a sign of how the genre has exploded in the UK, even though radio and television has largely shunned all but the biggest acts, like BTS, aespa and Blackpink.

“It’s still kind of a niche – but it’s not a small niche,” says Clare. “In my head I’m the only Itzy fan, but when I went to see them in concert, it was sold out.

“I was like, ‘Wow, where have all you people been hiding?'”

In fact, the UK is now among the top 10 countries that follow K-Pop on Spotify, with the boyband Ateez placing two records in the top five of the UK album charts last year.

This summer, Blackpink will play two nights at Wembley Stadium, with Stray Kids pulling off the same feat in Tottenham.

Meanwhile, Twickenham Stadium will say “anyong haseyo” to one of K-pop’s longest-running festivals.

Established in 2008, the SM Town Live festival is a showcase for artists signed to the SM Entertainment Label, one of the industry’s key players.

To celebrate the company’s 30th anniversary, they’re transplanting the event from Seoul to Middlesex.

“It’s essentially a multi-day festival all in one, because you’ve got so many artists all at the same venue, jam packed into the space of three or four hours,” says Reese Carter, of boyband Dear Alice, who’ll be among the performers in Twickenham.

“It’s non-stop. You’ve got to prep yourself, because you’ll definitely want to dance.”

“It’s very down to earth but it goes straight to your heart,” adds Ten from K-Pop group WayV.

SM holds a unique place in Korea’s musical history. Founded in 1995 by Lee Soo-man, it is widely credited with establishing the K-Pop template.

It was the first company to introduce the trainee system, where young talent goes through intensive training that lasts months, or even years, before making their “debut”.

And it dominated what’s known as the “first generation” of K-Pop idols, with bands like H.O.T. and S.E.S.

The Twickenham show will pay tribute to that three-decade journey, with a line-up that includes everyone from Red Velvet, EXO and Girl’s Generation to current chart-toppers like aespa, Riize and all of the sub-units of boyband NCT – which boasts more than 20 members.

“That’s very rare,” says Ten, one of the group’s most recognisable (and chatty) stars.

“The last time we had an NCT concert as a whole was two years ago. It’s so difficult to schedule every group to be in the same spot at the same time.”

But that’s not all. The concert will also feature what’s been billed as “a group of promising trainees”, known for now as SMTR25 – showcasing the future of the label.

“Performing alongside the senior artists we’ve admired since our trainee days, as well as our talented junior artists, makes this an incredibly meaningful experience for us,” said aespa in an email to the BBC.

The hope is that shows like this will open a few doors – because, for all the strides K-Pop has made in the last couple of years, bands have consistently prioritised America over Europe.

It’s a logical step. The US is the world’s biggest music market, so it offers more opportunities for touring and merchandise sales, while an MTV Award performance or a concert for NPR’s Tiny Desk series travels further internationally than an appearance at the Brit Awards.

“The situation here isn’t as good as what the American industry gets,” acknowledges Amber Clare.

“Every single K-Pop group, if they announce a world tour, America will always be on the map – but European countries are always left wondering if they’re going to be included or not.”

Things are changing, though.

In a crowded market, labels are increasingly turning their attention to the UK – where the anglophone media has international reach, and there’s a baked-in affection for boy and girl groups like Take That, Spice Girls, Girls Aloud and Little Mix.

To make inroads, bands have teamed up with some of Britain’s biggest artists.

Aespa’s 2023 single Better Things was co-written by Raye, while Le Sserafim collaborated with PinkPantheress on club anthem Crazy and with Jungle on their latest song, Come Over.

Last year, SM went one further – creating a British boyband and putting them through the K-Pop machinery.

That group was Dear Alice, whose gruelling traineeship was documented in BBC series Made In Korea.

Having survived the process, the five-piece finally premiered their debut single, Ariana, at a massive SM Town concert in Seoul in January.

“These shows are timed down to the second,” says singer Blaise Noon. “When we got our time to go on stage, it was literally like, 8:30 and 48 seconds. It just shows how so well thought out is.”

Bringing the production to London is evidence that SM has its sights trained on the UK, he confirms.

“In the UK, we produce some really amazing boy groups, so I think we have that connection in the culture. So I think they definitely want to hit it. I can see it getting bigger and bigger every day.”

Ten, who releases a new solo album, Stunner, next week, says he’s already experienced the devotion of UK fans.

When his group WayV last visited England in 2023, “we were surprised that people could sing along to our songs, because we sing in Chinese”, he says.

“This opportunity with SM Town, I feel like it’s going to open a bigger market for K-Pop in the UK.

“I hope so, because I’d like to come and perform my solo stuff to my UK fans too.”

The opportunity is there.

Nine of the 10 best-selling albums in the world last year were by South Korean artists, illustrating the music’s broad appeal – but none of those records charted in the UK’s Top 50.

Lack of radio exposure is one factor – but listeners can also be put off by clunky English lyrics or the sudden-but-deliberate stylistic shifts that characterise K-Pop.

If you’re willing to dig into the genre, though, you can find some of the most audacious and indelible hooks music has to offer.

One by-product of K-pop’s (relative) obscurity is the bond it creates among fans. There’s a sense of belonging that comes from discovering and nurturing your “bias”, outside the glare of the mainstream.

It’s a relationship bands foster by a fire hose stream of social media content, where dance challenges, video diaries and photoshoots are posted daily.

Dear Alice experienced the impact of that effort at a UK meet-and-greet last weekend.

“It felt like we were hanging out with a bunch of our mates,” says Dexter Greenwood.

“They were just cool people,” adds James Sharp. “We’re starting to recognise faces and remember people on this journey – and I think there’s going to be more and more.”

By the time they play Twickenham in June, the group promise to have more new music to showcase.

In the meantime, though, they want to introduce their labelmates to some of the UK’s finer customs.

“We’ve got to order a bunch of Greggs for the SM family,” says Noon.

“A whole banquet of sausage rolls.”

The court said the band, which had renamed themselves NJZ and began organising their own appearances, must not conduct any independent activities – from making music to signing advertising deals.

Earlier last year, NewJeans said that they were leaving Ador, after accusing them of mistreatment. Ador subsequently sued to have NewJeans’ contracts upheld and, after accusing the group of trying to sign independent deals without its approval, filed an injunction against them in January.

The group has said that they will challenge Friday’s decision.

The court’s ruling casts some uncertainty around the release of the group’s new song, slated for Sunday.

It also means they will now face difficulty re-debuting under their new name, NJZ, without facing severe financial penalties for breach of contract.

NewJeans and Ador have been embroiled in a dramatic dispute since August 2024, when Hybe, the parent company of Ador, allegedly forced out NewJeans’ mentor, Min Hee-Jin.

The band issued an ultimatum demanding that Min should be restored – and, when Hybe refused, went public with a number of complaints against the label, including the claim it had deliberately undermined their careers.

One of the group’s members, Hanni, also alleged that she suffered workplace harassment while working with the label.

In a press conference in November, NewJeans announced their departure from the company, saying Hybe and Ador had lost the right to represent them as artists.

On Friday, the Seoul court ruled that NewJeans’ claims did not “sufficiently prove that Ador violated their significant duty as part of their contract”, adding that the music label had upheld “most of its duty including payment”.

“If [NewJeans] unilaterally terminate the contract, Ador would suffer greatly. And if [NewJeans] begins activity under a new name, it could severely damage not only the brand of NewJeans but the reputation of Ador,” the court’s statement reads.

The group says they respect the ruling but has argued that they did not have sufficient opportunity to fully present their case to the court.

“We plan to challenge today’s decision… during which we will raise additional legal issues and submit further supporting evidence,” they responded in a statement just hours after the ruling.

“Regardless… we can no longer remain with a management that has disrespected our identities and undermined our achievements.”

A lawsuit regarding the validity of the two parties’ contract termination is still underway.

The five band members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – have over the past few months continued to assert their independence, creating a new Instagram account under the name “jeanzforfree”.

They have also said they would fight to keep their name, and their career, and would remain “NewJeans at heart” even if they lost the fight against Ador.

NewJeans were considered one of the brightest new bands in K-Pop, thanks to a playful blend of 1990s R&B and sugar-coated pop melodies.

In 2023, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world. Last year, they picked up a nomination for best group at the MTV Awards.

Besides begging, he ran errands for soldiers and sold foraged mushrooms. Sometimes he stole food out of sheer hunger: once he snatched a lunchbox that sat unattended at an underground station. Inside was a scoop of spoiled rice.

This was just “part of everyday life” for many North Koreans, he says, adding that his own life was so consumed with survival that it left little room for dreams.

But dream he did. Later on this year, the 25-year-old will debut in the US as a member of a K-pop boy band.

1Verse (pronounced “universe”) is made up of five members: Hyuk, Seok who is also from North Korea, Aito from Japan, and Asian Americans Kenny and Nathan – all prefer to go by their first names. They are set to make history as the first K-pop boy band to debut with North Korean defectors.

Hyuk was born in a seaside village in Kyongsong county and raised by his father and grandmother, after his parents broke up when he was just four.

Later, his mother fled the North to settle in the South and reached out to him in an attempt to get him to join her. But he refused as he was close to his father and did not want to leave him.

Hyuk says his family was “not extremely poor” to begin with, but the situation quickly deteriorated after his parents separated. His father didn’t want to work and his grandmother was too old, so Hyuk was left to his own devices to survive.

Eventually, his father persuaded him to join his mother, and in 2013 Hyuk escaped from North Korea.

It took months for him to arrive in the South, after going through several countries. He has chosen not to reveal specifics of the route, as he fears putting other future defectors at risk.

Once in the South, he lived with his mother for just a year, before moving to a boarding school with his mum’s financial support. However, he struggled to cope with South Korea’s fiercely competitive education system, as Hyuk had barely finished primary school before his defection.

Writing was the one thing he found solace in, he says.

He started with short poems alluding to his past life in North Korea. “I couldn’t openly share what I’d been through, but I still wanted to make a record of it.”

At first, Hyuk believed his story couldn’t be understood by others, but was encouraged by friends and teachers in his school’s music club – and eventually found his passion in rap.

Growing up, music had been a luxury, let alone K-pop which was something he had barely heard of. But now, he channelled his thoughts of feeling lonely and of missing his father into music, referring to himself as “the loneliest of the loners” – a line in Ordinary Person, a rap song he composed as a part of a pre-debut project.

Hyuk graduated from high school aged 20. Afterwards, he worked part-time at restaurants and factories to support himself.

But it was in 2018 when he was featured in an educational TV programme that his luck changed. His unique background and rapping talent caught the eye of music producer Michelle Cho, who was formerly from SM Entertainment, the agency behind some of K-pop’s biggest acts. She offered him a spot in her agency, Singing Beetle.

“I didn’t trust Michelle for about a year because I thought she was cheating me,” Hyuk says, adding that defectors are often targeted by scams in the South.

But gradually he realised that Ms Cho was “investing way too much time and money” for it to be anything but genuine.

Kim Seok, 24, also defected and arrived in the South in 2019, though his experience was vastly different to that of Seok’s.

Coming from a relatively better-off family, Seok lived close to the border with China and had access to K-pop and K-drama through smuggled USBs and SD cards.

Due to safety reasons, we are unable to reveal much more about his life in the North and how he came to the South.

Both boys were described by Ms Cho as “blank canvases”, adding that she had never encountered trainees quite like them.

Unlike Aito and Kenny, who had been immersed in music and dance from an early age, Hyuk and Seok were complete beginners.

“They had absolutely no grasp of pop culture,” she said.

But their ability to “endure physical challenges” astonished Ms Cho. They pushed through gruelling hours of dance practice with such determination that she was worried they were “overdoing it”.

Apart from music and dance lessons, their training also covered etiquette and engaging in discussions, to prepare them for media interviews.

“I don’t think they were used to questioning things or expressing their opinion,” says Ms Cho. “At first, when a trainer asked the reasoning behind their thoughts, the only response was, ‘Because you said so last time’.”

But after more than three years, Hyuk has made remarkable progress, she says.

“Now, Hyuk questions many things. For example, if I ask him to do something, he’ll reply ‘Why? Why is it necessary?’ Sometimes, I regret what I’ve done,” says Ms Cho chuckling.

But what do the other two boys think of their bandmates?

“I was kind of afraid at first because North Korea has a hostile relationship with Japan. I thought North Koreans would be scary, but that turned out not to be true,” says Aito, who at 20 is the youngest of the four.

Kenny, who spent much of his life in the US, adds that there were also small cultural differences that have taken him time to get used to.

“Korean culture is very [communal] in that you eat together… that was a culture shock [to me]”, he said. “I usually don’t like eating with people, I prefer Netflix in my ear. But their joy comes from being collective.”

Late last year, the band added a fifth member, Nathan, an American of mixed Laotian and Thai heritage to the group.

They aim to debut in the US later this year – a decision that the label hopes could attract more American fans.

Dozens of K-pop groups make their debut each year and only a few, typically those managed by major labels, become popular.

So it’s still too early to say if 1Verse will go on to resonate with audiences. But Hyuk has big dreams, hoping that it might be possible one day for his fellow North Koreans to listen to his songs.

With human rights activists often sending leaflets and USBs containing K-culture content via balloons and bottles towards the North, this may prove to be less of a pipe dream than it sounds, though Hyuk also has his worries.

To avoid being seen as a vocal critic of North Korea, he refers to his homeland as “the upper side” in interviews and avoids mentioning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim has in recent years been ratcheting up his crackdown on the inflow of K-culture. Since 2020, the consumption and distribution of such content has become a crime punishable by death.

A rare video obtained by BBC Korean last year, believed to be filmed in 2022, shows two teenage boys publicly sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for watching and distributing K-dramas.

One academic says it would cause a “stir” in North Korea should 1Verse’s music become a hit.

“If a North Korean defector openly embraced their identity and went on to become a world-class activist, I think that would cause a stir in the North,” said Ha Seung-hee, an academic specialising in music and media at Dongguk University’s Institute of North Korean Studies.

But his main motivation, Hyuk says, is to prove that defectors can be a success.

“Many defectors see an insurmountable gap between themselves and K-pop idols. It is hardly a career option for us,” said Hyuk.

“So if I succeed, other defectors might be encouraged [to] have even bigger dreams. That’s why I am trying my hardest.”

The five-member girl band announced their departure from Ador, a subsidiary of powerhouse label Hybe, in a late-night press conference held on Thursday.

Ador however has said its contract with NewJeans still stands, as the agency has not violated any terms.

This dispute is the latest development in a long-running conflict between former NewJeans producer Min Hee-Jin and Hybe’s chairman Bang Si-hyuk, which has made headlines in South Korea.

One of the group’s members, Hanni, has alleged that she suffered workplace harassment while working with the label.

“This is not the type of work ethic we respect and not one we want to be a part of, and to continue working under a company with no intention of protecting NewJeans would only do us harm,” Hanni said.

She added the group had faced “mistreatment, not just towards us but also including our staff”, and said the group had experienced “deliberate miscommunications and manipulation in multiple areas”.

Ador maintains that its contract with NewJeans remains valid as it has not violated its duty and has asked the group to “continue their activities” with the agency.

“A unilateral claim that trust has been broken does not constitute valid grounds for termination of a contract,” Ador said in the statement after the group’s announcement.

“We regret that the press conference on the termination of the contract took place without sufficient consideration, and even before we gave our response to the demand letter,” the agency said.

NewJeans said they would like to work with Min, the group’s former mastermind who left Ador in August following accusations that she had planned to split from Hybe, taking NewJeans with her.

This would have made NewJeans and Ador independent of Hybe. Min has denied the accusations against her.She has previously accused Hybe of launching another girl group, Illit, that was copying NewJeans’ music and appearance.

On 13 November, NewJeans filed a legal notice to Ador demanding the company resolve breaches of their exclusive contracts within 14 days.

They said that failure to meet their demands would result in the termination of their contracts.

The group has asked for an apology for a comment allegedly made by an executive at Belift Lab, another subsidiary of Hybe, and accused the company of workplace bullying.

They have also asked for the immediate reinstatement of Min.

They added that they would fulfil their contractual obligations, but at the conference warned their fans they might not be able to use the band’s name after the contract terminates.

Prior to the NewJeans’ announcement, the band were committed to a seven-year contract, which runs out in 2029.

The contract includes a clause specifying that parties can unilaterally terminate the contract if the other has violated its duty. However, the matter is likely to go to court as both sides do not agree. In such a scenario, a judge would decide if the contract can be terminated and if one side owes the other any damages.

In October, the K-pop news site Koreaboo estimated that the members would have to pay about 300bn South Korean Won (about £170m) to terminate the contract early.

But group singer Haerin said it made “no sense” that the group would be liable to pay a contract breach fee.

“We never broke any rules,” Haerin said. “We did nothing but try our best – they are the ones at fault. Hybe and Ador are the ones responsible.”

Ador said it had not “violated” the terms of the contract, adding that it “respectfully requests that the group continue its collaboration with Ador on upcoming activities”.

“Despite multiple requests for meetings with the artists, our efforts have not been successful. We hope the members will now be willing to engage in an open and candid discussion,” it said, referring to NewJeans.

The group has been embroiled in a year-long controversy with audits and emotional accusations making South Korean headlines.

In October, a member of the group, Hanni, 20, testified at the Labour Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly at a hearing about workplace harassment.

She alleged that entertainment agency Hybe had deliberately undermined her band, and accused senior managers of deliberately ignoring her.

Following several incidents, she said: “I came to the realisation that this wasn’t just a feeling. I was honestly convinced that the company hated us.”

Hybe shares fell by 4% in Seoul trading on Friday.

NewJeans made its debut in 2022 and is among Hybe’s most successful K-pop groups, along with BTS.

With slick pop hits including Super Shy and OMG, NewJeans were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world last year, and were nominated for best group at this year’s MTV Awards.

Formed by Ador in 2022, its five members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – range in age from 16 to 20.