When Semantic Error—a Korean drama series—aired in early 2022 and went viral, South Korea’s government worried its streaming service Watcha was under malicious cyber attack for its unusually high traffic.

The TV show falls under a subcategory of entertainment that is mostly popular in Asia known as Boys’ Love, or ‘BL,’ which centers queer romance between two Asian cisgender men. Major fandom aside, given South Korean’s conservative sentiment towards LGBTQ rights, the long-awaited kiss on episode seven of Semantic Error that aired on Mar. 9, 2022, quite literally broke the internet.

The riveting drama revolves around two university students in an enemies-to-lovers arc between a studious and calculated junior and the beloved charming senior who have to closely work together after their group project hits the fan.

In the U.S., Asian Americans are struggling to find themselves on screen—let alone those who are also LGBTQ. Even within the mainstream queer, trans and nonbinary TV shows and films, critics wish for stories “without a mountain of suffering and angst,” as Sara Li wrote on Cherry Picks last February. Enter Boys’ Love: a space in media where Asian (American) queer people see themselves on screen experiencing happy endings.

As of this past November, 56% of South Koreans still oppose same-sex marriage according to a Pew Research Center study about attitudes on gay marriage around the world. The success of Semantic Error from the year prior, however, served as a window to what could be a cultural shift in queer acceptance in South Korea, nonetheless.

“It was such an incredibly enjoyable yet absolutely heartwarming ride,” a Reddit user commented on a thread about not being able to move on after finishing the series. “I think this is the only [Korean BL] which I have rewatched nine-to-ten times.”

From underground self-published fandoms to popular streaming services, Boys’ Love is a piece of queer media that continues to grow beyond borders.

From Asia to worldwide, the growth of Boys’ Love is a salve to a much-needed queer audience

Despite Boys’ Love media being queer in nature, straight women were at the helm of its development.

Before BL became an on-screen phenomenon, its roots can be traced back to Japan’s genre of yaoi, which is a gay subgenre of Japanese comics known as manga and the Japanese animation known as anime. BL manga, specifically, was popularized by women in the 70s who self-published fandom work—called doujinshi—mainly aimed towards an audience of other young women.

At the time, Japan and South Korea were neighboring countries with a “politically antagonistic relationship,” according to Dr. Jungmin Kwon, associate professor of digital culture and film studies at Portland State University with expertise in Korean and East Asian pop culture.

“Korean youngsters loved to read and consume Japanese media text because it was more advanced and more liberalized in the black market,” she said, adding that yaoi was one of the genres.

With the rise of K-Pop groups in the 90s, fandoms of Korean women would self-publish fanfiction about members of popular boy bands like H.O.T The South Korean equivalent of manga is called manhwa. At the time, Kwon explains that women’s rights movements and queer rights movements began to start—though separately. Even Semantic Error was originally a manhwa by Jeo Soo-ri that was first published in 2021.

She also adds that the same renaissance of young women and their love for BL were happening in China, another neighboring country of South Korea. What makes South Korea stand out, however, was the fact that South Korea sought an opportunity for straight women in BL fandoms to build community with the queer people.

For her second book, Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies, Kwon interviewed writers of BL, in which one woman interviewee said that she incorporated more queer politics to educate young queer readers in addition to the entertainment aspect of her BL stories, hoping to build a bridge between her straight women audiences and the greater queer community.

Live action adaptations and original works of BL have since transcended past East Asia and well into Southeast Asia—from Thailand to Singapore and the Philippines. 2023 alone garnered 126 BL dramas around the world—nearly doubled the amount since 2020. It’s no surprise the popularity of Boys’ Love skyrocketed; hashtags trend weekly on X as new episodes are released, while a subreddit dedicated to BL has gained a following of nearly 80,000 Redditors as of today.

Over in Thailand, the first BL dramas in Thailand were created in 2014, though the genre didn’t overall take off until COVID-19 in 2020, while many were left to stay home, looking to stream new content. And despite the country’s LGBTQ-friendly reputation, when 26-year-old Thai queer activist Tattep Ruangprapaikitseree kissed his boyfriend on the steps of the parliament in 2019, it sparked major homophobic backlash.

Still, BL manages to oscillate between the harsh realities of queer people worldwide while simultaneously providing the fantasy of joyful love throughout Asia.

Fandoms feel bittersweet about Boys’ Love’s fantasized lives of queer people

An outspoken fan of BL, Kevin Ninh (he/him), is an internet star and full-time content creator of over a decade with a following of 609,000 on Instagram, nearly one million YouTube subscribers and 350,000 followers of TikTok with over 12 million likes on his TikTok videos overall.

Ninh, Seattle, Wa. native who is 27-year-old and Vietnamese, identifies as a queer, nonbinary trans person. Above all, Ninh is part of a larger internet fandom community, and his large following across multiple platforms proves his presence in that.

He tells Reckon that Boys’ Love is a form of media that is euphoric for him because of its representation of joyful queer Asian people—though not without the drawbacks of its circumstances.

“They kind of gloss over the reality of queer people; there are prejudices and discriminations against us,” he explains, stressing that it does not take away how meaningful it is for him to see depictions of love in a world of acceptance. “But at the same time, it ignores the reality of our world that not everything is sunshine and rainbows.”

In the largely positive community Ninh has cultivated online, his criticism of BL is outweighed by his pure enjoyment of it, namely the aspect of escapism that it provides him.

“Growing up, I’ve never been in a relationship, and so I get to live vicariously through these characters,” he said. “You know, [the characters are] very attractive and handsome! So, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I can just be delusional and pretend that I’m in this show.’”

The progression of LGBTQ rights in South Korea and Korean American storytelling

For the first time last February, a landmark ruling in South Korea legally recognized same-sex couples in terms of national health insurance. And while same-sex intercourse is not illegal, it is between men in the military under article 92-6. However, the South Korean Supreme Court overturned the conviction of two soldiers for gay sex because their relationship happened outside of the army.

“Things are changing, and it’s changing rapidly,” Kwon explained. South Korea’s first ever same-sex marriage bill went to parliament last May. While South Korea continues to fight for LGBTQ rights, Korean Americans in the U.S. are carving out spaces for them to take helm of their stories.

Gay Korean American actor and comedian Joel Kim Booster has been on the rise the past few years, having starred in Maya Rudolph’s comedy series Loot, as well as writing and starring in Fire Island alongside Chinese American comedian and actor Bowen Yang. While the two were vocal about showcasing Asians in queer spaces, Booster does not shy away from criticizing representation as the starting and ending point of the art he wants to see on screen.

“If you stop there—which a lot of creators do—it’s not helpful [and] it’s not good,” he said in a 2022 interview with TIME. “We should be demanding more than just representation at this point.”

As a queer Asian American who is both part of queer American fandom and Korean BL fandom, the root of it all is simple for Ninh.

“People love watching gay shit,” he said. “There’s a market for it.”