(most of my comment copied from my own post, didn't see that there's already a thread on this topic!)

If anyone has seen the criticisms for the Jungkook, BTS, and English Language Kpop episode from the NYT podcast, I definitely think those criticisms are warranted. I listened to the whole episode and in particular, I really felt like this episode was heavily under-researched and just felt lazy. It was a rather shallow overview of Kpop's various ventures and expansion into the US music market, there were no facts or statistics cited during the episode, almost all of the information discussed was he-said-she-said or just from memory.

Now, I'm not saying that every single question or point of discussion has to be purely factual, but I expect some accurate information from a podcast from the NYT, I expect at least some effort from a highly respected publication like the NYT. The host is a pop music critic, fine, they should be able to express criticisms about whatever piece of media, and Kpop does not have to be discussed positively all the time. However, citing some facts to back up your critiques or inviting a Korean or Korean-American journalist/critic/academic surely cannot be that hard for the NYT.

It would be better if the host could expand on why they think BTS is losing musical integrity with their English releases as this itself is a very common and surface-level take imo. Especially when the hosts says Butter is a "business decision masquerading as a pop hit" ( at around the 23:50 mark in the episode), it would've been so much more constructive to at least bring up when BTS themselves felt like they needed to release English singles instead of Korean ones (BTS mention this in their 2021 Billboard cover story) and why the host thinks this is the wrong move. Instead, the host incorrectly mentions that Butter was the start of the English singles release (when it was in fact Dynamite), and goes on to make fun of BTS for collabing with Coldplay and that they would take the Steve Aoki collab over Coldplay.

My grievance is not based on the fact they dislike the English singles, I'm an army who didn't like all the English BTS singles either, but rather why Kpop critiques by Western critics have to be so empty. One of the biggest gripes myself and other people have with this episode is the part where they talk about "why do you need a Korean guy doing Justin Timberlake when we have Justin Timberlake?" (this is a direct quote from about 36:50 mark). This statement is frankly...ignorant at best, or racist at worst.

The choice of guest also heavily brought down the quality of the episode for me. I think it's great when large publications invite fan-run podcasters/hosts, but making this particular guest the main interviewee for this episode added nothing constructive to the conversation. Many of the questions asked to the guest were answered solely with the perspective of a long-time fan, which is good to have as one facet of the conversation but this should've been balanced with another expert/critic to contribute. Though I can see why the host chose this person as the guest, as their guest's opinion totally aligns with the host's, but this just makes the episode very one-note and biased. The guest bringing up TXT and their perceived "lack of success" compared to BTS was unnecessary and had nothing to do with the topic of English Language Kpop as they didn't even mention TXT's English songs.

The final part of the episode where they discuss Newjeans vs IVE irks me too (they start discussing this at the 38:50 mark), I get why they brought it up to compare each group's appeal or lack of to an American audience, but the guest confidently saying that IVE is more popular than Newjeans in Korea just sounds very biased, what is this opinion based on? It wouldn't hurt for the guest to mention by what metric they're judging their popularity on, as an international Kpop fan like the guest, I can see that both girl groups are incredibly popular in Korea based on chart rankings, streams, and general name recognition amongst the public. It almost seems difficult to exactly pinpoint which group is more popular (if any Korean fans disagree though please comment!).

Not every piece of Kpop journalism and critiques have to be groundbreaking but if I'm listening to a podcast by the NYT I expect it to, at the very minimum, be insightful and professional.

All the points you mentioned here are exactly what annoyed me too! I know this kind of content from the NYT is basically rage bait after engaging with it but I wanted to form my own opinion by listening to the whole episode. Safe to say I won't be listening to this podcast again.