Fans outside the K-pop band BTS's performance at Prudential Center in Newark on Sept. 28, 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

By Bobby Olivier | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

It was raining Tuesday afternoon. Hard. Some areas of New Jersey were flooded with more than a month's worth of precipitation in just a few hours.

Yet outside Newark's Prudential Center, there was a snaking line of diehard fans, bracing the downpour in camping tents as they awaited entry to the arena's upcoming concert — a show that wasn't to begin until Friday night, three full days later.

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K-pop band Pentagon performs at KCON 2018 at Prudential Center in Newark on June 23, 2018.

That's just a taste of the mania surrounding South Korean pop music, K-pop for short, and its recent invasion into U.S. cultural consciousness, wherein The Rock has built itself into an East Coast hub and cultivation center for this monster fad.

While plenty of teens still obsess over more traditional mainstream artists like Ed Sheeran or Drake, a swelling fraction of youth now goes for these highly manicured and addictive acts soaring in from the Far East. Imagine if The Beatles had not only mastered social media but also enjoyed the immediate financial support of its national government, backing them as a lucrative export.

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BTS performs to a sold-out crowd at Prudential Center in Newark on Sept. 28, 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

That's the reality here — there is no rebellion against "the man" in K-pop. Instead, the South Korean government has, since the late '90s, invested in entertainment as a revenue source, grooming pre-teen aspiring artists for years in vocal, dance and social training before they are placed into one of dozens of manufactured bands. The formula is paying dividends, bolstered by the groups' accessibility on Instagram and Twitter. USA Today reports global sales for K-pop-related music and videos now exceed $5 billion each year, a total that continues to balloon as the genre's most popular acts begin to play American arenas and stadiums.

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Fans cheer during BTS's Prudential Center performance. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

Those fans stuck in the Jersey rain were waiting for BTS, an ultra-popular seven-piece boy band from Seoul, that has churned much of the stateside hype over the last two years. The group won Top Social Artist at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards, and has since scored two No. 1 albums in the U.S. (both this year) and has appeared on "The Tonight Show," "Ellen," "Good Morning America" and, earlier this week, before the United Nations General Assembly, to discuss youth education and strong self-image.

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Fans participate in a dance workshop outside Prudential Center at KCON NY 2018 on June 23, 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media

BTS played The Rock on Friday and Saturday night: a pair of packed, deafening affairs to follow the group’s headlining debut in Newark in 2017, where tickets for their shows sold out even more quickly than when Bruce Springsteen has come to play the venue.

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K-pop group Red Velvet performs at KCON NY 2018.

But at Prudential Center, these were comparatively small events when measured against the mammoth annual KCON convention and performance showcase the arena has now hosted for the past four years. Branded as KCON New York — even in K-pop, New Jersey gets no respect — the two-day event held each June draws more than 40,000 K-pop fans to downtown Newark, where supporters of the music and Korean pop culture can take dance classes and other workshops, eat Korean foods, meet scene influencers and see many of their favorite groups perform in a sort of Jingle Ball-esque rapid-fire medley.

Jini Cho, head of marketing for KCON — which began in 2012 in Los Angeles — says Prudential Center’s positioning in the New York metro market made it a clear choice to house the event.

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Red Velvet on the red carpet at KCON NY 2018 inside Prudential Center on June 23, 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media

“It’s a great location for both New York City and New Jersey to access, and fans come in from all over the world — not just Korea and the U.S., but fans flying in from Thailand, Southeast Asia, from Canada, so having Newark Liberty International Airport nearby is really great for us,” Cho tells NJ Advance Media. “And they have a perfect facility for events like ours. We’re both concert and convention, which takes over both the arena and we also we have a huge footprint outside.”

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The K-pop group Stray Kids greets fans at KCON NY 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

Prudential Center broke into K-pop in 2011 when it hosted the popular trio JYJ, not long before Korean singer Psy's viral smash "Gangnam Style" would become the first YouTube video to tout 1 billion views and play harbinger in the genre's American influx. The venue has since hosted 20 K-pop events, typically acting as the New York-area date for touring acts — including KCONs, BTS and other groups called EXO and BIGBANG— grossing $18 million in total. In 2017, Billboard named Prudential Center "the East Coast home of K-Pop."

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Sean Saadeh, executive vice president of programming at Prudential Center, couldn’t be happier with how the arena’s relationship with the genre has expanded, and notes demographics as well as location as factoring into the overall success.

“One of the factors initially, from an analytic standpoint, was the fact that Bergen County has a very large Korean population,” Saadeh says. “To get started, it made sense for them to look at the New Jersey marketplace as a good place in introduce K-pop.”

Cho notes that K-pop has since grown to diversify its audience, where only 45 percent of American listeners are of Asian descent.

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Fans at the KCON NY 2018 red carpet event. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

And as Prudential Center moves into its second decade as a major player in New Jersey entertainment, Saadeh notes the value in the arena mixing up its offerings.

“I think it’s great for our brand in the sense that it shows the diversity of events we’re able to produce here,” he says. “It’s one thing to be able to do Bruno Mars or Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles. Those are artists who are successful and have been successful for some time, but when you’re doing the kind of programming we’re doing here, it just adds to the diversity of the events we provide to our community. I think that we are New Jersey’s home for major events and we should be doing major events across all genres of music.”

While KCON 2019 is not officially booked at Prudential Center, both sides say they’d love to work together again, and as K-pop continues to flourish in U.S. markets and crest into a frenzy not seen since The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, expect more sounds of Seoul filling the Newark air.

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BTS performs at Prudential Center on Sept. 28, 2018. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)

“We think we are the perfect location to continue to build this fanbase and the genre of music,” Saadeh says. “We have the perfect amount of space, the building is a great building to see a show like this, and we have amazing areas to activate. K-pop is more than just the music, it’s an experience and we make sure those experiences come to life.”

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Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier and Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.