Around 2015, the word “Koreaboo,” used initially to refer to the website, began to denote a meaning much closer to weeaboo (a derogatory word for someone obsessed with Japanese culture). Part of the reason for the change may be due to the boom of K-pop boy band fandom and more specifically because of ARMY, the official name for the fan group of BTS. After all, their influence is so strong that they attract 796,000 foreign tourists annually, and they add $3.5 billion a year to the South Korean economy. Today, the top definition of the word on Urban Dictionary dates to April 2016: “A non-native Korean who is obsessed with Korean culture to the point where they denounce their own national/native identity and proclaim that they are Korean.”

Arkayla Napper argues with the latter half of that definition in a teen advice column on VOXATL on how to know if you are a Koreaboo. “Admiring only certain parts of a culture can be insulting,” she says and advises those interested in Korean culture to learn the language and educate themselves on the culture. While Napper’s suggestions do have merit, anyone interested in engaging with Korean culture (or any other culture for that matter) should primarily find a middle-of-the-road approach between ethnocentrism and xenocentrism.

According to Donald P. Kent and Robert G. Burnight in Vol. 57 of the American Journal of Sociology, ethnocentrism is a term coined by William Graham Sumner meaning “a view in which one’s own group is the center of everything.” Xenocentrists are the opposite of that — individuals who prefer a society other than their own. The type of Koreaboo gluing their eyelids together “to look Korean” represents an extreme on the scale between the two perspectives in engaging with another’s culture.

Majid Mushtaq is a Pakistani national who works for Korea Clickers, the official Facebook page of the Republic of Korea. He says he loves Korean food, learning the language, and sometimes even going to K-pop concerts but does not identify as a Koreaboo. He says, “Learning a new culture is fun, but calling one superior to another is where the problem comes in.” Previously the cultural ambassador of Pakistan in the United States, Mushtaq is active about making cultural exchange a two-way street. To keep yourself in check when falling for another culture, he recommends “loving who you are and your own culture.”

The worst Koreaboos fundamentally lack genuine understanding of Korean culture, and their obsession fetishizes Korean people.

One does not have to be a Koreaboo to make xenocentric observations. Even former President Barack Obama is guilty of making several eyebrow-raising comments on the Korean education system. In 2010, the leader spoke about American children spending a month less in schools than Korean children and how “that is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.” In 2015, he claimed South Korea “paid their teachers the way they pay their doctors.” While the first statement shows a complete lack of awareness about the Korean school system’s link to sleep shortage, depression, and suicide, the latter is simply false.

Amanda Melody Melgarejo Bastos, an American social media manager who previously taught English in Korea, says she considers the word Koreaboo negative. She says the worst Koreaboos “fundamentally lack genuine understanding of Korean culture, and their obsession fetishizes Korean people.” She has been interested in K-pop since the ’90s, and she’s been dangerously close to being a Koreaboo herself. “While my view and opinion of Korea is generally positive because I loved living there, I can also go on about important social issues that need changed,” she says.