A GIANT model of Robot Taekwon V, a 1970s South Korean superhero, glares at the salarymen passing Figure Museum W, a cross between a museum and a theme park that opened a year ago in a plush business district of Seoul, South Korea’s capital. It boasts a kaleidoscopic display of 800-odd artefacts mainly from the universe of Japanese manga (comic books) and anime (animation), and American cartoons. Most of its visitors are adult men.

The museum’s enthusiastic young guide says it is “heaven for deukhu like me”. The term comes from the Japanese otaku, and denotes those who pursue obsessive interests—think a “nerd” or an “anorak” with few social skills and a fetish for some aspect of popular culture. In South Korea, deukhu has long been a slur. Many associate it with a dangerously unpatriotic indulgence in Japanese cultural exports, many of them banned in South Korea from the end of Japan’s imperial rule in 1945 until as recently as the 1990s. More broadly deukhu were assumed to lead idle, unproductive lives, shut away in dingy flats playing video games or scouring the web for their next frivolous curio.

Now attitudes are shifting. The social-media networks of cool 20-somethings are abuzz with the hashtag deukmingout: coming out as a fanatic. A South Korean daily declared the Figure Museum W to be “a Mecca” for geeks going public. A 28-year-old deukhu, a fan of a South Korean pop star, Kim Jun-su, has started a blog about her coming-out. In it she argues that deukhu pursuits can be highly productive: the example of her idol has inspired her to get fit and to take up the piano and guitar. “I work even harder in my day job to prove a deukhu can be successful,” she says.

Kim Yong-sub, who has written a book on South Korean trends in 2016, says that as more prominent deukhu have created content from their pastimes—by writing online comics, for example, known in South Korea as webtoons—they have aspired to “a new social standing and role”. Ji Jin-hee, a dashing 44-year-old actor, revealed that he bought piles of secondhand Lego to build models and sell them for a small fortune (he appeared on the cover of Elle Korea surrounded by his creations). Other Korean celebrities have been admitting to their own eccentricities: fans now affectionately refer to Shim Hyung-tak as “Shimdakhu” after the actor disclosed a passion for Doraemon, a Japanese robot-cat cartoon character beloved of East Asian children. A member of a hip-hop group, Block B, revealed that he kept 700 tropical fish.

Stars are helping to push the idea that geekishness is cool. But beyond that, Mr Kim says, is the growing cachet of not following mainstream taste: a turnaround for South Koreans under powerful social pressure to conform. As more people pursue their individual preferences, they become more accepting of others’ too, for example, of the rise of the samchonpaen (“uncle fans”), middle-aged men who are unabashed groupies of teenage pop bands. Since November “Super-skilled People”, a television show, has invited deukhu, from bread enthusiasts to weapons buffs, to show off remarkable abilities or specialisms. The studio’s audience members all wear smiling paper bags over their heads—representing those who have yet to do their deukmingout.