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Five Things to Know about the Emmys

"Succession" is leading the way for the Emmy Awards with the most nominations, but can "Squid Game" win a historic prize for best drama? VALERIE MACON AFP/File
"Succession" is leading the way for the Emmy Awards with the most nominations, but can "Squid Game" win a historic prize for best drama? VALERIE MACON AFP/File
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Five Things to Know about the Emmys

"Succession" is leading the way for the Emmy Awards with the most nominations, but can "Squid Game" win a historic prize for best drama? VALERIE MACON AFP/File
"Succession" is leading the way for the Emmy Awards with the most nominations, but can "Squid Game" win a historic prize for best drama? VALERIE MACON AFP/File

Will "Squid Game" make history? Or will HBO powerhouse "Succession" swipe the best drama statuette again at television's equivalent of the Oscars?

And will Hulu break through on a wider scale?

Here are five things to know about the 74th Emmy Awards, which take place on Monday night in Los Angeles, AFP said.

- Is Hollywood ready to crown K-drama? -
K-pop sensation BTS are so beloved that news of the boy band taking a break sparked a global meltdown on social media. "Parasite" broke all the rules on its path to Oscars glory in 2020. Is Hollywood now ready to honor a television series in Korean?

"Squid Game" -- the blockbuster Netflix series about down-and-out people competing in children's games to the death for money -- became a global phenomenon upon its launch just about a year ago.

Now it could win the Emmy for best drama, in what would be a first for a non-English-language series. It is already a trailblazer just for earning a nomination in the category, one of 14 overall.

The series has already tasted Emmys victory, with Lee Yoo-mi taking the prize for best guest actress in a drama at the Creative Emmys, the pre-gala event at which many statuettes are awarded in minor categories.

Lee plays Ji-yeong, one of the 456 desperate competitors hoping to win cash in the brutal contest.

- Double nominations -
A host of performers are up for multiple awards on Monday, many of them in both acting and off-camera categories.

Julia Garner ("Ozark" and "Inventing Anna") and Sydney Sweeney ("Euphoria" and "The White Lotus") are among those nominated for multiple acting roles, with Garner tipped to win the head-to-head battle for best supporting actress.

Best comedy actor nominee Bill Hader ("Barry") is also nominated for directing, writing and producing the show about a hitman who moves to Los Angeles and gets involved in the acting scene.

Seth Rogen is nominated for best supporting actor in a limited series and for producing "Pam and Tommy" -- the story of how an infamous sex tape of actress Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee was made public.

- Bring on the gala -
For the first time in the era of Covid-19, the Television Academy is staging a full-throttle show at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, after a largely virtual event in 2020 and a scaled-back event at a partially outdoor venue last year.

"Saturday Night Live" veteran Kenan Thompson, himself a past Emmy winner, will make his debut as host. The festivities begin at 5:00 pm Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday).

The show is being held on a Monday night this year because NBC, which has the rotating network rights to air it, also airs Sunday Night Football, and the gridiron trumps Tinseltown, with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the schedule.

- Hulu has high hopes -
HBO and Netflix tend to dominate the Emmys, but 2022 could be a banner year for Hulu, which is majority-owned by Disney.

The US-only streamer, specializing in more adult-oriented content than Disney+, creates originals such as 2017 drama winner "The Handmaid's Tale," and has been ramping up production.

This year, it has a handful of top contenders in the limited series categories.

Michael Keaton is the frontrunner for best actor in a limited series for playing a doctor embroiled in the US opioid epidemic in "Dopesick," which raked in 14 nominations.

Amanda Seyfried is the frontrunner for best actress glory in the same section for her turn as disgraced biotech star Elizabeth Holmes in "The Dropout."

"Pam and Tommy" has 10 nominations, and comedy "Only Murders in the Building" -- starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as an unlikely trio of true-crime podcasters -- is also in the mix.

- Posthumous pre-gala Emmy for Boseman -
"Black Panther" star Chadwick Boseman died in August 2020 after battling colon cancer -- a diagnosis he never publicly discussed.

Last year, he narrowly missed out to Anthony Hopkins on a posthumous Oscar, for best actor in blues drama "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

But he earned some final awards glory at the Creative Emmys, winning for voicing a version of his "Black Panther" character in Marvel's animated series "What If...?"

Other winners at the pre-gala event were former US president Barack Obama (now halfway to an EGOT with his two Grammys), pop star Adele, rapper Eminem and reality show host RuPaul.

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Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut 

This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)
This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)
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Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut 

This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)
This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)

Growing up in North Korea, Hyuk's childhood was about survival. He never listened to banned K-pop music but, after defecting to the South, he's about to debut as an idol.

Hyuk is one of two young North Koreans in a new K-pop band called 1Verse -- the first time that performers originally from the nuclear-armed North have been trained up for stardom in South Korea's global K-pop industry.

Before he was 10, Hyuk -- who like many K-pop idols now goes by one name -- was skipping school to work on the streets in his native North Hamgyong province and admits he "had to steal quite a bit just to survive".

"I had never really listened to K-pop music", he told AFP, explaining that "watching music videos felt like a luxury to me".

"My life was all about survival", he said, adding that he did everything from farm work to hauling shipments of cement to earn money to buy food for his family.

But when he was 13, his mother, who had escaped North Korea and made it to the South, urged him to join her.

He realized this could be his chance to escape starvation and hardship, but said he knew nothing about the other half of the Korean peninsula.

"To me, the world was just North Korea -- nothing beyond that," he told AFP.

His bandmate, Seok, also grew up in the North -- but in contrast to Hyuk's hardscrabble upbringing, he was raised in a relatively affluent family, living close to the border.

As a result, even though K-pop and other South Korean content like K-dramas are banned in the North with harsh penalties for violators, Seok said "it was possible to buy and sell songs illegally through smugglers".

Thanks to his older sister, Seok was listening to K-pop and even watching rare videos of South Korean artists from a young age, he told AFP.

"I remember wanting to imitate those cool expressions and styles -- things like hairstyles and outfits," Seok told AFP.

Eventually, when he was 19, Seok defected to the South. Six years later, he is a spitting image of a K-Pop idol.

- Star quality -

Hyuk and Seok were recruited for 1Verse, a new boy band and the first signed to smaller Seoul-based label Singing Beetle by the company's CEO Michelle Cho.

Cho was introduced to both of the young defectors through friends.

Hyuk was working at a factory when she met him, but when she heard raps he had written she told AFP that she "knew straight away that his was a natural talent".

Initially, he "professed a complete lack of confidence in his ability to rap", Cho said, but she offered him free lessons and then invited him to the studio, which got him hooked.

Eventually, "he decided to give music a chance", she said, and became the agency's first trainee.

In contrast, Seok "had that self-belief and confidence from the very beginning", she said, and lobbied hard to be taken on.

When Seok learned that he would be training alongside another North Korean defector, he said it "gave me the courage to believe that maybe I could do it".

- 'We're almost there' -

The other members of 1Verse include a Chinese-American, a Lao-Thai American and a Japanese dancer. The five men in their 20s barely speak each other's languages.

But Hyuk, who has been studying English, says it doesn't matter.

"We're also learning about each other's cultures, trying to bridge the gaps and get closer little by little," he said.

"Surprisingly, we communicate really well. Our languages aren't perfectly fluent, but we still understand each other. Sometimes, that feels almost unbelievable."

Aito, the Japanese trainee who is the main dancer in the group, said he was "fascinated" to meet his North Korean bandmates.

"In Japan, when I watched the news, I often saw a lot of international issues about defectors, so the overall image isn't very positive," he said.

But Aito told AFP his worries "all disappeared" when he met Hyuk and Seok. And now, the five performers are on the brink of their debut.

It's been a long road from North Korea to the cusp of K-pop stardom in the South for Hyuk and Seok -- but they say they are determined to make 1Verse a success.

"I really want to move someone with my voice. That feeling grows stronger every day," said Seok.

Hyuk said being part of a real band was a moving experience for him.

"It really hit me, like wow, we're almost there."