When BTS first debuted in 2013, they were supposed to be just another South Korean boy band.

They were all but seven teenagers — Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook — hailing from different parts of South Korea and like so many young Korean hopefuls, trying to make it big in the K-pop music industry.

Backed by a modestly sized production company and recording label, Big Hit Entertainment, they were outfitted with all the necessary accoutrements typically associated with popular K-pop acts: aggressive dance sequences, heavily stylized visuals, and an old school hip-hop track.

But at the time…

No one is perhaps more surprised than South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho by the runaway success of his film “Parasite”. After winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last May, the foreign-language film has gone on to collect a bevy of international accolades and at its climax, make Oscars history by taking home best picture at the Academy Awards.

Widely acclaimed as an upstairs-downstairs drama, “Parasite” is about a poor Korean family who hustles their way into a rich household only to confront the original parasites already living there. The arrival of a lucky stone-turned-monkey’s paw sets off…

“I mean, how many twinkies do you know who can relate to Crazy Rich Asians?” is what my best friend from Beijing snidely asked me in a somewhat condescending tone.

I had been thinking the same thing when I first heard that Warner Brothers was launching a movie based on Kevin Kwan’s campy book of the same name, “Crazy Rich Asians”.

But what I found to be even more curious was the obvious disconnect between how mainstream America was billing this film as “Asian-American” when it resolutely, was not. Much like its oft-compared predecessor, “The Joy Luck Club”, most of…