How Monsta X Is Taking Over the U.S., One Tour Stop At a Time

Less than three months after Monsta X released its debut EP, Trespass, in May 2015, the Seoul-based boy band, under South Korean label Starship Entertainment, made its first stateside appearance as part of the KCON Los Angeles festival that summer. At the time, the largest-scale K-pop tour had been a nine-date theater run by hip-hop trio Epik High — one of six male K-pop tours to hit the United States that year. This year alone, so far nine South Korea-based acts, both male and female