This time last year, the five members of the K-pop group Le Sserafim were glued to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival livestream on YouTube, watching Blackpink make history as the first Korean headliner. On Saturday afternoon, they were getting glammed up in an artist trailer all their own, hours out from making their own Coachella debut.

"Coachella was something I could hardly dream of coming to, even as a spectator," said Huh Yunjin, of the groundbreaking HYBE girl group. "We've watched performances like Blackpink and Billie Eilish online and were like, 'It'd be so amazing to stand on a stage like this one day.' "

"It's a very famous festival in Korea as well," added Kim Chaewon, through a translator. "For a lot of artists there, it's a dream opportunity."

This year, that opportunity arrived for a whole new generation of Korean acts. After Blackpink's fast ascent from newcomer to top-billed act, Coachella is already cultivating its next generation of K-pop and South Korean music more broadly. Genres always wax and wane at the fest, with classic rock and EDM giving way to rap and pop. But it looks like South Korean music is a new core element for the fest.

On Friday night the K-pop group Ateez — already an arena act in the U.S. — put on an explosive set to an audience where many were likely seeing them live for the first time. The eight-piece group's core fandom could barely believe their luck to be able to see them so close.

"When I was training, I really looked forward to this kind of big festival," said Ateez's captain Kim Hongjoong, in full goth-glam regalia backstage just a couple hours before his band's Sahara Tent set. "Coachella has a lot of iconic stages, and Korean fans really love to see Beyoncé, the Weeknd, and Blackpink perform here. I think our performance style really fits at this huge festival. I've waited a long time for this."

The group left it all on the stage on Friday — singing, rapping and dancing with a ferocity and skill that showed the work they put in to get here. Who knows if they'll get to headline one day, but now there's proof it's possible, and Ateez is leading a new class of Korean acts working toward it.

"We really love to perform for our fans, of course, but we're also curious about how other audiences hear our music," Hongjoong said. "Today's a new experience that's so important to us."

For Kim Woosung, the singer of the Korean rock band the Rose, Coachella is close enough to a hometown show — he spent much of his childhood in the Valley here.

"I personally always loved Coachella," Woosung said. "Performing here was always a goal for us, after our first international festival run we left so inspired by the vibe. It's a dream to be here on stage just one year later."

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