Turkey’s Family and Social Affairs Ministry will examine Korean pop music, known as K-pop, which conservative pundits have portrayed as a threat to Turkish youth from the Far East, Turkish media outlets report.

“The ministry is examining allegations that K-pop is making young people drift from traditional values and reject their family and leading them to a ‘gender-free’ lifestyle,” journalist Onder Yilmaz reported in daily Milliyet on Aug. 29. 

The ministry contacted representatives of social media platforms in Turkey to seek their help in combatting harmful online content that will negatively affect children, the newspaper read. A representative of one platform who asked to remain anonymous confirmed to Al-Monitor that there were plans to do so in “near future.”

The ministry’s plans to monitor the impact of K-pop on Turkish youth follows the news that two sisters and a friend ran away from home earlier this month to go to South Korea. Their mother claimed that the girls were fans of Korean Wave or "Hallyu," a term used to describe the growing global popularity of South Korean culture from drama to cosmetics, music and fashion.