Back in the day (and nowadays, too!) the K-pop boy groups commanded a frightening number of fans. They would send them fan letters and gifts, attend concerts, and the very devoted ones would even follow them to their other scheduled events. Some of them were truly fanatics about their boy groups.
When the boy group members appeared in front of the waiting fans, they would scream in the hopes that the boy group members would look at them. One of the most common words that you could hear at this point was, of course, "오빠! (oppa!)"
The Koreans who were not so into fan clubs found this pretty amusing. The word "오빠" is a friendly honorific, with which a younger female calls an older male, but only when they know each other well. But somehow, it was tolerated in K-pop to call a celebrity "오빠." The Koreans soon made up new words to make fun of this phenomenon. The group of girls religiously following a boy band around were called an "오빠부대 (an "oppa" army)" and it is not so different in nuance to "groupies," although no direct contact with the band member is necessary.
An individual member of an "오빠부대" was often called "오빠순이." Remember that "-순이" is a suffix you can add to many words (both nouns and verbs, as well as adjectives and adverbs) which then acts as a nickname to a woman ("-돌이" is the corresponding male version). For example, a girl who really likes apples (사과) can be called "사과순이," a girl who really likes to eat (먹다) can be called "먹순이," and so on. So a girl who likes her oppas can be nicknamed "오빠순이."
Then as the language evolved, people started looking at "오빠순이" as a full name. To make it even friendlier (or maybe more derogatory), the took out the first letter, which would have acted as the last name in the Korean naming system (for example, the skater Yu-Na Kim writes her name as 김연아 in the Korean system, and 김 is her last name; if you were friends with her, you just call her 연아; if you're not friends with her but somehow want to look down on her, you call her 연아 as well. It's the nuance that counts!)
And nowadays, a girl who fangirls a little too hard (okay, maybe really hard) is called a "빠순이." It is fairly derogatory, although some people will take pride in the fact that they are a 빠순이. Similarly, for a fanboy, they call him "빠돌이." If you see a girl who is a hardcore fan of BTS, you can say:
걔 완전 방탄소년단 빠순이야 (She is a total fangirl of BTS.)It has gotten even shorter as of late; now you can simply call someone a "빠," even dropping the friendly suffix "-순이." Often, it is used like a suffix "-빠" although you can use it as an independent word. And the above sentence becomes
걔 완전 방탄소년단빠야.Weirdly enough, while the word "빠순이" still has a very negative connotation, as it is derogatory (remember that you're calling someone (오빠순이) by their first name only (빠순이), and not using the last name (오)!) the suffix "-빠" is only a little bit negative. Sometimes "-빠" can be translated as just "fan," although it depends on the context (is the speaker being sarcastic? neutral?)
These words are derogatory enough that they do not get used in the mainstream media. Some people would also take offense being called a 빠순이. While many people use these words, take care never to call someone a 빠순이 in their face, as you never know how they will react! But it is still a useful word to know, if you were to navigate an internet forum!
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