Non-Koreans (Survey).... how did you learn about K-pop?

[koganbot]

While searching "Oscar song meanings," I incidentally found this thread where non-Koreans talk about how they discovered K-pop and why they love it.

"I'm just wondering...... I see many people who aren't Korean listening to Kpop.

"How did you find out and learn about kpop?
"Why do you love it?
"What is your ethnicity/nationality?
"What are your favorite groups and why? What are your favorite songs and why?"
"Do you prefer boy groups over girl groups or both?"

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120412182534AAbtXrF

I don't think nationality matters at all because puppies of all countries listen to kpop. A norwegian puppy or a belizean puppy - they all love it! I'm central european, now living in Phnom Penh where local khmer kids dance to kpop in parks. Few nights ago they were swaying their hips to Abracadabra :D

Three people like that the groups don't have to sing about sex, money, and drugs.

I think this is my favorite bit of meta:

At first when I listened to [SNSD's] music, I didn't like it and I sorta became an anti. (I think that to like a group you have to be a bit negative to see if you prefer them. If their music and personality can persuade you then they are a good group. A group must be able to have strong persuasion to have fans)

Best food reference (in regard to Onew of SHINee):

Onew- he's adorable, he's sweet, he's kind of awkward, he loves chicken (and I do too), and his voice is amazing; though he's quiet, he's a good leader.

Most emblematic authenticity argument:

What are MY favourite groups and why?

Well .... I love mostly YG's lol. BigBang&2NE1. 2NE1, because i just love their music that they sing. I mean it's just so beautiful, and has a good feeling, it gets my emotions inside. That song ugly. It really got to me how they're calling themselves ugly. When everyone is unique, and pretty in the inside. I think their song just like gives a message to the people who think they are ugly. 2NE1 i think is just amazing, they don't care about anything. Especially Dara's hair, does she care that everyone thinks her hair is crazy no? I just love it how they all got their style, and just care about their own opinions. I love it how their different from other bands. I mean do other bands have the guts to call themselves ugly in a song? Narhh they don't! 2ne1 sings sad songs, and even their hyper songs have some feeling and emotion init for some reason !

BigBang, GOSH where do i start. Well most of the reasons are in 2NE1, some of them are not very attractive. But they don't care too, do they lolz. Bigbang's music is just A-MAZIN-G! I love their new album Alive. I like Fantastic Baby, the most yes because it's hyper. But through all the drama they went through, this is like the song that just says to me ' WOW BIGBANG IS BACK!'. With all the drama, u wud think BigBang's party-songs are gone. I love BLUE though, its like a starting-new fresh song if you get me. Like the songs 'i'm sing my bluee-oo' the songs feeling just makes me think their syaing bye to the drama and starting fresh and stuff like that. Bad Boy was like wow. I didn't understand the meaning of it, but it was a good song. What i like the most about them both is that they only got a few members! I can easily remember the members now. Bigbang - 5Members (TAEYANG, T.O.P, G-DRAGON, DAESUNG, SEUNGRI) 2NE1 - 4Members (PARK BOM, SANDARA PARK, MINZY, CL)

Anyone reading this can answer in the comments, if you'd like, even if you are Korean. How does one define "Non-Korean" anyway? I'd say that I'm non-Ukrainian, non-Belarussian, non-Russian, non-Polish, non-Austrian, nonshtetl, non-European, non-Yiddish, etc., though I could claim all those ethnicities (or whatever) under certain circumstances. By the way, the first-released (though unauthorized) version of "Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)" was not by SNSD but by an Uzbek. Not that Uzbekistan is anywhere near the Ukraine. But it's closer to the Ukraine than to Korea.

"Dineyra - Raqsga tushgin uzbek song" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[trevitron.livejournal.com]

"How did you find out and learn about kpop?"

It was a very random way. My girlfriend started watching K-dramas after she discovered them through Netflix, then she started talking to her sister-in-law (she's Salvadoran; my girlfriend is Cambodian) who had also been into K-dramas (as well as K-pop) and, through her, discovered the video for Dara's song "Kiss." The reason why my girlfriend even watched that video in the first place had nothing to do with the music (K-dramas use a lot of K-pop singers for their soundtracks but it the music doesn't sound "K-poppy") but was instead because it starred Lee Min-ho as Dara's love interest (and he's my girlfriend's favorite K-drama actor). Then probably through the "Related Videos" thing on YouTube, we discovered 2NE1 and pretty much fell in love with them that night. That was around October of last year, and I spent the next couple of months listening to pretty much 2NE1 exclusively while slowly expanding to discover other groups.

"Why do you love it?"

I've already written a lot on this topic (probably more than most would want to read), so I'll just distill it down to its essence: I love K-pop because it does everything I like about pop music better than anything else today. It's virtually never cynical, there's no shame about being pop music, and there's a good, proper respect for the value and power of a great song performed well. It's experimental/creative in all the ways that matter to me, and it's a culture that is explicitly welcoming (its presence on YouTube is emblematic of that). And like the way someone woud describe a great television show or play, it's "got great characters." The idols (male and female) are beautiful, interesting, and talented people, the kind you want to see more of and know more about. They take on an importance above and beyond the music itself without overshadowing it.

"What is your ethnicity/nationality?

I am American and I would describe myself as "white" more than I would in terms of my ethnicities (German, Polish, Czech).

"What are your favorite groups and why? What are your favorite songs and why?"

2NE1 is my favorite and I can't imagine that changing anytime soon. I hate to say I like them because they are "different" because everything that they are different from is also stuff I adore. I guess it's mostly that they are four strong females with distinct personalities. I don't see any conflict between liking someone like CL, who is a dominant personality whose persona would seem to suggest that she could make any man her bitch, and liking someone like Sunny, who seems like the total opposite (even though anyone who pays attention can see she knows how to be in control in her own way).

Aside from 2NE1, my other favorite groups are Girls' Generation, Big Bang, 4minute, T-ara, and f(x).

I think the two best K-pop songs are "Gee" and "Sorry, Sorry." They sound so perfect, you feel like it's somehow necessary for them to exist. Their hooks feel simple, but the more I listen to them, the more complexity I discover in the actual recordings. In some sense, I'm drawn to songs like this because they recapture something of the classicism that was valued prior to modernity that I'm nostalgic for, in the idea that a design can aspire towards perfection (something like the golden ratio). (Which is probably another thing I like about K-pop: it's a musical culture largely unburdened, if influenced in oblique ways, by modern Western aesthetic thinking, about which I feel rather ambivalent.)

I don't mention a 2NE1 song specifically, even though they are my favorite group, because I just like everything they do so much. But if I had to choose one, lately my pick would be "Lonely." To me, it sounds like the kind of perfect song that everyone should know, and people should play it and sing along with it in big groups around campfires (despite the incongruence of that given the song's meaning, or maybe because of that, who knows?).

"Do you prefer boy groups over girl groups or both?"

I would say I favor girls to boys by a 3-to-1 ratio.

[koganbot]

"Kiss" was a video I saw early in my K-pop education, sometime in mid 2010, embedded by anhh or Mat. First K-pop story vid — typical of the genre in that it's one you have to puzzle over — that truly touched me (story vid as opposed to excellent provocations like "Shake!" which anhh embedded at about the same time). Love the end where Dara rejects the expensive ring but secretly keeps the free beer-tab ring that the guy also gave her, the authentic boy hiding inside the rich boy winning her heart.



Presume the vid was paid for by a beer company.

[koganbot]

Funny: cutie-pie Sunny seems scarily formidable to me, someone I think of in the same way I think of Hillary Clinton. Whereas strong rapper girl CL is indeed strong but also adorably joyous and spontaneous, feelings on the surface, hurts and happiness, and unlike Sunny isn't so much trying to control the room but rather is insisting in finding a place in it where she can flourish in all her aspects.

[koganbot]

Video for Sandara's "Kiss":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr2PH0OWqLo