A Newbie’s Journey Into the Style and Fanaticism of K-Pop

Photo: Courtesy CJ E&M America

As of last week, the only Korean musical artist I could name with any sort of confidence was Psy—he of 2012’s viral hit “Gangnam Style.” I do, however, know an awful lot about the Korean beauty industry, which is how I came to moderate a panel on the subject at KCON, the annual festival celebrating Korean culture—featuring multiple K-pop acts as its main draw.



KCON had about 10,000 attendees when it launched in 2012. This year, more than 55,000 fans attended the festivities at L.A.’s Staples Center. Technically, the festival celebrates everything hallyu, a Korean word meaning ‘the Korean cultural wave.’ Since the early 2000s, South Korea has been a cultural juggernaut, pumping out addictive and melodramatic TV dramas, countless boy and girl bands, and fashion and beauty trends at a head-spinning pace. While people in Asia, and particularly China, were the first to embrace all of the pop culture coming out of Korea, it’s now gone global—at least if what I saw in L.A. is any indication.

Thirteen K-pop bands, including SISTAR, Got7, Super Junior, and SHINHWA, were scheduled to play concerts over two nights, as well as do meet-and-greets with rabid fans. Much has been written about the so-called K-pop “factory” that currently exists in Korea; it’s apparently very effective, producing mega-popular musical acts, many of which feature anywhere from three to nine members each. As of 2013, 244 bands had debuted within the preceding nine years.

Dan Chen, one half of the duo that runs the popular Asian culture YouTube channel “Off the Great Wall,” shed some light on why it works. “[The members] spend most of their lives training before they even debut. Each group is heavily curated and managed,” he said. “It’s basically like sports teams are [in the U.S.]. They’ve got PR, their colors, nicknames, a fan base. Each member has their own personality. It’s kind of like Backstreet Boys. You have each person appealing to a different demographic.”

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Photo: Courtesy CJ E&M America

This actually has a name in the K-pop world, which I discovered when I chatted with two young women—one of whom was in tears—at a meet-and-greet for Got7, a group comprised of seven very attractive young men. (To note: K-pop band members tend to be young and attractive.) In K-pop, your favorite is called your “bias.” Generally, you have an ultimate bias band, as well as an individual bias member within each group that you follow.

Nicki, 24, and Kat, 22, are the aforementioned fans. Kat was the lucky one who scored a “high touch” pass, which means that you get to stand in a line and file by the members who are sitting at a table and high five each member as you walk by. Nicki was in the audience watching on a giant screen; she was the one in tears. When I asked why she was crying, she said it was because she told Kat to tell Jr. (one of the members), that he was her favorite. Word is that Jr. was grateful. “I just started crying because I felt it through her, the thankfulness,” Nicki said. And that is K-pop fandom in a nutshell—tears and hysteria and joy and ear-splitting screeching.

There’s a certain style that comes with K-pop, too. Complementary, and sometimes even downright matchy-matchy, outfits define the genre. Each band has a look, and fans tend to adopt it, sometimes even taking it into cosplay territory. I saw a lot of recurring style themes amongst attendees, including but not limited to: cat ear headbands, rainbow hair dye, football jersey tops with or without pants, and medical-type masks worn over the mouth and printed with band names. No neutral minimalism, here—rainbow is K-pop’s favorite color.

Photo: Courtesy CJ E&M America

Not surprisingly, the majority of K-pop fans are young women. Allison, 17, told me that she first got into K-pop because a friend played her the video for “Lollipop” by 2NE1 (pronounced “twenty-one”) and Big Bang. (Watch it here. It’s better than Xanax.) “At first I didn’t think it was that cool, but Taeyang [a band member] had orange skinny jeans on and so I was sending it to everyone like, ‘Can you help me find these orange skinny jeans?’” Allison said. “Then I realized maybe it wasn’t that I wanted the orange skinny jeans, but I really just wanted everyone to watch this video because it was fun and colorful.”

Other fans I spoke to called out the energetic dancing, always perfectly choreographed and in sync. KCON offered multiple K-pop dance classes, and I would urge fitness entrepreneurs to develop it into a workout: K-pop dance could definitely be the new Zumba.

What stands out the most, though, is how multi-cultural and truly global K-pop seems to be. I saw tons of white and black kids who were just as fanatic about it as the Asian kids in attendance, which is impressive, given how many told me they don’t understand Korean. Allison plans to study Korean in college. Her older sister Riley, 22, is fluent in Korean, goes to Seoul about once a year, and now works for KCON. She said very matter-of-factly to me, “I was like, whatever, about [K-pop at first], but then I saw Shinee’s “Ring Ding Dong” music video and the member, Teamin—he’s really cute—and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, if I want to marry him, I’m going to have to learn Korean.’”

Photo: Courtesy CJ E&M America

K-pop is highly relatable to Westerners for a reason. Chen said, “I think [the reason] why it’s appealing to not just Koreans, but the whole world, is that it is a spectacle.” It’s also familiar. “They take influences heavily from American pop and rap and hip hop, and then they inject it with more swag and pizzazz,” he noted.

It’s also a kind and warm group of fans. I can’t tell you how many times I heard young women say to each other, “Oh, you look so pretty!”

Allison agreed. “It’s a very social thing to do. Everything’s really friendly,” she said. Fans connect with each other and the bands, which don’t tour in the U.S. very often, via a vast network on various social media channels—particularly YouTube and Instagram. In this age of musical beefs and Twitter wars, it’s nice to see bonding and camaraderie, especially with a dash of unicorn dust sprinkled in.

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