nanoomi

This week we review 2NE1’s Lonely and try to figure out what’s up with their creepy apartment. Read the full story

By Iwazaru

Just when you thought that girl idol groups in Korea were reaching every area of the populace and setting records while doing it, we now have a new youngest group that beats the record set by members of a group called i13 (Yes, they had 13 members and three of them were 12 when they debuted in 2005) and matched by GP Basic’s Janey, who was 12 when they debuted last summer (she’s a whopping 13 now!). i13, if you care, fell off the map.

But onto our new record holders, Girl Story, whose two youngest members are 9 with the elder members of the group coming in at 10 and 11.  The group launched into the K-pop scene at the end of December with the debut song “Pinky Pinky” and are being labeled, appropriately, kid idols.  Some detractors have, amazingly, popped up, voicing discontent and disgust with such young girls entering the market when they should be doing other things like being girls.

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(All images from the first page of Google image results for “Korean culture”) first image

The last time I talked about Korean culture, I crossed swords comments with a commenter…

On “Lee Hyori Gets It” we argued a bit about the one blood thing, and I’d like to address a few points raised there.

First, I’ve figured out why one of my commenters and I have been disagreeing so strongly, and it’s a simple reason: Our definitions of culture are different.  One of my favorite topics to bring into my old conversation classes was this handout of four opinions, each suggesting a different view on the cultural changes that have come through Korea lately. You can see it here – it offers four points of view on Korea’s culture.

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This week we review B2ST “Beautiful” and try to figure out what’s up with the baby-making music. I mean, seriously, did you hear the English in it? Not all of it’s baby-making music, of course, but if you’re gonna say “let’s make a love baby” then I’m pretty sure you’re talking about having sex. But do the writers of the song know it? Who knows, but we felt the need to talk about it anyways.

For the original post on B2ST’s “Beautiful” or for more K-pop in general, check out our Korea blog!

In a K-pop-heavy round-up of Korean tech/social media blogs:

• Bloter.net has an interview with Joyce Kim, who after a stellar academic career (Cornell, Harvard, law school) decided to ditch her job as a lawyer and start up Soompi.com, a site aimed at making Korean films, soap operas and pop music more accessible to English speakers. The article begins with some observations about how hard it is, language issues aside, for foreigners to access sites offering Korean dramas and K-pop music (Korea’s real-name registration system, Korean sites’ insistence on using Internet Explorer, and the dearth of English-language sites in the US).
  Kim says her site now gets more than 1.2 million hits a month (of whom only 10 percent are Korean) and that Korean pop culture has enormous potential among American youngsters, who Kim reckons view Hollywood as increasingly stale. About the difficulties facing start-ups in Korea, Kim has this to say:

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So “Superstar K” is the Korean counterpart to “American Idol”

Wifeoseyo has been totally enrapt in this show: she had her favorites, and rooted for them, and the final was this weekend.

There’s more on the finalists at ALLKPOP

The two finalists were John Park – known by some as the Korean-American American Idol contestant from a previous season, and Huh-Gak, a shorter, less handsome guy, but all-Korean.

Here’s Huh-Gak, in one of the performances that hasn’t been taken down from Youtube because of copyright violations.

Here’s John Park, singing “Man in the Mirror” from a previous episode: his English is stronger than his Korean, and Wifeoseyo says this was the best song of the “Michael Jackson Tribute” episode.

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It’s time for another edition of Kpop Music Mondays! Last week we reviewed “SHINee’s Lucifer.” This week we review one of 2NE1’s three new songs, “Can’t Nobody” Read the full story

The Korean offered some Korean indie music history as he selected PiPi Band/Pipi Long Stocking as number 50 on his 50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists list: 50 Most Influential K-Pop Artists: 50. Pipi Band/Pipi Longstocking.

Although I was more or less completely unaware of the existence of any kind of alternative music – let alone independent stuff – at the time, Pipi LongStocking was my first encounter with non-mainstream Korean music. I was big on Seo Taiji & The Boys back then, after a friend had traded her copy of Goodbye Best Album for a bunch of N Sync and/or Backstreet Boys posters, and doing some after-school Internet surfing I came across a fan site dedicated to both bands.

I can’t recall if I ever actually listened to Pipi LongStocking (If I did I probably thought it too weird to let it load more than a few seconds. Those things took a lot of time in 1997 – time I’d rather spend buffering H.O.T. music videos in tiny resolution as I was in the middle of changing BSB for H.O.T. as my definite favorite boy band), but I remember thinking it was incredibly cool that some Korean band had taken the name from a character in a Swedish children’s book.

Via Ask a Korean:

You can see the original post at IndiefulROK.

Hi hi hi.
So here we are again! Ah, at last the weather is starting to get a little nicer.
To start the playlist, hit play and navigate to and from videos using the arrows on the sides of the box.
The first half of the playlist is new MVs, second half live performances.

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