Sasaengs, Ulzzangs and Mukbangs? If all these new fangled terms have you culture or generation gapped or – let’s face it: you’re just a sucker for interesting popcultural phenomena, the latest installement of Strange Kpop is just for you!
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While most Scandinavian stuff makes me feel like Jordan Belfort on particularly vintage quaaludes, the series SKAM and recently Young Royals have really surprised me.
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The Kpop scene is like a pressure cooker for strange new concepts. The expression ending fairy might conjure up images of some unusually ill willed magical creature tap dancing at the end of the world and while there certrainly are quite a few men who would be considered effeminate within Kpop, this expression has nothing to do with gender nor feminine behaviour. Ending fairy is both more simple and, at the same time, more complex than that.
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With a resounding 5.1 IMDB score and a rumoured “love to hate” reception from native Singaporeans, is Singapore Social worth a watch? Is there something there for both the docu-soap aficionado as well as someone interested in getting a glimpse or immersing themselves into the social life of Singapore?
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As you get deeper into the wondrous and strange world of Kpop you’ll encounter a few expressions that sound intriguing but whose cultural meaning and nuance escapes you. There are few that capture the cultural uniqueness of South Korea and Kpop like “Let’s walk the Flower Road” or alternatively “Let’s only walk the flower road”. A saying with multiple meanings and used in several different contexts that has fascinated me since I heard it the first time. Let me take some of your time to tell you about what I’ve come to understand about it.
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I used to hate doing burpees until i found the right song to motivate me. An upbeat Kpop production called “Deep blue eyes”. A song that had randomly found its way onto one of my playlists. The song was performed by the “Girls Next Door”, a girl group that was new to me. Watching the “Deep Blue Eyes” video on Youtube I realised it was a collaboration between several artists, a few of which I was familiar with. The song had been made to promote the variety show “Idol Operations Team” which in turn was a promotion and kind of behinds-the-scenes series about the web drama “Let’s only walk the Flower Road” that was written in an autobiographical style by the participants of Idol Drama Operations Team. Complicated? You bet! Kpop doesn’t become more meta than this…
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With the need for escapism and anaesthetics for the soul never having been stronger and realising that the normal regimen of Tales of Off World Colonies and heartbreak in Seoul simply doesn’t seem to cut it, attention has started to gravitate towards video content created in some of the places I find the most intriguing as well as some that are already favourites – like Japan and large cities and urban areas. Read more about how to, in the year of the Virus, astrally project with the help of some great content creators on Youtube. Read the third installment of Travel without Travelling.
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If you think that the Japanese have a peculiar and intense relationship to cute things and cuteness the Koreans may well have the Japanese beat – If being “gyo”, ie cute has a special place in the hierarchical and confucianistic Korean society, then “aegyo” is the act of being cute. In its hardest to digest form, aegyo is both artificial, a part of the both the age and gender oriented social system and blatantly incentivised by gaining the performing individual something from someone else. For all intents and purposes aegyo has a lot of potential to culture-gap you to the point of being nauseous. Don’t let that deter you though – read on to enjoy all the intricacies of Aegyo!
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No matter if you’re a fan of the irresistible force of the Tsundere SinB or an admirer of the ditzy yet mysterious Eunha, the month of May had some really upsetting news in store for Gfriend fans. At the height of success having released the massively popular single Mago as the follow up to a string of successful releases and hits during the past years, the Kpop equivalent of Donna Tartts Secret History: Gfriend, abruptly announced that the 6 year old group had disbanded and left Source Music, the now subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment of BTS fame. What the heck happened?
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