While I was at the gym, I saw this story play in the locker room television. Long story short, it’s basically how Korean music, AKA K-Pop has risen to heights now reaching global popularity. So high, to the point where there are apparently K-Pop conventions popping up in the United States, where thousands of rabid K-Pop fans in from the United States flock to, despite the fact that they have very little clue to what any of the lyrics actually mean.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, considering my own past where I had a phase where I really liked Japanese music, despite only knowing that just about every word meant “destiny,” “protect,” and several other constantly recycled clichéd lyrics. But the difference with me is that I never fawned over these Japanese groups like all these people are fawning over their favorite K-Pop groups. Unlike the blatant false claims that “it’s just about the music,” that’s all it was to me: catchy music that I liked, not an infatuation with the performers themselves, like these rabid K-Pop fans are obviously demonstrating.
But what eats at me about this whole phenomenon is the fact that in a way, I’m glad to see that something from Korean is globally popular, and it brings Japanese culture down a notch in the process, but ultimately, it’s a very convoluted thing. As the video goes into detail, all these K-Pop stars go through as much plastic surgery as Michael Jackson to transform themselves into the visually flawless hollow idols that strip away a lot of their physical features that make them well, Korean.
Eyelid surgeries, eye-widening and nose reconstruction just to name a few, when it’s all over, there’s small armies of bleached-hair and race-ambiguous looking dancers with headsets parading around a stage with lights and fog machines. It’s hard to really call them Koreans anymore, as far as I’m concerned.
Yet it’s these artificial Koreans who have won over fans on an international basis. A part of me is happy that at least at the core, these Koreans have succeeded in doing such, but the other part of me is disappointed that they’re so physically augmented to where they don’t even look like Koreans anymore. Yes, I’m aware PSY kind of breaks the mold, and actually supersedes everyone else, but despite the fact that he opened the eyes of the world to K-Pop, it’s the false dolls that are doing the rest of the legwork.
The best part about this whole segment is that the Korean reporter obviously emotes undertones of feeling the same way I do. She’s as amazed as I am that Koreans are definitely en vogue right now, but it’s still somewhat artificial. She doesn’t sum it up any better than the quote she drops at the very end:
When I grew up, it was definitely not COOL to be Korean.
But things have certainly changed.
And from the tone of her delivery, I’m not hard-pressed to think that she believes the change is most certainly bittersweet as well.
