My Ultimate Guilty Pleasure: Korean Pop Music PART 1

The title tells it all. For the next week, I'm going to write about my ULTIMATE guilty pleasure in not just my music tastes, but heck, life! The undeniably catchy and highly addictive Korean pop culture...particularly music. Although I will mostly concentrate on music, unlike America, most Korean artists are bind to acting, emceeing/hosting variety shows, CF (commercial film), modeling, and endorsements arranged by their label. This is a trend that is vastly growing among Asian countries.

I'll start off with the boy-band craze. Ahh yes, remember the good ole' days of Backstreet boys, LFO, and N'sync? Well Korea is yet to get past the stage of boy bands.

1. SUPER JUNIOR- A 13, YES, 13 member boy band!One is missing in the following video, because one of the members were busy with a role in a movie. This is their smash hit "Sorry Sorry", choreographed by Nick Bass who has worked with Justin Timberlake and Usher.



2. 2PM- Every 13 year old girl in Korea dreams about these boys. 2PM is different from Super Junior because they are a bit more "westernized". 3 out of the 7 members grew up from the United States and are actually MUCH more comfortable in speaking English.



Here is a clip of 2 members, Jaebeom and Nick Khun, singing a cover of Usher's Confessions...


Members of both Super Junior and 2pm have been trained since their pre-teen years. Basically, they leave their parents and family (their home) and live in a dorm with other trainees. Training, which typically lasts 2 years minimum, consists of dance, singing, acting, and a whole lot of plastic surgery <----that's one topic that I can write a Ph.D thesis paper on!

Ok that's all for today. I don't know how those pro bloggers do this everyday. There is SO MUCH MORE I can talk about. But I really gotta hit the books. Next blog post will be about the Girl groups that make every girl in Korea running to plastic surgeons and go on the "corn diet". It's a love and hate relationship.