K-pop is undoubtedly a visual industry. Groups have “visual” members, change their concepts with each comeback and do their utmost to sear every frame and shot from every performance, photo shoot and music video in the minds of the fandom. Even the fandom is visually oriented, with fans creating art, photo manipulations, GIF sets and more, all as their way in participating in their respective fan community.
We at Seoulbeats consider our commentary to be our way of interacting with the media we consume and the fandom we came from, but our medium is more often than not the written word. While we obviously enjoy sharing our thoughts in such a way, the visual aspect of K-pop, and all of Korean entertainment really, often falls to the wayside in favor of the substance and depth of our content. Of course, that is not at all a problem. But given that the industry on which we’re commenting is so much about what we see, shouldn’t we find a way to incorporate a visual aspect more into our content?
The editorial team has been working for quite some time on moving Seoulbeats forward with a number of changes. We have unrolled many of these internally but are finally moving to the exciting part where we get to share changes with you our readers, the first of which is Highlights, a quarterly magazine that basically spotlights select articles from the past season.
The first issue of Highlights covers January through March of 2016. When first published on the site, some of the articles were popular, others were controversial, and still others passed under the radar. One or two articles are even exclusive to the magazine and not on the site. The criteria for Highlights is intentionally nebulous and vague: articles the editors believe deserve a second perusal. We want it to be open-ended with each issue different from the previous.
We hope that you enjoy the first volume of Highlights and look forward to sharing more with you in the future.
Since this is the first time we’re doing something like this, we would appreciate your feedback. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please share them with us below.
(Image via Cosmopolitan)
