7 Signs You May Be Addicted to K-Pop

Hello, my name is Andy. And I have a K-pop addiction. Who else is with me? For sure there are numerous hands in the air, but some K-pop fans may not be…

K-pop and the Middle East: The Friction

Exporting pop culture is difficult, in the sense that it’s not a tangible product that can be consumed or used by customers. It’s an idea that envelope…

When Girl Groups Go Hard

Music has always been used to deliver a message -- on one hand it may be to neuter the masses and quench any individual thought, whilst on the other ha…

A Quick Guide to Being Part of the K-pop Fandom

If you’ve been keeping up with my “Quick Guide” series, you probably have a K-pop bias and may have some K-pop friends to share your hobby with by now.…

Roundtable: Self-Reflection Time

Let us to catch our breaths this week from the whirlwind of news and releases in the Hallyu world and focus inward on how we perceive who we are as par…

What’s a Korean Beauty?: Comparing Cultural Constructs

Recently, Yahoo! Singapore did an article about the growing trend of Singaporean women heading to South Korea to do plastic surgery. The Singaporean me…

K-pop: More Than Pop

Most people hear the word “pop” and take it in the traditional sense of the genre. They think of the same Top 40 singers flooding the airwaves such as …

In Defense of K-pop: Why Its Songs Do, and Should, Sound the Same

In light of the new song from Psy,  it feels rather appropriate to discuss what it means to be “original” in music, seeing that “Gentleman” is causing …

A-Head of the Curve: AKB48’s Minegishi Minami as Revolutionary

On January 31, 2013, weekly Japanese tabloid Shukan Bunshun featured pictures of AKB48 member Minegishi Minami leaving the apartment of Generations mem…

Authenticity, K-pop and the West: Part 1

Fake! It’s a word inundating the comment section of English articles on K-pop, if not heavily insinuated by the authors themselves. To most Western …