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Girls’ Generation, (also known as SoShi (소시) or SNSD) the K-Pop (Korean Pop) sensations who dominate the Asian airwaves brought their talent to “The Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS Tuesday night. For their first U.S. television appearance, they performed a English-language version remix of their very sexy hit song “The Boys”. The nine-member supergroup has already had success in the United States with a sold out show last October at Madison Square Garden with other K-Pop acts and with their YouTube videos.

The group debuted in 2007 and are now the number one Korean girl band. They were formed by S.M. Entertainment and took off before they even released any music! At the time, they starred in a documentary called “Mnet Girls’ Generation Goes to School” that showed them moving into an apartment and preparing to release their first single. “Into the New World” was released in August 2007 and made it to the #1 spot on Korean music program “M! Countdown”. Five years later, now much more sexy than cute, these young women are taking America by storm. Their YouTube video for the song “Gee” has over 64,570,000 views and most of their other videos have well over 1 million views. They are a pre-teen girls dream group, and a young man’s dream come true.

Watching their early videos, it is clear that these girls were headed to the top, and they’ve made it. They have hit after hit and have starred in many TV programs all over the world. There’s also the Girls’ Generation number one books, posters and a staggering amount of endorsement deals. In December, “The Boys” became the number one selling album in Korea for 2011. They have tons of awards, most recently winning two Golden Disk Awards on January 12th (including the best award given, the “Digital Daesang”) and two awards from the Seoul Music Awards on January 19th. To round off their great January, they did the David Letterman show Tuesday night and will perform on “Live! with Kelly” this morning. Hopefully, they will be a huge hit in America.

Girls’ Generation: Taeyeon, Jessica, Sunny, Tiffany, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sooyoung, Yoona and Seohyun. Their ages are between 20-22. Members Jessica, Sunny and Tiffany are all from California.

Photo: Sry85

© Margie Wilson-Mars 2012

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The three “Inki Gayo” MC’s Nicole, IU, and Koo Hara transformed into K-Pop Doctors during the February 5^th episode of the music program. The three singers, donning white lab coats, acted as scientists delving into the research of K-Pop’s success.

In addition to lab coats, Nicole wore a headband with a big red and white bow, IU pinned two blue bows with polka dots to her chest, and Koo Hara sported a headband with a black sparkly bow. These accessories added an adorable touch to the girls’ ‘lab-look’ leaving male fans doting over their cuteness.

This week’s “Inki Gayo” featured MBLAQ, T-ara, Se7en, FT Island, J-Cera, NS Yoonji, Rainbow Pixie, Sunny Hill, Teen Top, ChAOS, Dalshabet, Nine Muses, Boyfriend, Brian, B.A.P, DIA, X-5, and Block B. 

“Balmain to KTZ / Many styles from A- Zee / Jeremy Scott, Givenchy / Bitch, you ain’t got shit on me!” ‘Can’t Nobody’ – 2NE1

K-pop. Korea’s unabashed, high-octane celebration of helium-filled vocals, fashion labels and style initially played second fiddle to her bigger brother J-pop, restyling a Euro-pop sound for the Asian market. In turn, it smashed the shores of the West. Japanese stars might have laid the groundwork with franchises like Pokemon and Japanese pop stars providing the vocals for video games back in 2004, but since then K-pop has grown, and now, outlandishly dressed she has barged her way into the US and European music scene. The speed of K-pop’s rise to popularity is impressive. Distributed and disseminated at an accelerated pace that only the Internet can provide, its urgency and immediacy runs like a pulse. And its palpitations are being felt all over the globe.

A quick low-down. This year Time magazine readers voted K-pop male idol Rain one of the most influential people of the year. Big Bang, a K-pop band, reached the US iTunes Top Ten album chart, and in August this year picked up an MTV VMA. “K-pop is a massive industry,” Time noted, and, with global sales worth over £18 million in 2009 and doubling year-on-year, they have a point.

It is interesting that while in the US and Europe contemporary pop music often aims for loftier lyrics, Korean pop shows an honest and funny disregard for such pretensions. Take Rihanna’s and Calvin Harris’ ‘We Found Love’ as an example. Even though Harris might add a racy amphetamine backdrop to a thoughtful meditation on love, the video seemed to take its cue from art house film. K-pop, in contrast, doesn’t care one bit for such gritty aspirations. K-pop is a look for the plasma screen generation. Life is a screen saver. Save it, upload it and share it with your friends.

When contemporary Western pop does opt for an uplifting tinny sound it goes for the ubiquitous hum of auto-tune that permeates nearly every chart music track. K-pop largely focuses on cartoonish vocals, shoehorning English lyrics into bubblegum BPMs. Most K-pop tracks are littered with meaningless ciphers and phrases that sound like Korean expressions having been force-fed through online translators where what you get, is what you get. Tumblr, YouTube and Twitter have all play their part in K-pop’s greater exposure, more then ever before generating fans all over the globe, not just Asia; from trendy East London kids listening to KARA on their iPods to American designer Jeremy Scott, who chose K-pop girl band 2NE1 to front his campaign for Adidas Originals, claiming that he listens to their music in his studio.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that someone like Scott would like K-pop. Scott is known for his own cute limited edition Adidas trainers and other sports wear. If Scott takes the masculine, graphic hard-edge of trainers and reinvents them with cuddly gawky pandas bear cubs, it is much a similar way as K-pop taking an existing template and overly liquoring it in sugary coats for aesthetic overload. Yeah, we are talking superficial, but K-pop does it unashamedly. This is refreshing. The irony is that K-pop could be far more sophisticated that it appears. While manufactured pop bands have always got it in the neck for essentially being a deception – i.e. false, contrived and untalented – K-pop celebrates that model by liberating it, injecting it with naïve and youthful energy to ridiculous ends that are somewhat surprisingly subversive. Of course, this is not coldly intended – it’s wonderfully by accident.

In K-pop videos, fashion labels are bandied about to ridiculous irreverence, treated more like theatrical props than clothing, upping the ante on anything Lady Gaga might aspire to. If they’re not wearing Balmain, well they’ll just throw on all the labels they name-drop in the lyrics for good measure. There’s a definite sense of androgyny with K-pop boy bands – boy bands and girl bands are often styled quite similarly, which can make for men looking effeminate. Which flies in the face of their western counterparts, who want a starker dichotomy between the boys and the gals.

The styling is all done by Korean stylists and is adored in equal measure by the bands’ fans. One of the most prominent K-pop stylists is Yang Seung Ho, who is said to have been drafted into the Korean army. He pioneered 2NE1’s style direction. 2NE1 are currently one of the most fashion-forward K-pop bands in the charts – possibly one of the most fashion-forward bands in the world! Their ‘I Am The Best’ video is an example of their “editorial” looking styling. When they’re not strutting about in latex, leather, and studs, they’re wearing brands such as Cassette Playa and Gareth Pugh. When it’s rumoured that even Lady Gaga finds it difficult to get the okay to use Pugh, the ease at which a K-pop band can don anything they want shows the respect and interest from the fashion houses over in the West. This doesn’t come cheap though.

Some bands consist of up to thirteen members, so producing a K-Pop band is a pricey business. Combined with the costs of choreographers, stylists, and extra marketing, a lot of stake is placed on the success of a band. South Korea’s pop industry is big business in Asia and the government is keen to promote its new national identity in the hope they could rival Japan’s universally cool cultural image. With K-pop turning into big business, the money at stake with K-pop is what could threaten its appeal. While an innocence and youthful disregard for the refined look, sound and appeal of Western pop is K-pop’s strength, it might well be undermined if money dictates the template. If this were to be such an influencing factor, how can we take the sparkling eyes and the garish smiles of band members in the same vein we take them now? But now is not the time to worry – just plug in and enjoy.

Words by Matthew Josephs

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SINGAPORE — Twelve-year-old Sabrina Kaur does not understand the lyrics of her favorite South Korean boy band Big Bang’s songs and, until recently, had never met Koreans in real life.

But that did not stop her from joining more than a thousand other Singaporean girls at an audition in the city-state in January to discover a new pan-Asian Korean pop (K-Pop) band to be promoted by a talent firm across the region.

“I want to be the first Indian (Singaporean) girl to join a Korean girl group,” she quipped moments before stepping into the audition room, outnumbered by aspirants from Singapore’s ethnic Chinese majority.

From pre-teens to retirees, millions of fans across Asia have transcended ethnic and age barriers to share a common obsession with South Korean pop music and dramas — a phenomenon known as the “Hallyu” or Korean cultural wave.

The industry is now trying to cement its hold on its fan base by creating non-Korean versions of the hugely popular stars and groups idolized by followers worldwide for their striking looks and slick productions.

“There is no turning back from here,” Eric Yun, CEO of talent search company Alpha Entertainment Korea, said at the Singapore audition, one of several planned for various Asian capitals.

Alpha’s rival SM Entertainment — which boasts South Korea’s biggest female group Girls’ Generation — recently announced plans to hold similar auditions for pan-Asian K-Pop stars in five different countries this year.

South Korea’s music industry held its star-studded Mnet Asian Music Awards in Macau in 2010 and in Singapore last November, breaking out of its domestic confines to further promote itself.

“After Asia, the next step is for Korean culture to conquer the world,” Yun told AFP.

The multi-million dollar-selling K-Pop industry has also set its sights on the Western pop world.

Girl’s Generation headlined a sold-out K-Pop show at Madison Square Garden in New York last year while Google has said it intends to set up a YouTube channel for Korean pop music.

South Korean popular culture first made major inroads into East Asian countries in the early 2000s with the widespread popularity of sensational romantic melodramas such as “Winter Sonata.”

Glamorous single-gender K-pop groups like Girls’ Generation, TVXQ, Super Junior and Shinee took the Hallyu explosion in the region to the next level.

According to a survey conducted by South Korea’s cultural ministry last year, there were an estimated 2.31 million Hallyu fans in Asia, based on memberships in official fan clubs alone.

Asia has already spawned other pop genres such as Bollywood song-and-dance routines and Hong Kong martial arts flicks, but Hallyu is distinct from past fads, according to Singapore-based cinema researcher Liew Kai Khiun.

“The spread of Korean popular culture is exceptional as it was not founded upon the traditional factors of military and economic dominance that characterized that of Western imperial powers, or the diaspora networks of India and China,” said Liew, who has been tracking South Korean popular culture for almost a decade.

Liew cited the globalization of American popular culture, which he said went in tandem with the US “imperial expansion” in the 20th century, as an example.

However, the jury is still out on whether non-Korean K-Pop performers will catch on.

“I have to admit that their look is one of the reasons that Thai people like Korean pop stars,” said Chanika Sriadulpun, editor for ‘The Boy Kimji’, a Thai magazine inspired by K-Pop.

The phenomenon does have its detractors who take umbrage at what they see as South Korea’s exhibition of soft power.

In August last year, thousands of Japanese staged rallies to protest against the Fuji TV network for allegedly “forcing” South Korean programmes on its audiences.

“We cannot stand the fabrication of a boom any longer,” read one placard held by a protester.

But 62-year-old Tokyo retiree Emiko Shimizu is unfazed, professing her love of Hallyu even though it might mean “dancing to the tune of South Korea’s export policy.”

In the Philippines, talent manager Chris Cahilig said he was worried that the Korean wave could seriously impede the growth of local talent.

He told AFP he was “deeply concerned” that “many of our youth have lost their Filipino identity and psyche due to their exposure and preference” for Korean entertainment.

Cahilig said that, compelled to capitalize on the Korean wave in 2010, he put together 1:43, an all-Filipino K-Pop-inspired boy band that became an instant hit.

The band’s debut album became one of the best-selling in the Philippines the following year.

Liew, the Singapore researcher, rejected such worries and said that on the contrary, the K-Pop phenomenon has had a positive impact on Asia’s entertainment scene.

The popularity of Hallyu has raised production standards that regional and local networks have “taken for granted for a long time,” he said.

February 04, 2012 13:19 PM

Falling In Love With Jawi Script

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By: Ramjit

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By Fadzli Ramli

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 (Bernama) — An academician in South Korea, a country known for its K-Pop culture, is a surprising admirer of the Malay jawi script.

This writer had the opportunity to talk to Prof Dr Kang Kyoung Seok of Busan University about his views on jawi script, which is synonymous with Malay society.

Dr Kang, 57, who is fluent in the Malay language, loves any subject that delves into jawi script, which he describes as “beautiful.”

“The Malay culture, from its songs, its lingo, which is so fine and soft, makes me fall in love with the beauty of jawi script,” said Dr Kang.

UNIQUE SCRIPT

Dr Kang’s love affair with jawi began in 1974 when he was a student at a South Korean university.

“My lecturer at that time told me that Malaysia has a beautiful script known as jawi, but when I asked what it was, he replied that he did not know.

“There was no book on jawi in Korea at that time, little reference. But this did not stop me from studying the script,” he said.

In 1982, Dr Kang met Abdul Ghani, a Muslim scholar from Pattani, Thailand, in Busan, and this was the start of his love affair with jawi script.

Through Abdul Ghani, Dr Kang began to know jawi and its writings. The book “Sejarah Melayu Pattani” (Pattani Malay History), which is written in jawi, became his favourite book.

DESTINATION MALAYSIA

This inspired Dr Kang to fly to Malaysia to learn more about jawi. In 1984, the academician received an offer he could not resist to study at Universiti Malaya (UM).

But the perception of South Koreans toward Malaysia was a major challenge to Dr Kang at that time.

“At that time, South Korea was not familiar with Malaysia, not like what it is now, where we are good friends. Koreans viewed Malaysia as an undeveloped country with many poor people and problems.

“My parents cried as they did not want me to come to Malaysia, but as I loved jawi script I insisted,” he said.

After studying jawi script for some time, Dr Kang was attracted to the Quran, which he describes as the priceless gift to all Muslims in the world.

“I am fascinated by the manner of the jawi scripts in the Quran, which are able to produce such a melodious recital. I used to hear the Quranic reciters assembly and it is beautiful and brings peace to my soul,” he said.

UNIQUE HERITAGE

Dr Kang said the present young Malaysian generation are not aware that they have inherited a unique heritage that is their identity and legacy.

“The condition of jawi scripts now is critical, as not many among the young generation know how to write and read jawi. There are not many jawi experts now, as those I have known have retired without anybody replacing them,” he explained.

Dr Kang joined Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) as a lecturer in 2010.

“UPSI is a university for teachers. When I teach them jawi scripts they will in turn teach their students so that more will come to know and use these scripts,” he said.

Dr Kang called on education authorities to revert from the Za’ba system to jawi spelling, which is simpler and easier to understand.

He said the media has a significant role to play to ensure that jawi is widely used.

Jawi newspapers such as Utusan Melayu should be given new life in order to attract Malaysians, he said.

He also called on institutions such as the National Translation Institute and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka to produce more books in jawi.

MALAYSIA A UNIQUE NATION

When he first came to Malaysia, Dr Kang said, he realised that it was wrong for South Koreans to believe that Malaysia was undeveloped.

“When I emerged from the airport, I saw development everywhere, tall buildings and all. I saw many luxury cars such as BMW and Mercedes,” he said.

Dr Kang said he is attracted to the plural society in Malaysia.

“When I first arrived in Malaysia, I was attracted to this concept , which was absent in Korea then. But as the world changes, more people of other ethnicities are coming to Korea.

“Therefore Korea learns to adapt to this, while in Malaysia it has been existence for a long time, and I learned from Malaysia,” he said.

Dr Kang is fascinated by the marriage of cultures that gives birth to a race that in turn has its own identity, such as the Baba and Nyonya in Melaka.

He said Malaysia is a country rich in various arts and culture, inherited from many centuries ago.

“And in the middle of all of these (cultures), we have the Malay culture that binds all. It attracts many researchers, including me,” he said.

He had this message for the younger generation of Malaysia: “It is good to like other cultures such as K-Pop, but there is no need to exceed the boundary, as there is the culture of our own to cherish.”

— BERNAMA

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