Ever since I was in elementary school, I obsessed over various bands, movies, books, celebrities, and pretty much anything in pop culture. I spent most of my free time running many fan accounts talking about my obsession, posting 'fun facts', editing photos, creating memes, buying merchandise, and even finding other people online and in real life to fangirl with. My whole family thought it was just a 'phase' and that I'll get over it once I get into college- surprisingly, they were wrong.
My interest in Korean Pop, commonly known as K-Pop started when I was starting middle school. I stumbled upon a recommended YouTube video titled "Oh!" by Girls' Generation on YouTube. I was curious about how Korean Pop music sounded like, so I decided to give it a try. I was mesmerized by the colorful visuals and aesthetics, catchy sounds, and fun choreography to the point that I added it to my "favorites" YouTube playlist and started to learn all of the members' names. After, I started to become a fan of other groups, such as Infinite, 2NE1, f(x), and Wonder Girls.
From there, I decided to open up my first K-Pop Twitter fan account. I followed other K-Pop fans, hoping that they will follow me back. I tried to strike as many conversations with others, hoping that I will make friends. After a couple of months of being in the K-Pop fandom, I felt like I was truly included...like a family. Most of the people that I knew in the fandom were nice and pretty chill, which made my experience amazing. To be honest, my early time in the K-Pop fandom felt different from the other fandoms I was in previously because of how uncommon K-Pop was back then. I am truly thankful for the positive experience when I was a new K-Pop fan, but I slowly experienced negative situations from my cousins and classmates.
I was teased by my cousins and previous classmates because they claim that listening to music in a different language is weird. Honestly, I never thought of it as weird because it is still music. I may not understand what the artists are singing about, but the song is pleasant and catchy to my ears. Come on, music is a universal language! As time passed, I did not care of what others around me thought because I had my online friends on my side.
When I started high school, I decided that I would start studying the Korean language and culture in my own time because K-Pop made me interested. I tried to look for resources online to learn from, but I had a lot of extracurriculars and classwork to focus on. During my high school years, I tried to eat at various Korean restaurants and cook several recipes that I found online to try out the foods. This helped me expand my horizons. When I entered college, I knew that I would have more free time to study Korean, so I started to purchase various textbooks to help me in my studies.
Other than that, I was also scared of being judged for liking K-Pop once I started college because of the negative experience that I went through. I slowly dreaded the ice-breaker activities that my instructors would make us do on the first day of class, and I hoped that they would skip to the part where we talk about the syllabus. My life changed during the fall quarter of 2019. One of my instructors partnered me up with someone for an ice-breaker where we talked about ourselves and our favorite genres of music. The person mentioned that they liked listening to K-Pop, and I became surprised. I mentioned that I also liked K-pop, and we started to exchange social media handles. From there, that person introduced me to other people that he knew who also liked K-Pop. I finally found my tribe.
It took a long time for me to find people who also liked K-Pop, and it was worth the wait. However, I can say that K-Pop changed my life in several ways. It helped me feel like I truly belonged in a community in real life and online. Now I have many people to talk about K-Pop or other things. Other than learning about Korean culture and getting to know it, I am now able to understand many more. Looking at the K-Pop fan culture now, I am glad that many people are trying to listen to K-Pop, and I hope that the music genre will influence them positively, just like me.
