Okay. Maybe not OCCUPY but there are plenty of reasons why I would say that K pop exists in the USA.
1. Many K pop contests, concerts, and thus recognition in NY and CA areas.
2. Extremely high rate of participation for K pop auditions like SuperStarK or The Birth.
3. Attempts to make new groups modeled off of K pop artists.
Sorry about the people who may not be a US citizens, however, the viewers for my blog so far has been from the USA, and I think it is important to note how important K pop is in the USA.
But I digress; let's get back to the subject.
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| 2NE1, the most influential girl group outside of South Korea. |
Secondly, I chose the high participation rate from American region in K pop auditions. These auditions follows the format that is somewhat like American Idol but for K pop. Although the audition programs are very young, (the oldest one SuperStarK is only three years old, as in 2011) the high rate of participation from everywhere around the world has gained a lot of attention. One of the American participant, Shane actually is the one who got the most attention as a foreigner because he made it to top 6 in the audition program, The Birth.
Now, the third evidence that I have may be somewhat misleading. You will know why as I explain.
So there is a group called Heart 2 Heart, whose concepts and ideas are adopted obviously from K pop. But the responses to their debut was absolutely FAIL. If you want to check them out, the video is down below.
Anyways, whether this is a joke, as many people say, or not, one clear thing is that K pop is influencing American market to the extent that it is being mimicked by American entertainment companies. Now that I think about it, you've got to check this video out as well, by a boy group TeenTop, who is considered one of the sloppier group but still does a great job explaining where Heart 2 Heart came from.
This post is actually made because of your comments, and I will still post about something that you guys want to know about in the future. So please feel free to ask questions, write a comment, and get a new response from me :) I think I will be posting only one another post, because I have a plane schedule this week... :(
But just keep commenting or ask me questions; I appreciate it a lot! Alrighty. See youuuu!!
i absolutely agree with his opinion about today's post. There are a lot of k pop performances which being practiced in the US now. Not only k pop singers show up at concert in America, but school students also participate into k pop music. For example, in high school, after first half of basketball game, cheerleaders started to dance with k pop music for more than 20 mins. This is rare situation to watch. Therefore, I can say that k pop is now widely known to a lot of people in the America.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that new piece of information! I could not find enough of official evidences that K pop is known in the USA, but now that I think about it, I think I should have focused on more colloquial examples, since K pop is not conveyed top to bottom but bottom to top, if you know what I mean :)
ReplyDeleteI found it really interesting reading about K pop in the US, because honestly it's something that I've never really heard mentioned in my life. Especially with that group winning the MTV award; K pop is general seems to be under the radar in the US. Its funny how some aspects of other cultures around the world can become so well known and popular in the US, but something like K pop (which I think is a fantastic genre) is something that I've never really been exposed to. Or maybe I have been, but I never payed attention to it. I'm really glad you started this blog, because I'm legitimately interested in learning more about this .
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