K-Pop is the term used for Korea’s home grown genre of pop music, and I’m not ashamed to say that I am rather a big fan. Sugary sweet bubblegum pop with infuriatingly catchy beats, it is vaguely reminiscent of 90’s pop bands like Steps and S Club 7 that I adored as a kid.
K-Pop dominates the Korean music scene and the phenomenon is now spreading to the rest of East and South-East Asia, and even America.
What may have started as merely a music genre is now as much a part of Korean daily life as kimchi. It’s in your head, it’s in the classroom, it’s in the street; there’s almost no escaping it. Even if you were to don earplugs and manage to escape the music, there’s still the copious amounts of merchandise to cope with (they even have K-Pop biscuits!). Oh, and the dancing! Almost every music video features a highly choreographed dance routine, memorised and performed by kids up and down the country.
With it’s unique blend of cuteness, kitsch and synthesizers I really can’t see it being long before K-Pop makes an appearance in the charts at home.
Personal favourites so far include…
T-ara – Roly Poly Wondergirls – Nobody Kara – Step
Girls’ Generation – The Boys 2NE1 – Hate You BigBang – Tonight
(Click the links to see their music videos!)
