Big props for Johnny Noh and AllKpop for knowing that Kpop was going to be big and Time Magazine is now recognizing that. Time interviewed Johnny and others about the growing popularity of Korean pop music.
“Korean artists are now out there,” says Johnny Noh, who runs the (AllKpop) site. “People like [Korean artists] and want to know more about them.”
For many artists in Korea’s booming music industry, social media like YouTube and Twitter have become crucial tools to reach audiences in formerly hard-to-access markets like the U.S. and Europe. Korean artists are bypassing traditional outlets like radio and television, “aggressively steering their efforts to go international via the Internet,” says Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based agency specializing in the international marketing of Korean pop acts. “Social-media-savvy K-pop stars are now tweeting, YouTubing and Facebooking their way up music charts across and beyond Asia.”
Looks like those Kpop girls from South Korea are getting a little lonely in the states. They hang out a lot along Korea town in NY and that’s because the JYP Entertainment headquarters are a few blocks away. You’ll see glimpses of them together eating soondubu but never with a male companion. It sure must get lonely for these pop tarts and they share a little bit from their de facto website WonderfulsWorld.com.
Hollywood hunks like Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, and Robert Pattison have found fans in Korean girl group The Wonder Girls. But men not blessed in the genetics department needn’t fret. These girls are equally open to just about anybody and everybody as Park Ye-eun (better known as Yenny) says, “We don’t really care about races or colours.”
But so far, their love lives have been anything but colourful, “We haven’t really met boys in the states. We are quite busy touring all the states (in America),” she continued to explain.
Currently busy with the promotional activities for their latest English single, Nobody, the girls (Park Ye-eun, Min Sun Ye, Ahn Sohee, Kim Yubin, Yu Hae Lim) have their hands full preparing for the May/June worldwide release of their upcoming music album. It doesn’t help that it will be recorded with songs in three different languages (Korean, English, and Chinese) to “satisfy fans from all over the world.”
They’re the most successful Korean girl group in the US market, but the start before the breakthrough was all but bumpy. They were sent to attend English classes in America and confessed that “the language” was the biggest obstacle” for them.
The girls have had intensive English lessons for less than a year, and while their grasp of the language is far from perfect, there’s already an American accent when they speak. “Except Yubin, we’ve never lived in the US before, so we really needed to learn English very hard. And we’re still learning English very hard [now],” quipped Yenny in crisp American accent.
Despite being far from home, the girls aren’t worried about the increasing competition or losing base with their Korean fans.
“This is just a miracle to be able to do what we are doing now,” Min Sun Ye gushed in response while Yenny the most eloquent speaker of the group, reiterated, “We don’t really try to keep our place on top [of the game]. We just try to deliver our music and try to interact with fans.”
And their game plan for keeping in touch with international fans? Social media networking platform, Twitter.
“To be honest, that’s why we try to tweet a lot. We can still talk to our fans through twitter,” the giggly girls agreed in unison.
The quintet changed the landscape of K-pop in the world with their catchy rifts and signature dance moves in their hit song ‘Nobody’. And despite all that fame and success under their belts, they remained unbelievably humble and grounded when asked to differentiate themselves from other girl groups in Korea.
The group’s leader, Sun Ye, replied with a slight drawl, “Yeah, I wonder too.
“We are really not that pretty, and not that smart. We are not that good at singing and dancing, I think. We are just really grateful that people are enjoying our music, dance, and everything. Yeah, so thankful for that.”
Looks like fans will be in for a surprise this coming May/June. The girls played coy and refused to divulge details of their upcoming new concept. They hemmed and hawed for a few moments before Yenny flashed a cheeky grin and chirped, “No comments!”
The Wonder Girl’s latest music single, Nobody, is available at all leading record stores.
This is the second episode of Korean Beacon’s new Weekly Online Talk Show where our host, Christina Lee, will discuss a topic and ask viewers to send in their own comments and video responses to beacon (at) koreanbeacon (dot) com.
This week we share a few comments from last week’s Valentine’s day episode and leave you with the all too important question, Who is your favorite K-POP artist?
RAIN was in New York over the weekend to promote the Concept Korea Fashion Collective during New York’s Fashion Week. The event was held at the New York Public Library to promote the fashion sense coming out of Korea. Enjoy RAIN!
The power of the Internet (or Korean netizens) made the music video “Nobody” by the Wonder Girls as the video of the year (2009), according to an online poll conducted by musiqtone.com. The video received 37% of the overall vote among 80 eligible candidates. That’s a lot of voting from the devoted Wonder Girls’ fan base and probably from South Korea.
Musiqtone.com is a website that provides news and multimedia content about albums and music videos in the U.S.
KBS’s megahit IRIS will be premiering on DramaFever on Thursday, Jan 28. IRIS will be available in high quality streaming video with English subtitles. All three Korean broadcasters (MBC, SBS, and KBS) have now joined with DramaFever to bring the best Korean dramas online to the U.S. and Canada. IRIS will become part of a growing library that includes recent hits such as Shining Inheritance, Boys Over Flowers, and Queen Seon Duk, as well as classics such as Coffee Prince, My Lovely Samsoon, Land of Wind, Gourmet, Stairway to Heaven, My Girl, Hotelier, Sandglass, Jewel In The Palace and Jumong.
And DramaFever will soon be carrying more than just dramas. The documentary series Shocking Life will be DramaFever’s first non-drama series. Part Real Sex, part Ghost Hunters, and part Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Shocking Life examines the oddities and the unusual from Korea. Shocking Life premieres on DramaFever on Thursday, Feb 4.
ABOUT IRIS
A blockbuster hit and one of the most talked-about dramas of the year, Iris premiered to stunning ratings of 24.5% and had crossed 30% ratings by its 8th episode. With a budget of 20 billion won (almost a million U.S. dollars per episode), this explosive action-spy thriller uniquely utilized many aspects of American television and action film genres to create a high-octane, large-scale production with international flare and exotic shooting locations.
Megastar and Hallyu icon Lee Byung Hun gives the performance of a lifetime as a daredevil secret agent who transforms into a driven, tormented spy on the run from powers he doesn’t understand. He is ably assisted by a star-studded cast including Kim Tae Hee (Hallyu star for Love Story in Harvard and Stairway to Heaven), Jung Joon Ho (2008’s hit Last Scandal), Kim So Yeon (Gourmet), and T.O.P. (mega Kpop hiphop boyband Big Bang). Having tried and succeeded in blending the tension and fast pace of American spy series such as 24 with the romance and character depth of Korean dramas, Iris’s innovative style, heavy-weight leads and big budget have enabled it to become something of a minor phenomenon (the broadcast rights have already been bought by seven other countries). It could very well become a Kdrama classic.
About DramaFever
DramaFever.com is the premier online destination for North American audiences to enjoy popular prime-time television shows from Asia in high quality with English subtitles. DramaFever has built up one of the largest licensed collections of popular Asian TV content for the North American market with programming from Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Media, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) Distribution, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) International, Group Eight, ISplus, and JS Pictures. For more information, please visit http://www.dramafever.com
Gotta admit, that’s quite an accomplishment to have sold the most number of single CDs in North America. Those darn Wonder Girls keep the Nobody train moving.
Wonder Girls set the record for the most number of single CDs sold in North America in 2009. Billboard reported that Wonder Girls’ “Nobody” released last year in the United States topped the hot singles sales chart.
The five girls were Korea’s first singing group to be included in Billboard’s main chart of Hot 100 by ranking 76th. The sales of their first single record in America exceeded most people’s expectations, raising the bar for the girls even higher this year. “Nobody” is also currently placed first in the online poll for the year’s hottest music video on musictone.com. Other nominees in the poll include “Single Lady” by Beyonce, “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, and “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas.
Who was the first Korean male to star in a leading role in a Hollywood film? That would be RAIN, the Korean pop star known was the Justin Timberlake of Asia. We knew he was going to be big back in 2006 when he was voted #1 to the TIME 100 poll, beating out everyone else in the world that was thrown on the ballot. Fast forward three years later and we found RAIN kicking his way into Ninja Assassin, produced by the guys who brought the Matrix Trilogy. What RAIN represents is the future of entertainment because the economics dictate such. With the advent of digital undermining the traditional Hollywood business model, Hollywood has to seek out new ways to expand their reach and better monetize their products. Asia is the new frontier, but RAIN wasn’t necessarily the first guy to build that bridge to several billion people across the Pacific for Hollywood. There was of course Jackie Chan, Jet Li and others who found themselves as the first set of Asians in co-leading roles of big budget films. It’s obvious that Hollywood is trying to identify someone who has a huge following and leveraging their fame to expand their overall reach. What RAIN has done is open the possibilities for other Koreans to venture into Hollywood and perhaps someday, well be cheering on our version of Slumdog Millionaire. Someday we’ll look back and say that guys like John Cho and RAIN were the ones who put Koreans on the Hollywood radar, and that’s why RAIN is #3 on our top ten list of most influential Korean(-Americans) for 2009.
Looks like the Wonder Girls are spending their Christmas in New York. They seemed to be in a festive mood, lighting up the Christmas Tree at the JYP headquarters in New York City.
If you happen to be celebrating Christmas in Las Vegas, then you may want to drop by Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas strip to see Korean pop sensation RAIN. He’ll be performing two nights on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. It’s his first concert in the United States in three years. He’s bringing his RAINISM tour so watch out!
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