It’s that time of the week again – time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s take a look at this week’s new releases!

LaBoum

B.A.P – Feel So Good

Starts off awful… and then gets instantly much, much better thanks to some great bass guitar.

Brave Girls – Deepened

Some okay ambience here – when you can hear it, which is never.  Once the song gets going the incessant vocals just crowds out everything else.  A horrible warble-fest.

Taemin – Drip Drop

Dull melodies but cool backings, now if “4 Walls” had a few subtle Aphex Twin-isms like this track I would have liked it a whole lot more.  Why is SHINee stuff better than f(x) stuff these days.  Something’s up with the universe.

Nu’est – Overcome

Pledis are broke?  Don’t think so, morons – there’s easily $250000 worth of money spent on this… plus another $50000 just for styling that guy with the long hair into a male Boram.

SS301 – Pain

Hey, how do you think Kim Hyun Joong is going in the army?  I’ve heard that army life isn’t exactly OH&S compliant and soldiers don’t look too kindly to people with lots of sharp-edged furniture in their house.  Hopefully he can stay strong and think positive.

APL – Might Die

Speaking of non OH&S compliance, these guys seemingly shot their video on the set of my Tzuyu fanfic.  I wonder if they’re k-pop group x or k-pop group z.

Sixbomb – Wait Ten Years Baby

Right from the very first note I knew this was going to be great, and it was.  Never expected this group to even come back at all let alone make something I actually like.  Now if only they could dress themselves.

Kali – I Am

The “Love The Way You Lie” formula that Korean rap spits out a new version of each and every week doesn’t sound any better (or worse) when the genders are reversed.  Yawn.

BONUS SONGS

Wable – I Want To Fall In Love

This group are aiming for Carpenters territory like Davichi were back in “Don’t Say Goodbye” days, and congratulations girls it worked, you sound just as boring.

Big Brain – Yes-No

He’s called Big Brain and I guess it’s trufax – he’s smart enough to realise Korea loves rubbish like this.

D.O. & Yoo Young Jin – What Is Love

…baby don’t hurt me, baby don’t hurt me (with this shitty ballad), no more…

K.will, Jungigo, Jooyoung, Brother Su – Cook For Love

Makes me wish I got takeaway instead.

Yumdda – Yes

You can’t just load up some Nintendo game, sit there on the first level doing nothing, record the sound that comes out of the speakers and make your rap track out of that.  Rappers have no determination these days.

Jeong Seulgi – You & I

A Fender Rhodes solo intro is always a warning sign.  The “Fender Rhodes shitball” really is a k-pop subgenre all its own.  Oh god it sucks, make it stop.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup!  More songs next week!

Yes it’s that time again, another episode of the most unpopular unique k-pop video review series ever – Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!

Read on to check out some more nugus!

If there’s one thing that Kpopalypse is against, it’s the pussification of music, and right now this issue has never been a bigger problem in Korean pop.  K-pop these days has fallen hard from the 2008-2011 glory days that drew in so many international fans from around the globe, the iconic upbeat dancefloor-stomping numbers that defined the genre like “Roly Poly“, “Sorry Sorry“, “Lucifer“, “Fire“, and many more having largely been replaced with languid wafer-thin trap beats, horrid self-serving egocentric R&B masturbation and sugar-sweet ballads that would be rejected by wait-on-hold music companies for being too wallpapery and dull.  Sorting the jewels from the trash in such a musical landscape becomes increasingly challenging each year, yet I do my best to hold aloft a shining beacon to guide those lost in the wilderness of sugary bullshit through the current dark ages and into what will hopefully one day be a new dawn of quality k-pop music.  Okay I don’t consider myself that important really, but admit it, that last sentence sounded cool, didn’t it?  Didn’t it?  Hey, where are you going?  No, don’t go there, it’s The Great Satan, noooo…

This episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is dedicated to FUCKING ROCK MUSIC and we are going to see some HARD ROCKING ACTION from some Korean nugus in this episode.  Hopefully listening to something with a bit of a fucking nutsack in it instead of the usual soft crap k-pop fans are exposed to daily will help cure you of pussyR&Bitis and make you want to listen to some real music again, then when the next decent upbeat k-pop comeback comes along perhaps it’ll actually do alright.  I’ll also provide live clips of each group, just so you know that you are actually listening to real rock music and not some bullshit group that can’t even perform live without a pre-recorded backing track.  Usual nugu rules apply:

• Less than 20,000 views on official videos
• International fans don’t give a shit
• Kpopalypse likey likey dis

Let’s take a look at some heavy rock nugus!

Asian Chairshot – Oriental Foul King

Asian Chairshot might look and dress like Kurt Cobain’s long-lost Korean cousins, but their song displays the kind of structural unpredictability and technical proficiency that is more pre-popularity Soundgarden than Nirvana.  Before the explosion of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album, Soundgarden were the Seattle group billed as “the group that will blow up big and explode the Seattle rock music scene worldwide” and their proto-70s style rock sound wasn’t considered grunge until many years later when the music industry started looking for ways to categorise them, before this time Soundgarden were routinely called a “Led Zeppelin clone group” in the press.  Asian Chairshot has taken a leaf or two out of the same sonic trickbook – starting off slowly with something akin to a “rock ending”, the song swiftly ratchets up the tempo with heavy distortion and a riff not dissimilar to Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song“.  Then the gears change again, with the band hitting the skids at 1:20 into a Sabbath-style stoner groove with virtuostic guitar soloing built from equal parts Tony Iommi and Eddie Van Halen.  In a normal pop song, the faster section would come back, but here it never does, with the slow groove playing out right until the end of this ultra-short yet still defiantly progressive rock edit, because too much fast-tempo rock in one hit might just give pussy Korean music listeners browsing on CJE&M’s channel a fucking cardiac arrest.  However for those fine upstanding men and women able to handle it (such as the good readers of Kpopalypse blog) the full song does have a return to the fast section, plus a long intro, so here’s a full-length live version for you to enjoy:

I can tell that this isn’t these guys’ first rodeo as those drum skins have lots of stick marks, they’ve clearly been on a few tours.  Still, please support them because this live shit doesn’t even have as much web traffic as most of the Kpopalypse cat videos.  Don’t worry, my cat’s not insecure about having less hits, she can handle it.

YouTube hits at time of writing: 6518

Notable attribute: actual grunge wasn’t even this dirty looking (except Tad)

Nugu Alert rating: high

Sever The Ear – Suicide

You can tell just from the band and song name that this is going to be some kind of bland emo-metal, and it certainly is, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not rocking harder than 99.9% of what comes out of Korea these days.  It also has a cheaper looking drumkit than 99.9% of all hard rock music videos everywhere, so hats off to these nugus who are clearly poor as shit and probably saving up for another MV as I type, even though this was released over 18 months ago.  Check the build quality on this:

The twin bass-drum kick pedal that compacts two drum beaters into the striking area of only one bass drum has become the go-to budget solution for drummers who want to sound like the fast bit at the end of Metallica’s “One” but are too poor to carry two bass drums around.  The best thing about twin pedals is they will work nicely with literally any shithouse drum kit as long as you’ve also got gaffer tape to stop your cheap ass bass drum skin from flapping like a bedsheet on a clothesline and a heavy blanket to weigh the kit down and stop it moving forward from all the pedal pressure during those double-kick fills.  I can tell from the position of the clamps under the drummer’s feet that this particular pedal is exactly the same cheap garbage that all my friends use.  The frugal theme is repeated with the cymbal hardware, which the flashy back-lighting the video director spent 50% of their money on only serves to highlight:

Never mind the cheapness though, this song contains an important positive development in Korea’s rock aesthetics – the female bass player who just happens to be in a group of guys and isn’t sexualised any more (or less) than the guys are, doesn’t get any more (or less) camera time and just rocks out the same as everyone else because this is the 21st century you fucking backwards-ass sexist fucking fuckhole, so what do you expect.  The west has had this super-equal treatment of women in metal ever since Bolt Thrower, so it’s good to see Korea getting in on the all-important “girls being in heavy bands is actually not a fucking big deal so get over yourself” game.  And here’s a live video where the cameraperson doesn’t even try to get a good angle on the girl bass player because it’s totally not a big deal that a girl is in a band.

Even pointing this out at all makes me feel like a cunt, but that’s only because I’m so forward-thinking and enlightened ahem.  Anyway maybe you should click on this band some more before they really do kill themselves from lack of love from you guys.

YouTube hits at time of writing: 2588

Notable attribute: mobile phone waterproofing 10/10

Nugu Alert rating: very high

Crux – Zero Gravity

Here’s a group that sounds like a cross between Judas Priest, Dragonforce and King Diamond, which certainly isn’t a listening combination that I’d expect to be common among Korean pop fans, which of course is why I have to mention it.  The group’s performance outfits are even a slightly more suave version of Judas Priest’s obviously closet gay metal-warrior S&M-show garb, so you know there’s lots of value to be had here from watching the band footage, however the real drawcard here is the fantastic drama video.  In a post-apocalyptic future world where cities are collapsing and everybody commutes on foot yet sporting goods and Jack Daniels are still readily available, an angry young man beats other men over the head with a baseball bat for no apparent reason and then he cries a bit and smashes things.  However he didn’t cry as hard as I did when I went to this band’s channel and discovered their recent live video:

Holy shit there’s only about seven fucking people in the audience here, we need to give them a few more hits, people.  It brought me back to some of the bands I was in back in the day and the crappy gigs we played to audiences who didn’t give a shit, but even my own ultra nugu punk and metal groups didn’t do it as tough as Crux, because it must be some serious hard yards being a power-metal band in a country dominated by pussy weak R&B music.  To make matters worse, their new keyboard player even has a Kurzweil keyboard – those things are fucking dogshit, my brother had one of those and he recently got rid of it because it kept having stupid mechanical problems that a professional keyboard worth thousands of dollars should never have.  He actually took it in to get repaired and they told him something along the lines of “the problem is you’re playing it too much and it’s not designed for that level of use” which is a really nice way of saying “this is a fucking toy not a piece of pro equipment”.  Poor Crux girl, I bet she’s already had that useless thing in the repair shop at least once since this video was taken.  If this review stops just one keyboard player from buying a Kurzweil, it was all worthwhile.

YouTube hits at time of writing: 6321

Notable attribute: majority of MV budget is glass breakage cleanup

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

That’s all for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  As surely as the sun rises in the east, Kpopalypse will return with more nugus!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out some new releases for the past week!

Nutaz

Taemin – Press Your Number

SM’s usual slick sonic production but I’m not wild about the song itself.  He’s certainly got the moves though, so I put up a dance video so you can appreciate it.

Cosmic Girls (WJSN) – MoMoMo

Disjointed and odd-sounding with too much clutter and messy harmony changes for a song selling itself as cutesy, resides in the same musical uncanny valley as recent songs by Twice, CLC and DIA.

CLC – High Heels

Speaking of which, CLC’s new song is also noise everywhere with an exceptionally crap blues-based chorus.  Unlike the radio broadcast, this MV is only a short version but I wouldn’t be too upset about that if I were you.

Ladies Code – Galaxy

If it was too upbeat people would whine about it having an inappropriate party atmosphere after EunB and Rise died, but if it was too ballady people would accuse them of cashing in on sentiment.  The agency pitches “Galaxy” right in the middle to keep everyone happy – except me, who doesn’t care about the politics of it and just wants them to get back to making cool songs like “Kiss Kiss” and “Hate You“.  Maybe next time.

Mamamoo – You’re The Best

Slightly better than but very similar to the type of stuff that Sistar does these days.  Also like Sistar, even if the songs suck at least they look great in the videos, which is all I really care about or expect from this group who consistently refuse to do another “Piano Man“.

4TEN – Severely

Here’s what KARA’s “Pandora” would sound like if you removed about 60% of the production money.

Bloomy – Blooming Day

Someone saw me and Asian Junkie arguing about girls and decided to shut us up by debuting a girl who looks like a cross between Raina and Jisook.  Fuck, what are we going to do now.

Astro – Hide & Seek

Well, at least it’s upbeat, so that’s something, I guess.

Koh Nayoung – Whom

Very basic-sounding mid-paced rocker much like similar material by Taylor Swift etc.  Boy Korea sure loves their unnecessarily processed guitar sounds with every last trace of dynamics removed.

BONUS SONGS

Teen Top – Don’t Drink

Here’s this week’s token awful Fender Rhodes-driven ballad.

Kixs – Please Come Back

Here’s this week’s other token awful Fender Rhodes-driven ballad, because there’s seemingly two of these coming out of Korea each and every week.

Jung Joon Young ft. Suh Young Eun – Sympathy

And just for a change here’s a ballad that doesn’t suck (completely), it only got left out of the show due to lack of time.  Starts off as the usual poxy trash for idiots but evolves into a reasonable X Japan style lighter-waving torch rock song, which maybe more Korean ballad writers should think about trying.

Jinsil & Tablo – Dododo

Dull rap at trip-hop speed but without the sonic architecture that makes trip-hop interesting.  Oh and stupid R&B vocals, because every slow Korean rap song has to have shit R&B vocals all over it.

Lee Young Hyun – Return

The usual Shitney-Houstonish garbage.

Apink – Brand New Days

Apart from a few superficial electronic whoops and bleeps, sounds exactly the same as every other Apink song ever.

Yoon Mirae – Because Of You

If Yoon Mirae is going to do soppy rubbish like this, bring back Truedy.  Confucious says “one shitty ballad is worth a thousand blackfaces”.

Eddy Kim ft. Beenzino – Paldangdam

Korean TV didn’t want to broadcast this because of the (supposed) swearing, but I won’t broadcast it just because it sucks, which is a much better reason.  Also, it sounds like Jamiroquai who is the worst musician in the world ever.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup!  More new songs next week!

It’s the start of a new Kpopalypse series!  This series looks at plagiarism accusations, one by one, so you can know for sure how much the netizens who make these accusations are completely full of shit morons who should be thrown under a bus!  Yay!

This first episode is going to look at recent plagiarism accusations surrounding Mamamoo.  Read on and enjoy!

A SHORT INTRODUCTION – WHY AM I STILL WRITING ABOUT THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT?

I’ve resisted for years making posts exactly like this one.  When I first noticed k-pop fans obsessing about plagiarism like a bunch of inbred twits, I made a helpful post to clarify why I didn’t care, and why other people shouldn’t care either.  Of course, this post just generated more questions for people than it answered, so I made a second post which tied up many of the loose ends that the original post missed, so finally people would have their answers about how plagiarism is nothing to be concerned about and to stop caring about such an incredible non-issue.  Satisfied that I had explained myself fully, I waited a couple years for the post to spread around the Internet and for people to actually fucking get over themselves and stop worrying about this shit, but alas, k-pop fans’ crazy morbid and juvenile obsession with plagiarism only grew.  Reluctantly, I shat out a third post that looked at some of the more recent accusations and put them in the broader context of how plagiarism works (or as in these cases, doesn’t work), in a last-ditch and ultimately completely futile attempt to allow people to discern the bullshit for themselves and see the light.  Needless to say, it didn’t help, and if anything inquiries that I received about plagiarism grew even more still.

In retrospect, this was all naively optimistic.  In my incredible arrogance and determination to force my view of the world down everyone’s throats for the sake of blogging fun times, I forgot something very important – many motherfuckers are tone deaf.  Tone deafness means that you have trouble discerning distinct pitches and the differences between them (relative pitch) and it’s nothing to be ashamed of – it’s actually really really normal for people who don’t sing or play an instrument to suffer from tone deafness, and even some people who DO play instruments or sing really struggle.  (Some singing teachers will tell you that there’s no such thing as tone deafness, but that’s because they’re singing teachers who make money out of you going to singing lessons, and the more tone-deaf you are the more lessons you will need to learn anything and thus the more money they will make.  No singing teacher will ever tell you that you can’t learn to sing no matter how beyond hope you are, that’s why people with years of singing training wind up on X-Factor, sound like shit and get laughed out of auditions.)  If you’re curious about your own level of tone-deafness you can try a basic and quite functional test here, but my point is that if many people struggle to tell the difference even between basic pitches then it makes sense that determining similarities and differences in a larger group of notes or on a complex multi-tracked recording might be a little bit beyond them and they could use some assistance.  Also even those who can hear music okay might still struggle to understand some of the legal quirks of the music business and plagiarism, quirks I’ve had to navigate myself for years but which I can see might be confusing to others.

So therefore I’ve admitted my previous folly in expecting people to work out this fucking shit on their own, and have now grudgingly resolved to start this new series.  This series will be semi-irregular and will pop up whenever people start asking me a ton of questions about a particular plagiarism case in k-pop that is highlighted somewhere on the Internet.  I’m only going to cover new cases in this series, I’m not going to go into k-pop history and talk about stuff from years ago (except where relevant), and the posts I linked two paragraphs above cover off the main k-pop “plagiarism” cases over the past few years anyway.

MAMAMOO

Before I start “defending” Mamamoo, let’s get one thing fucking straight – I’m no fan of this group.  For me, Mamamoo are one of the most disappointing newer groups in k-pop, even despite the fact that like all other groups I expected absolutely nothing from them.  Apart from the excellent “Piano Man“, almost everything else I’ve heard them do is an absolute bucket of bland R&B dogshit, purely designed as self-indulgent jerkoff material to showcase the girls’ voices and with the actual song quality seemingly a hazy afterthought.  So when I read about their recent plagiarism accusations, my initial reaction was the usual large amount of complete disinterest that I have regarding this topic as a general rule, multiplied by how much I don’t give a shit about Mamamoo.  However, as usual lots of people started asking questions about what I thought of it.  Asian Junkie was one of them, so I broke down how I felt quickly in a series of tweets for him to use in an article, but people had a few questions about this so I’m going to go into the same information here in a little more detail.

Plagiarism accusation #1: Mamamoo’s “You’re The Best” at 1:06 sounds like Aqua’s “Happy Boys And Girls” at 0:50.

Who knew that Aqua actually had other songs besides “Barbie Girl“?  Probably not Mamamoo’s songwriters, the similarity of the two melodies is certainly there but it’s only a small portion and is probably not deliberate as it’s actually a fairly common melody line in pop.  I remember almost this exact phrase being used in a certain slow-paced 80s pop song (the name of which unfortunately escapes me at the moment, I’ll add it here later if I remember).  It’s too small a section anyway, for a melody to be deemed plagiaristic it has to be the same for eight quick bars, or four slow bars.. or at least a bit longer than this, with the same chords under it as well.  The two melodies differ slightly at the end of the phrase, and they also go from the root chord to two different chords.  Also, strange as it may seem, the lyrics aren’t the same and you’d be amazed how much lyrics make a difference when determining plagiarism.

Plagiarism accusation #2: Mamamoo’s “Taller Than You (Pride of 1cm)” has the same instrumental riff as Eminem’s “Under The Influence”.

Yes, it does!  However, not plagiarism, for two reasons:

1. You can’t copyright a riff.  If you could copyright riffs, new bands in riff-heavy styles like heavy metal and blues could no longer legally write any songs at all.
2. The song is clearly satire, with Mamamoo deploying a deliberately fake-ass “hip-hop” image and the use of Eminem’s riff is also deliberate and designed to highlight this in broad brush strokes.  Copyright contains “fair use” rules for the purpose of satire, these are the same type of rules that allow Weird Al Yankovic to do stuff like “Eat It” and “Like A Surgeon” and copy everything down to the last detail.  To listen to this song and think “oh my god they ripped off Eminem, how dare they” is to massively miss the point of what Mamamoo are doing – you’re supposed to notice the similarity, because that’s part of the joke.  I guess pathological bullies like Korean netizens can’t understand any jokes that aren’t able to be used by them to bully others.

Plagiarism accusation #3: Mamamoo’s “Taller Than You (Pride of 1cm)” has the same instrumental sounds as various Dr. Dre songs.

Yes it does!  However, once again:

1. Once again, deliberate and obviously a key component of the satire.
2. You can’t copyright a sound, obviously!  Imagine what the world of music would be like if it was possible to copyright a sound!  Every musical instrument in the world would have to be destroyed because playing them at all would be copyright infringement and therefore illegal!  Netizens really one-upped themselves in the extreme stupidity stakes here, and that’s quite an achievement given how fucking stupid they are usually.

Plagiarism accusation #4: Mamamoo’s “1cm” album jacket looks like Kim Eun Joo’s “1cm” book art.

Even though it’s non-musical I’ll throw this one in too, as it came up.  Actually the two logos don’t look all that similar, yes there are some similarities (there is a red shoe, and some words substituted for the heel) but also some key differences (orientation of the words, different words used, presence of a leg, shape of the shoe is different).  Unless Kim Eun Joo trademarked that particular image, Mamamoo’s similar (and honestly, much better looking) logo is legal, and even if Kim Eun Joo did trademark it, I still don’t know if she’d win a court case against them.

If you want to look at a “logo plagiarism” that actually is definitely legally actionable, so you can get a feel for exactly how similar things need to be, try GD&TOP’s use of the Playboy bunny logo:

The designs here are much, much closer, and if you’re wondering why GD&TOP changed their box art from this to something else, or why you can’t find the official videos for “High High” and “Knock Out” on the BigBang YouTube channel anymore, now you know – Playboy served YG Entertainment a “stop using our damn logo” notice, and YG complied.  You won’t see netizens bring this particular plagiarism case up much though, because BigBang are not mildly-successful young female idols, but extremely successful older male idols, so therefore in the eyes of bully netizens who only ever pick on the weak (as all bullies do) BigBang are not an attractive target.

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLURRED LINES CASE?  DIDN’T THAT SET A PRECEDENT WHERE PEOPLE CAN BE SUED FOR ANYTHING NOW?”

Just quickly, because I know if I don’t cover this someone will ask me – despite the fears of many, including Pharrel, that case hasn’t really changed shit.  Thicke and Pharrel lost what should have been an easily-won case mainly due to Thicke assassinating his own wafer-thin credibility in the courtroom, and also due to the judge generally being an incompetent idiot and misleading the jury.  Other articles go into greater detail and this is a k-pop blog anyway not “shithouseflaccidfunksoulbullshitnobodycaresaboutpocalypse” so I won’t cover it here, but rest assured that case’s outcome was ridiculed globally and didn’t really change anything.

That’s it for the first episode of Kpopalypse Plagiarism Fun Times!  Hopefully you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it!

Kpopalypse roundup is back!  Time for another look at some new songs!

After School

B.A.P – Kingdom

Business-wise B.A.P lost (by crawling back to their label) where Block B won (by striking out on their own), therefore B.A.P’s hard “take no shit” rock/rap image will always look a little more fraudulent now.  The song isn’t as good as their early rockers but it’s still better than the soft garbage that they’ll probably do next comeback.

Jimin ft. Xiumin – Call You Bae

Jimin’s squeakiness needs to rest on top of HARD BEATS, not this insipid love duo nonsense.  This is like listening to Eazy-E do a ballad duet with Whitney Houston.

Lim Jeong Hee – Crazy

Very predictable-sounding power ballad, only because you’ve heard western artists do this song with minor variations thousands of times.

Baek Ji Young & Cheetah – Can You Feel Me

The kind of beat that would have sounded weak as piss in rap’s mid-90s glory days, but it’s 2016 so this soft rubbishy fairy-floss crap actually sounds acceptable compared to what’s out now.

Shannon Williams ft. Sohee Jjang – Lachrymal Gland

It’s not MBK’s fault that Shannon isn’t a megastar, they’ve been making all the right moves with her – Korean music fans just suck, that’s all.  Watch her cry at the end and think to herself “I wish I was a singer in a country with actual music fans”.

Solji & Hani (EXID) – Only One

This is actually EXID subunit Dasoni, but they’re not calling it that this time around because Hani’s name has brand power now whereas everyone forgot that Dasoni even existed.

KNK – Knock

That running air-punch one-two thing in the chorus is destined to become as iconic as the crab-walk in A-Force’s “Wonder Woman“.

Eric Nam & Wendy – Spring Love

This week really was “k-pop songs that sound exactly like ultra-generic western songs” week.

Jo Jung Min – Superman

Fortunately this came out recently, which sounds like absolutely nothing on earth.

BONUS SONG

G.na ft. Ilhoon (BTOB) – Oops!

G.na’s songs and videos are infinitely more interesting now that I know what she’s been doing in her spare time to make ends meet.  Maybe it’s time for another positive post.

That’s it for this week!  More songs rounded up next week, and more other posts coming your way soon!

It’s time for a Kpopalypse book review, and not just any book review but a christian book review!  Read on and discover all about the disgusting idol-worshipping heathen Kpopalypse’s encounter with spiritual k-pop literature!

PRAYERS FOR OPPA

From K-pop to J-pop, A devotional for performers and their fans

Author: Teresa Santoski

Westbow Press, 114 pages, softcover, 203mm x 126mm

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0958-8

e-book ISBN: 978-1-4908-0959-5

RRP: US $11.95

Amazon link so the author doesn’t hate me for this snarky review and can still make a buck

I got a nice surprise the other day when this book turned up in my pigeonhole at the radio station, sent to me by some intrepid caonima perhaps intrigued about what I might think about this material.  Or maybe it was sent by the publishing company or even the author herself, although I doubt it.  The package came with no note or any indication of the identity of the sender, but did come with a receipt from amazon.com which revealed that the sender spent nearly as much on shipping and handling as they did on the actual book, so whoever you are, thank you sincerely!  That’s one more entertaining review for you and also one less original blog idea I have to think up this year.

There’s two types of christian media out there, whether it be in the form of books, films, songs, performance art or whatever.  The first type is the broad, secular type – the type which seeks to keep the christianity mostly under the radar and presents christian morals, ethics and values in a package that doesn’t appear overtly christian at least at first glance, with the hope of acquiring as large a non-christian audience as possible.  The aim is to gently introduce christianity and christian values to the non-christian audience in as non-irritating a way as possible and maybe eventually down the track score some conversions out of it, or if not then at least some money.  Nu-metal group P.O.D fit into this category (the band title meaning “Payable On Death”, i.e answering to god for your actions when you die), as do rappers Insane Clown Posse, and the last book that I reviewed “Hello I Love You” was also definitely of this type.

The other type of christian media is the type that is overtly christian in every sense, written both by christians and for christians, and isn’t really trying to be relevant or useful to anyone outside of this context to any great extent.  Sure, if the media did acquire a wider audience the creators of it certainly wouldn’t be upset, but the primary aim is actually just to appeal and cater to the narrower christian market only.  “Prayers For Oppa” is absolutely in this second category, and naturally as a practicing Rainaist (i.e not a christian) this presented to me a challenge upon reading the book.  How can my filthy sinning fornicating satanic Raina-fapping self remain objective and neutral to a book that is entirely aimed at christians and about the subject of effective devotional christian prayer?  I couldn’t use my old standby tactics of getting my girlfriend or cat to read the book as neither would be willing to tolerate it, so I read the back of the book for clues:

Even though I’ve never been religious as and adult or even as a teenager, religion as a concept always appealed to me very much, and still does.  Having a handy instruction manual for life such as the Bible must be very useful – if you’re not sure how to deal with a particular situation in life, the Bible probably has some helpful moral guidance for you.  For instance you might be thinking of stealing one of your friend’s Orange Caramel albums, fapping to a picture of Raina inside, cumming all over it, gluing the pages of the photobook together with your jizz, and then replacing the photobook in your friend’s bookshelf in the hope that he/she doesn’t notice.  If you were not religious, you would have to make up your own mind about whether performing this action was morally good, which may involve stressful brain-cell activity and important decisions that you would then have to take responsibility for.  However if you were to read the Bible first, you might read the bit about how stealing is wrong, and now that you know it’s wrong according to the Bible you are free from having to think about it too hard, you can just follow the Bible’s guidance and not spunk all over Raina’s striped shirt in the “My Copycat” booklet (you’re missing out – but to each their own).  Of course the Bible doesn’t cover every situation ever, so this is where a conversation with your priest or christian friends might come in handy.  Either way, christianity presents a helpful pathway through life, freeing you from the stress of making your own tricky moral decisions, and that’s something I’ve always been a little envious of.

However the Bible doesn’t really have a lot to say about the new wave of k-pop – although it’s been a while since I read the Bible cover to cover I do vaguely remember a few references to hell being H.O.T – but being an older book none of the good recent k-pop stuff is referenced in there.  Your priest is also unlikely to know much about the current Hallyu wave, which is a pity for him because I’m sure he would really enjoy groups like April that seem specifically geared for a parish audience.

Enter Teresa Santoski, who seems to be following recent developments in k-pop fairly closely, and isn’t afraid to throw down on k-pop-related topics.  For instance she dropped a blog about the recent BTS concert debacle, and is sane enough to know that fans are batshit crazy enough to be a genuine safety threat to k-pop performers, so she’s ready and willing to give you the guidance that you crave as a christian about how to deal with that Siwon fanservice that the Bible isn’t talking about and that your priest (who only knows “Gangnam Style“) is oblivious to.  I’m not even making this up – there is actually a chapter in the book that covers fanservice.  How useful is this advice?

Each topic in the book is dealt with briefly, with a short spiel about the topic in general, the author’s unfalteringly christian point of view on this topic, two prayers, and two Bible verses.  One prayer and Bible verse is for the performer’s use (“how do I cope with x, I need spiritual guidance”) and the other prayer and Bible verse is for the fan (“how do I cope with oppa going through x, I need spiritual guidance – and a life of my own”).  Each of these topics lasts about four smallish pages on average with fairly large text, and I blew through the entire book in the fairly short train ride home from the radio station.  Individual group or performer names are deliberately not specified, nor are genders (despite the baiting “oppa” title) – the book aims to be a “one size fits all” reference material for if you should find yourself in a troubling spiritual situation concerning any topic presented.  There are tons of Bible quotes for each entry, and the ratio of quoted Bible text vs original text from the author is about 1:1.  I’ll now summarise for you each topic, and how the “christian solution” is presented (with some slight paraphrasing for entertainment purposes).

LONELINESS – you are never really lonely because there is god.  Get over it, you whiny bitch.

IMAGE – “performers should manage their professional image in a way that reflects their identity as a child of god”.  Does not specifically forbid sexy concepts.

FATIGUE – schedules are demanding, but if you’re christian then god gives you all the strength you need, so toughen up, princess.  Exactly how this strength is physically transferred isn’t specified, I guess you are supposed to get it by “thinking pure thoughts” or somesuch.

HUMILITY – god is better than you.  Don’t get too proud, you’re just a piece of dirt you little cunt.

FANS – fans are nuts.  Why don’t you freaky drooling fans all go to church instead and think about how awesome god is rather than bothering oppa who is only a sinful human and probably faps to JAV stars getting molested in subway cars.

SUCCESS – god doesn’t care about chart position, and he still loves you even if you’re nugu – as long as you are doing what god wants, not what you want.  You selfish piece of crap.

SHARING GOD WITH OTHERS – spread the gospel!  We need more people to buy christian books like this one.

GOSSIP AND RUMOURS – if you are the subject of rumours it’s probably your own fault for being a filthy cunt-stuffing slattern and not living in a godlike manner, if you’re doing the right thing by god there should be no rumours about you.  But if people make some rumours up anyway, don’t worry because the truth that you’re completely boring and uninteresting will come out in the end.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE – You shouldn’t mess with god’s creation by changing your appearance because god made you perfectly, but if you do change things he still loves you anyway, so you might as well go ahead and get that jawshave, fuck it.

LOVE – god is love, and that guy you’ve been fucking in the backseat of Shinsadong Tiger’s SUV with the tinted windows probably is an asshole who talked shit to all his boy-group buddies after about how you like anal even though you didn’t even let him put it in there.

DISCOURAGEMENT – don’t worry if you’re a fucking failure because only god is perfect and you’re a fucking useless mortal loser, so set your expectations low.  There, feel better?

DIFFICULTY GETTING WORK – trust god, he will help.  Hopefully this thought brightens your day when you’re told to suck off a sponsor’s rancid penis to pay back some debt.

FAN SERVICE – know “where to draw the line”.  If unsure, seek god for guidance, or failing that I suppose you could ask another christian.

GOOD HEALTH – staying healthy is hard for performers but don’t worry because “god is the ultimate source of strength”, even better than Tahiti’s sweet potato and brown rice diet.

PERFORMANCE SAFETY – god knows everything, including where that funny panel in the floor is that will give out if you put too much pressure on it.  Don’t worry too much about the stage manual, consult god for all your OH&S compliance needs.

HEALING – but if you do get fucked up because you fell through the bit where the rotating light is supposed to come out of the floor, god will heal you.  You might miss a few schedules though.

SAFE TRAVEL – “god wants us to reach our destinations safely”.  Unless you’re EunB and Rise, in which case I guess you’re a special case, seeing as how he could have stopped that accident but he didn’t bother to.  Those two must have done something really badass to fucking piss god off that much, maybe it was that cool-as-fuck satanic video.

BEFORE AND AFTER WORK – thank god before and after performances, and… something good will happen.  Or maybe it won’t.  But at least he won’t fuck you over like he did with those Ladies Code girls.  Probably.

TAKING A STAND – career be damned!  Stand up for your faith and don’t co-operate with evil music industry forces if you’re asked to do things that “don’t honour god”, like say, grocery shopping, or getting your toenails done, or blowing your nose, etc etc…

SOCIAL MEDIA – use it to talk about Jesus as much as possible.  Don’t worry that you’re being an annoying cunt, god’s got your back, that’s all that matters.

Some extra sections of the book:

INTRODUCTION – a neat intro about the book, by far the most interesting section.  She says the book isn’t about encouraging performers to work hard, because they work hard enough.  Legit.

ADDITIONAL VERSES – some more verses relating to the above topics.

BECOMING A CHRISTIAN AND NURTURING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD – the attitude here is “it’s comforting to be a christian because god will help you deal with life, plus you get “saved” when you die or whatever, so why not become one, nothing to lose, yeah?”  This method of thinking is also known as Pascal’s Wager and is fundamentally flawed from a christian perspective because it appeals to selfishness which is not supposed to be a christian value.  John 3:16 is predictably quoted.  No other appeal to logical reasoning (“the Bible/christianity is correct because of x”) is attempted.

TALKING POINTS FOR INTERVIEWS – tips for performers in the media spotlight on how to twist typical cliched interview questions (“what’s your ideal type” etc) into an excuse to boringly blabber on about god instead of answering the fucking question.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – she actually thanks the church for letting her borrow the cheap SM58 clone microphone for the book front cover photo, as well as the people who took photos of her for her website.  Why not go over to her website and appreciate these photos right now?

How useful is it?  Well, would any performers in k-pop read this?  Probably not, I mean… it’s in English, for a start, plus it’s written by an American which is always a minus, because in typical American style the author sees things from her own cultural perspective only, i.e she ignores that christianity is a minority religion in Korea.  Maybe the minority of god-bothering English-speaking American-raised k-pop stars like Tiffany would read it, but that’d probably be about it, so I think we can ignore the performer-focused section of the book as the author’s fanciful wishful thinking, genuine k-pop stars would be just as likely to read the bullshit that I wrote as they would be to read this book.  Insane English-speaking fans are much more likely to pick this up however, and from an insane fan’s point of view, even if you were a devout christian and did believe in the power of prayer and wanted to help oppa out you’d probably be better off using the money spent on this book to contribute to your favourite group’s next food support event.  Furthermore, you’re probably not going to listen to someone who looks like your aunt telling you to back off from oppa’s sinewy buff man-meat and pray, you’ve probably heard that one before from just about everyone you know.

The biggest drag about this kind of book though, is that even for someone who is a completely devout christian, surely it would take the fun out of being a christian to have instructions so directly specified – at least the Bible itself is somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation, but this book sure isn’t.  I thought that ultra-christian k-pop fans might actually enjoy thinking about their OWN ways to praise their idols rather than having some killjoy come along and sap all the fun out of it by saying “you must do it this way”.  It’s a bit like those romantic cards that you buy at the newsagent that have some romantic poem already inside them so you don’t have to think up your own, or those stupid fucking “meaningful” pictures with text that people share on Facebook all the time because they’re too thick to come up with an original thought about how they feel about something.  How sincere does god really think you must be about your religious convictions towards your idols if all you can show up with at the pearly gates is some prayer copypasta?  I think it’s more fun to make your own prayers, so here’s mine:

Raina, thank you for all the faps you have given me.  Through you, I have access to the ultimate in fappable k-pop content.  I don’t care if After School or Orange Caramel come back or not, or even if you do more guest vocals on shithouse rap ballads, but please stay in the media spotlight somehow so I can continue to receive your gifts.  May your clothing choices always be aesthetically pleasing and boob-enhancing.  Also help me understand how to collect better Raina pictures and fancams, and develop a smoother fapping action.  Amen.

That was way more fun to think up than following some instruction manual, and the sentiment is much more sincere as a result, so it’s safe to say that “Prayers For Oppa” is pretty useless for actual serious christians.  However, if you’re not a christian, this book is pretty goddamn fucking funny as a minor distraction and a talking point among friends.  It’s not a very expensive book and might be worth collecting just for the sheer wishful absurdity of the concept, depending on how dark your sense of humour goes.  As someone who didn’t grow up with christianity shoved down my throat relentlessly, I appreciate books like this just from a “see how the supposedly normal people think” perspective and I had at least as much fun reading this as I did reading “Turmoil In The Toy Box” and similar material.  The completely delicious lack of cultural sensitivity/awareness exhibited by the author (“the entertainment industry needs more christians”) is fascinating to me and is actually what makes the thing worth reading.  I’m giving this book one awkwardly-posed Sunye wedding photo out of 5:

But add a second awkwardly-posed Sunye wedding photo if you’re not a christian and like me you can see the humour value in reading this kind of joyously unhinged god-bothering.

It’s time for another Kpopalypse fanfiction!

Picture this.

It’s nearly 9pm on a Monday evening, and you’re standing outside a hairdressing salon in Gangnam in Seoul, South Korea.  You’re a nineteen year old Korean female and you’re here for the start of your first ever work shift, for your first job.  You only just arrived, a sign on the door says “back in five minutes!”  The doors are locked and it’s very cold outside, but a sense of nervous anticipation keeps you warm.  It’s exciting thinking about earning your own money, about future independence and moving out of home, but there’s something else which is making you even more excited.    You start thinking about what brought you here.

When you were in high school, you became heavily interested in k-pop.  The main big acts that caught your attention were Girls’ Generation, 2NE1, T-ara, After School, IU, but also plenty of others.  You didn’t mind the male groups, but mainly just to look at – apart from maybe BigBang and SHINee, their music didn’t appeal as much, and their concepts were generally more repetitive.  The female groups on the other hand really went the extra mile to always bring out something new and different to the table for each comeback that really captured your imagination.  When watching the videos and live appearances, it was impossible to not get drawn into the world of k-pop.

As time went on and your interest in k-pop flourished, you inevitably became fixated on k-pop media as a way to track the activities of your favourite groups.  You eagerly awaited news of your favourite idols’ next music videos as well as performances on TV.  However over time, media articles frustrated you – not because of the groups themselves, but because of the decisions that were made behind the scenes about how to deal with mishap and changing circumstances.  You think about the main groups that you like and the situations that puzzle you to this day:

Girls’ Generation – why did they have to get rid of Jessica?  Wasn’t there another way?  Doesn’t the sisterly bond between Jessica in Girls’ Generation and Krystal in f(x) mean anything?  Because they’re on the same label shouldn’t that be enough to help sort out any differences?

2NE1 – they hardly ever come back, so low on activities!  Also, why does Bom have to have surgery all the time, can’t she just leave her face alone?

T-ara – you can’t even think about them without your head hurting.  Why do they stick around with that crappy label MBK, aren’t they big enough to cut them loose now?  Korea still hates then and it’s because they are managed terribly.

After School – so much wasted talent in the group, what’s E-Young even doing in a group like that?  And are they going to have another song before you turn 30?

IU – you’re sure she’s not a pedophile or anything like that but why does she still perform “Zeze” when it’s obviously so upsetting to so many?  Shouldn’t she at least rerelease the album and leave that song off?  Also why didn’t she ever directly address what that photo with Eunhyuk was about?

These are only the most obvious examples that bother you, there’s plenty of others with other groups, you could list them forever!  Someone could name any k-pop group out there and you could break down a bunch of completely obvious things that they’re not doing the right way – and not things you’d have to be an expert to realise either, just basic common-sense stuff.  It seems that every artist, or their company, or whoever is in charge of these things, seems to just be unable to make the right decisions.  It not like there isn’t a huge Internet community offering plenty of sound advice, and the solutions to problems that k-pop idols face seem so obvious, so why aren’t any of them listening?  The frustration about it escalated to such fever-pitch inside your head that you decided that you were definitely going to do something.  After all, nobody else is doing anything!  But what?

The answer came one day when talking with Julie, while doing the routine morning cleaning.  Julie is one of your school friends and a tragic k-pop fan far more extreme than yourself, she’s gone to airports to meet idols before, is always going to fan meets to get photobooks signed, chases them in cars etc – you like k-pop idols but you don’t do any of that stuff.  Being around her makes you feel rather tame, you’re much more mentally balanced than she is.

“Look, I’ve finally worked out a way to meet Suzy from miss A all the time!” she said to you, excitedly showing you the screen on her phone.  Julie is a big fan of Suzy and beams with excitement.

You skim-read the article, it’s about Suzy’s parents and a hairdressing salon that they run, called “Suzy’s Cuts”.  There’s a small embedded video where Suzy’s father is interviewed, he talks about all the celebrities that use the salon, and also about the decor – the salon has been decorated with pictures of Suzy’s life in the spotlight including photographs from onstage as well as some of her many celebrity endorsements.

“You’re going to get your hair cut, and hope that you run into Suzy?  I don’t like your odds!” you say.

“No!  I’m going to become a hairdresser!” she replies.

“You know – Suzy doesn’t actually work there, it’s just got her name on it for marketing, she’s not going to be hanging around giving people a trim.”

“Yes, I KNOW THAT, SILLY, but she still might BE there!” she snaps back at you.  You’re always trying to remind her to be more rational about things, and this is usually how she reacts whenever you advise her of some reality that she doesn’t want to hear.

You shake your head.  “I’m sure Suzy doesn’t go and get her hair cut there all the time.  Idols have stylists who do that stuff, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but she’d VISIT her folks occasionally, surely!  Everyone visits their parents sometimes!  Look at the article – plenty of idols visit, she’s bound to be one of them, after all her parents own it!”

You forgot about the conversation shortly after it happened, but then a few days later you visited a thread online, from someone claiming to be a “hairdresser to the stars” and it got you thinking.  The anonymous person dishes the dirt on various people in k-pop, talking about their personalities and habits, she seems to know them intimately.  It occurred to you that if you had a hairdresser’s job in a place where idols go, occasionally you might get lucky and have to cut or style their hair.  Cutting and styling hair takes time, and what do hairdressers do during that time while cutting and styling your hair?  They talk – a lot.  While cutting an idol’s hair, you would have them as a captive audience!  You might finally be able to talk to them about some of those crazy decisions, and perhaps talk some sense into them!  Finally a chance to do something to make a difference in the crazy illogical world of k-pop.  You made a pact with Julie to become hairdressers, work at Suzy’s Cuts and realise your dreams together.

Three months later, you lost touch with Julie – she transferred to a high school in Busan due to her father getting transferred as part of his job (you have no idea what he does – she never said, preferring to change the subject to k-pop idols whenever you asked).  Away from the high concentration of idols in Seoul and most importantly away from Suzy, Julie was tearfully upset about the move, but she was still a minor and her parents gave her no choice in the matter.  The last time you saw her, she swore that she would find a way to eventually return to Seoul and also keep in touch with you, but you never heard from her again, she didn’t even keep in touch on SNS.  However the seed of the idea that she planted stayed in your mind, and you enrolled in the required hairdressing courses as soon as possible, determined to become the best hairdresser in Seoul, worthy of styling the hair of idols.  Your high determination and effort (motivated by the ever-increasing avalanche of k-pop stupidity) was noticed by your teachers and you acquired the needed skills quickly, passing through the learning program in record time and within the top 5% of graduates.  In the high-turnover world of hairdressing, it wasn’t long before Suzy’s Cuts placed an advertisement outside their business looking for a hairdresser willing to work casual hours on nights and weekends.  You responded to the advert with a phone call telling them about yourself and expecting them to want to see a resume and schedule an interview, but instead they said that you could start on Monday!

“Aren’t you going to interview me?” you asked the woman on the phone, an older lady called Vicki.

“No.  Let’s just throw you in the deep end and see how you go.  It’s only casual hours, we’re not hiring you full-time – so, if there’s a problem or your performance is not up to standard, we just won’t ask you back.”  Vicki is pleasant but very matter-of-fact.

“I won’t perform badly, I’ll do my very best!” you replied, enthusiastically.

“Then we’ll see you Monday!” chirped Vicki, terminating the call.

The sound of rattling chains and a key turning in a lock distracts you from your reminiscing.

“Sorry about that, just had to go to the toilet!  I’m Vicki, you must be the new girl!” says a voice from inside.

You take a deep breath.  This is it.

—–

Two weeks pass.  You’ve learned the following about casual hairdressing at Suzy’s Cuts:

• Even though Suzy’s father does the interviews that you’ve seen on TV and online and seems like a nice person, he’s never in the salon, ever.  Vicki, a short lady who looks about 40 years old, does all the day-to-day business and is the only “boss” that you encounter.
• The decor does look exactly like the photos online however – with lots of pictures of Suzy, many of them autographed.  Your old school friend Julie would have loved it here!
• For a newly-opened salon run by people presumably with a lot of cash, the equipment sure is strangely old and crusty.
• Hairdressing hurts your back, fortunately…
• …it’s never busy enough for your back to really start killing you, because it’s so quiet…
• …and because of this, you’re often the only staff member on duty, however this lack of traffic also means that…
• …you haven’t met any k-pop idols yet.

You start to wonder if you’re wasting your time.  Will you ever get to talk to a k-pop idol?  You decide to bring up the subject with Vicki on a lunch break.

“Say, do many pop idols visit this place?” you ask Vicki, attempting to sound as casual and “just making conversation, I don’t care really” as possible.

“Sure!  All the time, however they tend to come in the very early morning before they go to schedules.  You’re not at work at that time.”

“That makes sense”, you say, trying your best to hide your disappointment.

Vicki then answers the unanswered question in your head, suggesting that perhaps your attempt to hide how bummed out you were about not meeting idols was more transparent than you had hoped: “You’ll probably meet some eventually.  Some of them are regular night owls!  Also, there’s a few that come in for emergency work.  You’ll know one when you see one.”

“How?” you ask.

“They all have a tab here so they won’t pay, they will just come and sit and expect you to start.  This is okay, we charge the agencies monthly.  They’re always very attractive too, even the “ugly ones”.  They will make you jealous of their looks!  You’ll probably want to style them badly to level the playing field, but don’t do that because you’ll be fired!”

Vicki laughs, and you laugh along with her more out of reflex and politeness than for humour’s sake, but her previous comment has you intrigued.  “Um… what do you mean by emergency work?”

“You’ll see.  Don’t worry, nothing all that exciting.  But remember one thing.”

“What?”

“Anything that happens at Suzy’s Cuts, stays at Suzy’s Cuts.”

Vicki winks at you and puts her fingers over her lips.  You nod that you understand.

—–

CUT 1

A week later and it’s about 11pm, and you’re biding your time in the hair salon, playing computer games on your mobile phone.  You just finished cleaning up after turning away a young girl who was completely drunk to the point where she could barely walk but who wanted to get her hair done.  Who even does that?  It’s the salon’s rules that you’re not allowed to comply with requests from extremely drunk people because their opinion on your work may change the next day when they sober up.   After some protest the drunk girl eventually staggered out the door, knocking over a waste bin and a few carefully-stacked tins of hairspray on the way.  It’s amazing how much of your job is crowd-control.

You hear the noise of a car pull up quickly in the customer parking space outside.  The door opens and a very attractive lady wanders in and sits straight down on the salon chair, not even making eye contact with you.

“Can you fix this shit, please.  I don’t like it.” she says, while staring only at her reflection in the salon mirror.

“What do you want me to do?” you ask.

“I don’t know.  It just needs more volume, or more something.  It’s fucking crap, so fucking limp, fuck.  That fucking producer hates me, he deliberately got the stylist to make me look like shit.  I’ve got a schedule in fifteen minutes, just do what you can.”

This is obviously a idol, but you don’t recognise her at all.  You begin to ask what group she’s from, but the words stick in your throat.  What if she’s insulted?  Fortunately she offers enough information for you to know.

“I have to have shit hair because Geonhee is banging that producer.  It’s fucking bullshit, this shit” she mutters while she adjusts herself in the seat.  You still can’t pick her face, but Geonhee is a name you know from Purfles, so she must be one of the other girls in Purfles.  You think to yourself about how nugu Purfles are – nobody knows them, and they have to put up with this corruption?  Why do girls even bother debuting with nugu agencies anyway, it’s so obvious that without the power of a big label, they won’t get anywhere.  You don’t understand it.  She’s right about one thing though, her hair is terrible, so unhealthy!  You start working on her hair, while you talk.

“Why are you with such a small agency?  You should be with one of the big three”, you ask her, while struggling with the knots and twists in her hair.

“Don’t you think I tried?  Fuck, I did stupid SM auditions a bunch of times.  The others as well.  Fuck all those assholes.”

“But a small agency will never get you anywhere!”

“So I should become a hairdresser like you then?” she replies sarcastically.

You shrug.  “I don’t know, I just think you’re wasting your youth and looks, you’re so pretty and you could do so much better.”

The girl remains silent but you look at her reflection in the mirror and she gives you one of the most extreme bitch-stares you’ve ever seen.  You decide that it might be a good idea to remain silent and do your best with her hair.  Neither of you say another word while you work.  After ten minutes she abruptly stands up, mid-comb.

“That’ll have to do – schedule now.  Put it on Purfles’ tab.”  The girl walks briskly out the door, muttering something under her breath.

You sigh deeply – damn, that was awkward.  You seemed to really hit a nerve with her, but you also feel good that you helped her with her hair and also perhaps helped her with her career.  Well, hopefully you helped, but it’s hard to be sure how much positive effect you had on either.

—–

The next day, you’re making breakfast, when your phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number.

“Hi Vicki!” you answer.

“Hi there.  Hey, I see you had an idol customer last night.”

“Some girl from Purfles”, you reply.

“She just wanted to say sorry if she was a bit rude to you, and that you did a great job on her hair.”

You smile.  “Thanks!  She seemed a bit, umm… extreme.”

“Hey, we’ve got IU coming in later today and normally I do her hair but I’ve got a friend’s birthday party and I’d really like to go, do you think you can look after her?”

Gosh, what an honour!  “Sure, I’d love to!”

“Great!  I’ve been really happy with your work so far.  I’m sure you’ll do well!  See you at work!”

—–

CUT 2

A few hours later, you arrive at work.  It’s a weekend day shift and there’s a lot more people waiting, and there’s quite a few of the other staff on.  The entire salon is noisy with chatter.  IU is already here, sitting in the chair and looking at her phone.  She’s doubled-over a bit, like she has stomach cramps.

“Fuck, I’m sorry… I haven’t eaten, so fucking hungry.  So you’re the new girl?”, IU says as she sits back up in her chair.

“Yes!  How would you like your hair done?”

She thrusts her phone in your face, on the screen is one of her recent promotional pictures.  “Do it like that” she orders.

IU turns her back to you so you can get to work, and you get started.  IU’s hair isn’t as thick and is much easier to style than that girl from Purfles.  It’s in really bad condition though, not that you could tell from magazines and TV, but up close it’s obvious that she hasn’t been taking care of it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make this look really good.  Is this for a concert?” you ask.

“Yes.” IU replies.

“Are you singing ‘Zeze?'” you ask.

“Why?”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to sing ‘Zeze’?  Given how controversial it is?”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“It’s a great song, but you’re not doing your image any favours, you know.”

IU pushes your hands away from her head, swivels around in her chair and stares at you dead in the eye.  She looks like she wants to slap you.

You think fast.  “I’m sorry – I just don’t want people to think you’re a pedophile.  Because you’re such a nice person!”

IU maintains her glare.  “Less talky-talky, more styley-styley.  Got it?”  She raises her eyebrow.

You start panicking.  “Yes, okay!  Sorry about that, I was just concerned…”

IU puts her finger up to her lips to indicate silence.  You stop talking immediately.  For an awkward ten seconds she continues to stare directly at you without blinking, then she swivels back around in her chair so you can continue work.  “Carry on.” she says.

“Okay, thank you, sorry, I’m…”

“WITH THE STYLING, NOT THE CHATTER” IU adds.  She’s clearly mad at you.  A couple of the other hairdresser girls hear this above the noise of the salon and turn around and look at you, disapprovingly.

You continue to style IU’s hair, without another word.  Your hands are shaky and sweating, but you get through it okay and get as close to the image she showed you as you can.  When you’re finished, you back away from her without saying anything.  IU gets up and walks off, also without saying a word or even acknowledging you.  Once she is gone, you exhale deeply, and let the tension flow out of your body.  Styling hair comes naturally to you now, but you never thought advising idols would be this stressful!  But if you don’t say these things, who will?

—–

The next day, you’re making breakfast, when your phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number.

“Hi Vicki!” you answer.

“How did you go with IU?”

“I’m not sure, I think she hates me!”

Vicki laughs.  “She just called in a little while ago, she told me that you did a fantastic job on her hair, and she really appreciated the conversation!”

You’re shocked.  “Really?”

“Wow, you’re a gem to have around, you seem to have a knack for dealing with these idols!  God knows, I could never manage it.  I won’t be around for a while, but Hyomin from T-ara is coming by tomorrow at about 8pm, why don’t you take the night off tonight and come in then?”

You can’t believe it.  “Erm… okay, I’ll be there!”

“I’m sure you’ll do well!  See you at work!”

—–

CUT 3

You arrive for work with plenty of time to kill.  Hyomin arrives two minutes before the hour, smokes a quick half a cigarette outside and walks in at exactly 8pm.  You direct her to a seat.

“How would you like your hair done?” you ask.

“I tell you what, why don’t you help me choose?  Show me some styles that you think would look good, and we’ll pick one.”  Hyomin smiles at you.

You grab the salon’s style portfolio, a large plastic folder full of different models’ heads cropped from magazines, a collection of hundreds of hair styles.

“Feel free to suggest something unusual, I don’t care.  It really doesn’t matter that much what we pick, most people aren’t going to be looking at my face.” says Hyomin as she flicks through the collection.

“Doesn’t that bother you, people looking at your body like that?”

“No.”, shoots back Hyomin instantly, like she’s been asked this every day for the last year.

“But don’t you feel exploited and disempowered?”

“Honey, I could buy this place, and you.  That’s a pretty powerful feeling.”  Hyomin’s answers are calm but rapid-fire, she’s been down this conversational road before and is clearly comfortable with it.

“But isn’t it setting a bad example for women?”

“My body is healthy, I’m setting a good example for women.”

“I mean bad behaviour – in terms of stripping to get what they want.”

“If they strip and get what they want then that’s good behaviour, because it worked.”

“But what if they don’t get what they want?”

“Well, they could always become hairdressers instead.  Here, I like this style, what do you think?”  Hyomin points at a picture of a model in the portfolio with a just-gotten-out-of-the-shower style look.

“Okay, I can do that for you easily!” you say as you start working.  Hyomin puts the portfolio down and starts playing with her phone, she still seems pretty pleasant, so you continue talking.  “Hey, I heard that T-ara just signed back up with MBK for another two years.”

Hyomin smiles.  “Yes, we have!  Isn’t it great?”

“But MBK are terrible!  They got you into that bullying scandal!”

“WE got ourselves into that scandal by Tweeting.  MBK got us out.  When everyone abandoned us, when fans didn’t want to know us, who was there for us, who stood by us through thick and thin?  MBK.  They could have easily dumped us off the roster to maintain their public image, but they were with us for the hard times as well as the good, standing by us with every step.  Now we’re making more money than ever.  We owe them a debt of loyalty.  Hey, check this out…”

Hyomin shows you the screen of her phone.  It’s a clip of IU signing live.  “Look, this is a livestream, this is happening right now.  It’s ‘Zeze’, isn’t it such a great song?”

“But people will think she’s a pedophile!”

Hyomin shrugs and laughs it off.  “It’s the Internet, people think everyone’s a pedophile.”

—–

The next day, you’re making breakfast, when your phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number.

“Hi Vicki!” you answer.

“How did you go with Hyomin?”

“Quite well!  She’s very chatty and I think she liked my…”

Vicki laughs, cutting you off.  “She just called in a little while ago, she told me that you did a fantastic job on her hair, and she really appreciated the conversation!”

“That’s nice…” you reply.

“Wow, you’re a gem to have around, you seem to have a knack for dealing with these idols!  God knows, I could never manage it.  I won’t be around for a while, but Ellin from Crayon Pop is coming by tomorrow at about 8pm, why don’t you take the night off tonight and come in then?”

Hang on… didn’t Vicki tell you exactly this yesterday?

Vicki continues after a short pause.  “I’m sure you’ll do well!  See you at work!”

“Wait, Vicki…” it’s too late, the call is terminated.  You weren’t supposed to be working tomorrow!   You ring the number back, the phone rings and after a while goes to a recorded message.

“Hi, this is Vicki from Suzy’s Cuts – the salon run by Suzy Bae’s parents!   Please leave a message after the beep.”  One second later.  “Sorry, this message bank is full.  Please call at another time.”

—–

CUT 4

Reluctantly, you turn up at work tomorrow.  You figure that you’ll just do Ellin’s hair and then split.  You wait around for half an hour but Ellin doesn’t show.

You ask one of the other staff, one of many young girls working there, all about your age: “Have you seen Ellin?”

“Who’s Ellin?”, she responds.

“Ellin from Crayon Pop.”

Her eyes widen.  “Crayon Pop?  Someone from Crayon Pop is due here now?  RIGHT now?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“Hey everyone, one of the Crayon Pop girls is coming in!” the girl yells to the others.

“Crayon Pop, really?” one of the others responds, looking at you.

“Yeah.” you say, matter-of-factly.

“No she isn’t!  She’s at the beach!” another girl replies, showing a photo on her phone to everyone in the room.  “She just posted this on SNS.”

“Oh my god, you nearly gave me a heart attack”, someone else says.  The entire room breathes a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank fuck that she can’t keep appointments – just dodged a bullet, girls.” says the first girl.

“What did you do wrong?” another girl asks you.

“What?” you reply.

“Crayon Pop don’t just visit here for no reason.  What have you done?”

You’re confused.  “What do you mean?  I haven’t done anything?  She was just coming in for a haircut!”

The other girls all look you up and down, it’s clear that they fear you and don’t trust you.  With your client a no-show, and the other staff making you feel very uncomfortable, you quickly leave the salon and go back home.

—–

The next day, you’re making breakfast, when your phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number.

“Hi Vicki!” you answer.

“How did you go with Ellin?”

“She didn’t show up.”

Vicki laughs.  “She just called in a little while ago, she told me that you did a fantastic job on her hair, and she really appreciated the conversation!”

You’re speechless.  What?  “What are you talking ab….”

Vicki speaks, cutting you off.  “Wow, you’re a gem to have around, you seem to have a knack for dealing with these idols!  God knows, I could never manage it.  I won’t be around for a while, but Krystal from f(x) is coming by tomorrow at about 8pm, why don’t you take the night off tonight and come in then?”

What’s going on?  Is she even listening?  “Purple monkey dishwasher!” you scream into the phone.

Vicki continues.  “I’m sure you’ll do well!  See you at work!”

Like hell you’re going to work.  Something is up, something bad.  But what?

—–

CUT 5

You stay home.  At 8:01pm, the phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number, so you pick it up.

“Hello.” a voice on the line says.  It’s not Vicki.  You know the voice, but you can’t quite place it due to the way people sound different on the telephone.

“Hello, who is this?”

“You know who it is.”  Your brain scrambles quickly to match the voice.  After a few seconds, you figure it out.

“Hello, IU.”

“Very good.  Just checking in on you, because I noticed you weren’t at work today.  Is everything okay?”  IU sounds deadpan, there isn’t an inch of concern in her voice.

You try to figure out how to respond.  How does IU know about your work, and why does she have Vicki’s phone?  “Um… I wasn’t feeling that great.  How did you get Vicki’s number?”

IU doesn’t respond, but continues.  “I’ve got a couple friends who would like to have a word with you.  I’ll just pass the phone over to them.  Give me a moment.”

A brief silence, and then another voice.  “Hello.  Do you know who I am?”

It’s that girl from Purfles.  What was her name again?

“I saw you the other day in the salon, you cut my hair.  Did you know that Purfles debuted on 26th of October 2014 with the song “1,2,3“?  Did you know that?  I’m Eunyong from Purfles, that’s my name.  And your name, what’s your name?  Do you even know what your name is?”

She doesn’t give you time to respond, but then passes the phone to someone else.

“How does it feel to be disempowered?” says another voice, who you instantly recognise as Hyomin.  She passes the phone straight away back to IU.

You’re panicking.  “What do you want?” you ask.

“I suggest that you come into work tomorrow.  There’s a problem at work.  When you get the call from Vicki, please be co-operative” says IU, before terminating the call.

—–

The next day, you’re making breakfast, when your phone rings.  It’s Vicki’s number.

“Hi Vicki” you answer.

“How did you go with Krystal?”

You play along, just in case.  “I didn’t go with Krystal.”

Vicki laughs.  “She just called in a little while ago, she told me that you did a fantastic job on her hair, and she really appreciated the conversation!”

You wait.  Obviously, this is a recording.

After the same pause that you experienced in the last few calls, Vicki’s voice continues.  “Wow, you’re a gem to have around, you seem to have a knack for dealing with these idols!  God knows, I could never manage it.  I won’t be around for a while, but Suzy from miss A is coming by tomorrow at about 8pm, why don’t you take the night off tonight and come in then?”

You wait.

Vicki continues.  “I’m sure you’ll do well!  See you at work!”

You put the phone down.  Hearing the name Suzy from miss A makes you have conflicted feelings but you’re not sure why.

—–

CUT 6

You arrive at the salon at 8pm.  It’s closed, which is weird because it’s normally open, but the lights are on and there’s people in there.  There’s some funny signs on the footpath with numbers.

You look through the window of the salon.  Your work colleagues are inside, and it’s really messy in there, with red stains on the walls and furniture tipped over.  The staff all make eye contact you and start panicking, running into the back room.  There’s also a male police officer there, and IU is there.  When the girls panic, IU and the officer, who were previously talking to each other, turn to look at you.  The police officer draws his pistol and points it at you.  IU ducks behind the salon counter.  You then hear your phone ringing.  You pick it up from your purse and answer it with one hand.

“Hello?” you ask.

“Julie, why don’t you put the gun down?” says IU.

“What gun?” you ask.

“The one in your other hand, Julie.” IU replies.

You have no idea what she’s talking about – and who is Julie?  Something hits you in the head out of nowhere, and you fall unconscious.

—–

EPILOGUE

It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s look at this week’s new releases!

Sechs Kies

Fiestar – Mirror

All 808 drums and sultry keys, this is Fiestar’s “Touch” moment where they finally solidify their core concept.  Let’s hope that unlike miss A, they stick with it.

Lee Hi – Hold My Hand

YG aim for “Lion Heart/Sugar Sugar” territory here and miss wildly, by not modifying the typical 2NE1-style melodic lines in the chorus to suit the material.

Cosmic Girls – Catch Me

About one part Wassup to two parts Red Velvet, you can tell they’re Sistar’s sister group because their label has no set musical concept for them and is just flinging shit against the wall to see what sticks just like they did with Sistar back in the day.  This song is at its best right at the end when the girls stop singing.

Miss $ – Don’t Speak Without Soul

A song with little potential anyway made even worse by bizarrely incompetent musical choices.  The time signatures of the backings rub up against the vocal meter, making this song sound like it’s tripping over itself rhythmically.  Fine for a pure rap song maybe, but not for this.

Snuper – Platonic Love

Lifts the keyboard textures from a-ha’s “Take On Me” and the melodies from a bunch of other songs from the same era.  The 80’s actually weren’t this 80’s.

Yuju (Gfriend) & Sunyoul (Up10tion) – Cherish

You know you’re a big-ticket item in k-pop when you get offers to pair up in some generic mid-paced ballad to help promote some boy group member on another label.

Solbi – Black Swan

I don’t even know what this is but it’s alright, with a welcome change of musical directions mid-stream.

Echae en Route – Night Drive

If more Korean slow songs were a bit vocally and musically subtle like this one instead of sounding like the ten millionth Whitney/Mariah/Beyonce clone jerking off in my face with their “amazing” technique, maybe I’d pour less scorn on them.

BONUS SONGS

JJCC – Today

This didn’t make the cut for the show only because I couldn’t find a playable copy in time.  I think it’s cool how they colourised the windows a bit to make you think it’s a different building.  Clever.  But what’s with the strobes?  Can you guys stop that?  This is supposed to be a “cute concept”, no strobes please.  Thanks.

Lee Hi – Breathe

This one on the other hand didn’t make the cut because it’s pure garbage.  Now that Lee Hi has turned 20 she gets to do cookie-cutter Korean slow ballad #598723, coming soon to a restaurant sound system near you.

Loopy – Goyard

Sounds great for the first 50 seconds before the awful beat and rapping come in and ruin it, I’d happily take another three minutes of the ambient intro and the rest can get buried under an avalanche for all I care.

Yoona (Girls’ Generation) & 10cm – Deoksugung Stonewall Walkway

Some dull music, some eaves of some buildings, a few trees, some computer-generated clouds and Yoona’s face all fight for the title of Most Boring Thing 2016.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup – more next week!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse Interview!

The subject of this edition of Kpopalypse Interview is Naino from Nutaz.  Read on to find out more!

Kpopalypse interviews emerge with the unlikeliest of subjects, and one of those subjects is Nutaz – a two-piece underground rap group who were on MBK Entertainment, and no that’s not a typo.  They were featured on a previous Kpopalypse Nugu Alert (the prestigious “these songs don’t suck” edition) and the group consists of members Naino and Venimun.  A member of the elite Caonima Interview Squad put me in touch with Naino and we had a Skype conversation about what Nutaz have been up to, their time with MBK and their new directions.

This was a difficult interview to conduct, because Naino has very, very broken English and took a long time to answer questions, even with an interpreter – kudos to him for being a sport and showing high determination levels to struggle with the language barrier.  Hence this interview is very short!  The following answers have in some instances been edited for clarity, but I’ve made them as true to his actual statements as I can possibly manage while also maintaining readability.

Hi!  How are you?  Answer in as much or as little detail as applicable.

Hi, I’m Nutaz’s member “Naino”.

A lot of international fans don’t know about Nutaz so this interview will be the first time many hear about Nutaz.  How would you describe Nutaz to them?

Nutaz is a pair, a hip-hop team.  We have been friends since middle school.  Just friends who play and create a team in a natural way.

Until a few months ago, we were in MBK Entertainment, but now we’re out cuz we’re not a match musically.

MBK’s website as of 17th March 2016, with Nutaz still listed (for now) as a current artist.

So Nutaz is still active?

Yes, still a duo team.  Just not with an agency, just independent.

We are projected to release an album independently.  It is maybe 60% completed.  I’m not sure of my plan, whether to get sponsorship from an entertainment agency or stay independent, but this album is really awesome, I swear.

Also I manage a crew called “Crimp” this is a crew that do art, music, anything and sell our work.

Has Nutaz been successful so far?

I think we are not yet successful, our team is ready to start.

How high is your profile in Korea?

I don’t know “what is success’s standard.”  But I will have success just by my own standard.

Nutaz has an “old-school” hip-hop sound.  What is your favourite era of hip-hop?

None, I just know if I’m hearing good music.  It’s the same with making my album.  I can’t talk about “this is ~era music”, it’s just music.  As it were, I like Odd Future.

How did you get involved with MBK?

I sent Nutaz’s demo tape to some major entertainment agencies.  The next day 3 companies contact us, and MBK is the one we went with.

What is your impression of MBK as a company?

I think MBK just want idols.

Were they good to work with?

I don’t want to be an idol, I just want to be a musician, so I didn’t have a good time in MBK.

Many people in hip-hop in Korea also work with idols.  Did MBK ever try to get Nutaz to collaborate with idols?

MBK did try featuring Nutaz for a Davichi song.  We think our vibe is not a good match to Davichi.  And that’s so stressful, when a project is not completed.

What is your opinion of rap TV shows such as Show Me The Money, Unpretty Rapstar etc?

That was just a TV show, soso.  Show Me The Money has nothing to do with my music.

Do you think it is a good or a bad thing?

I think it’s just a show, and people like that.  I don’t think badly of it.

Tell me more about your crew “crimp”, what activities do they do?  I was told you are doing something in fashion now, is “crimp” part of this?

Now Crimp’s members is Nutaz and producer Lee Jong Min, rapper VANDA, designer coolkid.

They do shows, clothes, music, pictures, anything,

Crimp site’s item is [I didn’t really understand the rest of this comment but I believe he was referencing his website].

Do you have a link to the site?

www.crimp.kr

This looks good!  Can you tell me about this music item? 

This is producer Lee Jong Min’s free instrumental.  You can download, stream, use is free for all.

When can we expect your album to be released?

Maybe 28th December 2015 his first Ep is released.  My album is maybe next year.

I planned a few more questions but after this short interview both myself and my contact lost touch with Naino, as he presumably is now working hard on Crimp and the next projects for Nutaz.  I also wasn’t able to secure a “proof picture” because of this, but it’s possible one may turn up in the future in which case I’ll add it here.

After this interview was made in December 2015, all of Nutaz’ old videos were taken off the Internet.  The videos of the old Nutaz songs above are reuploads by another dedicated caonima.  Those of you who speak Korean may enjoy this short video from Crimp’s YouTube channel which might shed more light on this interview (or might not).

It’s tricky to find Nutaz content, however if you like the songs in the videos above remember that while you’re waiting for new Nutaz material you can buy the older 2013 Nutaz album on YesAsia, Kpopalypse recommends that you do this and that you support Nutaz in the future!

Naino + dog. As good as a proof shot.  Source: Realnutaz Instagram, 2015

That’s it for another Kpopalypse interview!  Are you or do you know someone of interest in the Korean music scene who would like to do Kpopalypse Interview?  If so, get in touch!

It seems that “sponsors” are the latest big issue in k-pop and naturally everyone is horrified that people in the music business might get paid money to do extra-curricular activities.  Could it be that the music industry is actually a corrupt den of thieves, liars and prostitutes whoring themselves out for cash, and that the entire industry is inextricably linked with organised crime?

Of course Way is no help, but it’s okay because once again, Kpopalypse is here to bring you the trufax and take you to places that other bloggers don’t dare go!  Let’s ask some more candid folks and find our the answer to this all-important question!

Yes the industry is full of criminals, and nobody cares.  Great, now that’s over with, let’s get to the real purpose of this post, which is sponsoring Kpopalypse.  Why should G.na have all the fun?

My site has a Paypal donation button on the side, you should all be familiar with it, but I noticed that not many people were clicking on it and giving me ridiculously large sums of cash, so instead I devised this neat Wikipedia-style fundraising banner at about the same time that Wikipedia were doing their annoying yearly fundraisers (click to enlarge):

I set up this donation banner a while ago to randomly appear instead of the usual KPOPALYPSE banner at the top of the web page, however I only received one donation because of this (cheers to you, you know who you are!).  I think that most of you just went out and got ice-creams and fapped to Raina instead, which is fair enough because that’s probably what I would have done. I have to hand it to my readers for being discerning individuals, however this still left me with a dilemma – I was not incredibly stinking rich.  What to do about this situation?

I thought that maybe I could try some YouTube monetisation.  Surely a combination of cats and k-pop would be enough to make people click on video ads and for YouTube to then give me a slice of that precious advertisement revenue.  So I made an amazingly kick-ass cat video, with the best quality k-pop rapping I could find and as short a running time as possible to entice people to play it over and over again and watch adverts:

My video all ready to go, I headed over to the YouTube partner monetisation settings to enable my influx of wealth, and:

“No YouTube ad revenue for you, filthy Australian!” declared the YouTube partner page.  Clearly in the interests of global safety YouTube doesn’t want funds leaving the USA and entering the hands of people in other countries with access to dangerous wildlife.  So much for that idea.

I figure I could try out some crowdfunding.  Crowdfunding isn’t really a critical thing for k-pop labels who burn way more cash even with a cheap MV than what a crowdfund would make, but it’s a nice way for them to get the community involved.  It worked well for nugus Stellar who had high levels of success with their crowdfunding, reaching over 400% of their projected target, so I figured that maybe they could help me out too.  I went over to popular k-pop crowdfunding website Makestar to see how I could become involved in a crowdfunding project.

Makestar are so keen to let you know that any old person can’t have their own star project, that this question/answer is actually mentioned on their FAQ twice, just to make sure you don’t miss it – I guess they get a lot of enquiries like this.  Only an official contract between a star and Makestar would suffice to create a “star project”, so I got my project administrator Ms. Cao Nima from my little-known subsidiary CaoNiMa Entertainment on the case to see if Makestar would be willing to enter contractual negotiations and crowdfund for my new upcoming girl group SPUNKMOP (쑤북크멉).

The lovely people at Makestar got back to Ms. Cao Nima within only a few hours, which was very impressive indeed.  I highly recommend doing business with the folks at Makestar, they seem very punctual and thorough, and they even made a point to guarantee confidentiality (Way’s Girls take note), plus their English usage is flawless!

The answer to my question about crowdfunding was potentially, yes!  There was a problem however.  As CaoNiMa Entertainment is still recruiting for SPUNKMOP at this stage, many of the details they required are unknown, so my project administrator wasn’t able to be more helpful in providing the needed details to get the crowdfunding project off the ground.  I decided that waiting for SPUNKMOP’s lineup to be ready could take a long time, certainly longer than I was prepared to wait for some cash, so I told her to politely end the email exchange for the time being.  No point leading them on, after all.

Maybe I need an actual crowd before I can do crowdfunding anyway, it’s probably too soon in SPUNKMOP’s life-cycle to get Makestar involved… but then, do I need them anyway?  Why can’t I just do it all myself?  I’ll just have to do my own crowdfund without their help.  Let’s do it!

I know my crowdfund is going to be a huge success!  That’s it for Kpopalypse blog for now, more posts soon!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out new stuff!

Pritz

This week’s roundup nearly didn’t happen as I almost had to pull a sickie on the entire show due to rapidly losing my voice from a viral infection.  Fortunately high determination levels won the day.

Hyomin – Sketch

T-ara’s Hyomin out-Hyunas Hyuna’s Hyuna effortlessly, which I expected, but what I didn’t expect is for this song to actually work.

Red Velvet – One Of These Nights

Red Velvet could have used Hyomin’s producer going over this track to see if he could have added something vaguely interesting to it because there sure is nothing here right now.

Jiyoung – Radio

I definitely HAVE heard this song before, or one that sounds 99% identical, but where from, I have no idea.  I didn’t like it back then much either.

Jiyoung – I’m Just Not Into You

It’s better than this unexciting BoA-by-numbers, though.

Bauuer ft. MIA & G-Dragon – Temple

Not great but better than all CL’s 57 “American debuts” so far.

Luhan – Adventure Time

“Disneyland reflects the real life.”  Unquestionably a phrase destined for the Kpopalypse Lexicon.

GOT7 – Fly

The chorus is okay but the slow bullshit in the rest of it is just the same boring slow bullshit 90% of pop music is these days.

Baba – Catch Me

All the bounciness and gaudy strangeness of Orange Caramel but without the melody.

Mercury – Don’t Stop

This Europop song is just the same four chords over and over but is certainly pleasant enough, just like the girls themselves.  Everyone looks so generically beautiful these days, don’t they?

BONUS SONGS

CLC – High Heels

Actually I played this a month ago but the full video just came out so I thought I might as well stick it here just to meet Kpopalypse blog’s minimum Sorn quota.

Jessi – Excessive Love

Obsession over vocals is a disgusting, worthless cancer on k-pop even when the performers CAN sing, but to see vocally-obsessed trashbags fawn over this obviously 90% computer-generated performance really brings home how little these self-appointed Internet vocal experts really know.

Ailee – Love Now

A new Ailee MV without Ailee actually in the MV is like socks for Kpopalypse’s birthday.  Curse OSTs and their abundance of stock footage for MV use.

K.will – Talk Love

I actually can’t whistle at all and it’s one of the multitude of things I was bullied about as a kid.  K.will please stop bullying me with this Bruno Mars bullshit song thank you.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup – more next week!

It’s time for another POSITIVE post, this one is all about G.na!

G.na was recently caught being a prostitute, and thus has now earned coveted POSITIVE post status on Kpopalypse blog.

Some might believe this article is being sarcastic, but not so!  Kpopalypse is a firm supporter of prostitution, the “world’s oldest profession”.

Prostitution is very natural occurrence that happens not just with humans but also in the animal kingdom.  Any time where a currency is introduced to a species, prostitution quickly follows.  Penguins are even known to trade precious nest-building stones for hot penguin sex.  Why fight what nature intended?

For those less interested in natural law but who are more of the religious persuasion, note that prostitution is also very religious.  Contrary to popular belief, both the Bible and the Koran favoured regulated prostitution, just as sex workers themselves do.  So there is no reason for religious people not to support prostitution.

As for the belief system of the average basement-dwelling Internet knob-jockey, everyone’s a believer in “key and lock theory” until they lock themselves out of their house or car.  Then, they secretly wish for all locks to be as easily opened as possible.

Aren’t analogies fun!  Prostitution is exceptionally common in the music business and you’d find it difficult to meet a single person active in the music industry in any country who doesn’t at the very least support prostitution ideologically, whether they use such services or not.  This is partly because of the industry’s culture of permissiveness in general, and partly the acknowledgement that the music business is such a dead horse financially for all but a few, and therefore any extra-curricular activities that people might need to do to earn income are not frowned upon.

Prostitution is also very common in South Korea generally, accounting for up to 4% of South Korea’s GDP, but you probably knew this. That’s a lot of fucking.

Combine these two factors and the likelihood of k-pop girls using a knock-shop to knock away some of that trainee debt is very likely, and already-debuted girls with established names can obviously demand higher prices than those who are still trainees.

It’s not just the girls getting knocked, either.  Rookie and in-training boy groups also get used for sex services, and are often hired out to private corporate hen’s parties and similar functions so they can dance and be groped by women keen to lay their hands on some chiselled k-pop man-meat… plus a little more, if the price is right.

Source?  Names?  Just wait a while… like all good Kpopalypse predictions, it’ll all come out in time.  In the meantime, support G.na, because whatever she’s been doing, there’s a good chance your bias was also doing at some point.  Let’s all think POSITIVE thoughts for G.na!

It’s been about six months since the last Kpopalypse survey, so you know what that means – time to survey all of you lovely Kpopalypse readers once again!

Click on the picture of Eunjung below to take the survey, and enjoy!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out some new releases!

Akdong Musician

Hyosung – Find Me

Yeah she’s tied up and she looks amazing and there’s even some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sideboob somewhere but what really excites me here is that the beat is at 124 BPM which in 2011 would be considered about average but in 2016 sounds like fucking Slayer compared to everything else in k-pop coming out lately.

Oh My Girl – Liar Liar

Similar to Twice and DIA‘s recent songs, but better – however it also has the same sonic overload problems and just like those songs your ears will feel like they’ve been syringed once it’s over.

Block B – A Few Years Later

Redeems itself from R&B ballad trashville by soundaliking some of The Roots’ better production quirks.

Rude Paper – Sons Of Liberty

No k-pop concessions here, this is pure reggae, so if you like reggae you’ll like this.  And if not, then you won’t.

KittiB – Doin’ Good

Add this to the enormous list of Korean rap songs where a doubling of BPM would have fixed the fucking problem.

Amber – Borders

Amber could have done so much more with the “misfit” theme of this, I was hoping for something that actually sounded like The Misfits.

A.cian – Touch

They pretty much ripped off YG’s entire sonic palate here and tried to make an actual decent song out of it.  I refuse to believe that young men who look this fit are this bad at climbing.

Lipservice – Hello

Another promising k-pop group goes shit, here’s this week’s token “Love The Way You Lie” clone.

MC Meta, Naachal, Nuck, Rhyme-A, DJ Pandol – We Back

This is what actual rap music sounds like.  Just reminding you because I think a lot of people have forgotten.

Hong Jin Young – Thumb Up

Starts off looking meh but Hong Jin Young wears better clothes as the MV progresses and that’s all I really wanted from this.

BONUS SONGS

Dean – Bonnie & Clyde

The beat is acceptable, pity Dean (I refuse to spell his name the stupid way) isn’t doing anything acceptable over the top of it.

Dean & Gaeko – Half Moon

This is even more fucking shit, Dean should just quit music and… oh wait, in Korea they love this crap.  Never mind then, carry on making money I guess.

Jay Park – The Truth Is

And here’s how Jay Park does it.  Horrible of course, but the funny lyrics make it one of the best songs Jay Park has ever done.

D-9ine – Touch Me Now

Yeah mind if I don’t.

BTOB – Remember That

Ballads are no fun.  Ballads endanger the life and happiness of millions.  It must stop.  We appeal in particular to the youth of today.  Stop the madness!  There are better things in life.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup!  The series will return next week and in the meantime don’t forget to TAKE THE KPOPALYPSE SURVEY if you haven’t yet!  Do it, caonimas!

I’ll post detailed results later, but one of the big takeaways so far from my latest survey is that you readers like the fanfiction but would also like to see more gender balance in Kpopalypse blog.  So in the ever-continuing quest to give all of my readers exactly what they want at all times, I’m going to hand this post over to a young female author to write about k-pop guys!

Her writing style’s a bit different to mine but I’m sure you’ll all enjoy a break from my snarky bullshit, right?

Hi!  My name is Amy and Kpopalypse has asked me to write a fanfic! Yay!

So here it is:

XIUMIN AND CHANYEOL GET BUCKWILD (WHILE I WATCH)

Chapter 1

My name is Amy and I am really pretty with long hair and it’s my best feature and I’m really nice. I just started at my new school in Seoul! It’s really boring because of all the learny stuff and cos I have to clean and mop but it’s also super rad because it’s in Gangnam where K-POP STARS ARE omggggggggggg

So I was having lunch break and I was sitting at the table eating lunch, and a guys says “can I sit next to u?” and I looked up and saw Xiumin from EXO!

OMG SQUEEEEEEE

So he sat down and I was like “oh my god you are Xiumin from EXO!  I love you!”

and he was like “yeah” and totally cool about it and everything but he also seemed really sad.

“Y r u sad?  I love you!” I asked Xiumin, but he didn’t say anything, he just looked deep and moody and really sexy.

Chapter 2

The next day I had lunch and Xiumin was there again.

“Amy, I have something important to say” he said. He looked totally serious which was really hot.

“Okay then!” I said.

“Amy, even though this is only the second time I have seen you, I feel like I have known you my whole life. I need to confess to you something… are you an EXO-L with all your heart?”

“Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I reply.  I mean I’m not actually in EXO-L or anything but that doesn’t matter I’m still EXO 4 LYF

He said “I’m gay for Chanyeol.  But we need help to consummate our love.  Because EXO is our life and so important to us, we cannot make sweet love without the presence of a true EXO-L who is completely pure in their love for EXO.  Can you help us by being there for us during our lovemaking session?”

“OMG YES” I said!  I got really excited and started jumping up and down and spazzing!

“It’s only because you are so pretty, Amy, prettier than that other girl over there” said Xiumin, stroking my hair with his hands.  He looks at some other girl called Sarah and then back at me.  “You’re the prettiest” he says.

Chapter 3

So that night Xiumin takes me over to the EXO DORMS and I’m really excited!

We go into the shower and there is Chanyeol and he is like SUPER HOT

MY OVARIES THEY HURT

Xuimin sees Chanyeol and then he sprouts angel wings OMG

AN ANGEL OMG

He says “I AM ACTUALLY AN ANGEL SENT TO EARTH THAT IS WHY EXO ARE SO AWESOME AND BETTER THAN OTHER GROUPS, CHANYEOL PLEASE BEND OVER AND ACCEPT MY WARM LOVE INTO YOUR HOLE”.

Chanyeol drops his pants and says “AS EXO WE ARE ONE, WE WILL JOIN OUR FLUIDS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE EXO-L, WHO IS SO PRETTY WITH HER NICE HAIR”

Xiumin wraps his angel wings around Chanyeol and says “IT IS JUST AS WELL YOU ARE SO PRETTY AMY, THANK YOU AMY FOR ENABLING OUR HOT MAN LOVE”

Chapter 4

I’m having lunch with Xiumin and Chanyeol at school, they are both stroking my hair cos it’s so pretty omg.

“Can you listen to my singing? Do I need more vocal practice? Please teach me the proper way to sing with your knowledge of true talent as an EXO-L” asks Xiumin.

“What do you think we should release next as a single? As an EXO-L I think you would know best” asks Chanyeol.

All the girls in my class looking at me and they are totes jealous especially that bitch at school Sarah who thinks she’s better than everyone and who all the gross boys look at because she looks so easy.

Chapter 5

Xiumin says “thank you Amy, you have given us the courage to go public with our relationship”.

They go public in the media, South Korea sees this and make gay marriage legal and I am at Xiumin and Chanyeol’s wedding and its so awesome.

Then EXO release a new album and its the best thing ever, and Xiumin shows his abs on stage a lot.

ASDGFJAHGSDFGHASDFADSGGH

Everyone at school loves me because I helped EXO. Nobody looks at Sarah ever again because she’s a slut and so gross, all she ever did was meet them at a fansign once and Xiumin touched her on the arm but I couldn’t go because I had a cold. She thinks she’s so special but she is NOT she is UGLY.

THE END

p.s KRYSTAL KEEP AWAY FROM OPPAR YOU TROLLOP

YOU ARE NOTHING

YOUR NOT EVEN PRETTY

I was actually going to write something different today but I quickly had to stop and catch my breath to praise the new hero of our time Shannon Williams.

How many reasons can I find to love Shannon Williams?  Let me count the ways!

SHANNON BROUGHT US “WHY WHY”

Listen to this great song.

It’s like Twice’s “Like Ooh-Ahh” if someone actually went through and carefully fixed all the production problems like the overbearing vocals and general screechiness of it all, and then tuned the song’s melody and backings up a bit to make them way more awesome.  Except that “Why Why” actually came out BEFORE “Like Ooh-Ahh”, which also means that JYP is a dirty plagiarising whore.  Say what you want about MBK but they are always with the great songs.  Well okay, Shannon also had “Daybreak Rain” which was a fucking shit song but that doesn’t fit in with my narrative for this post so let’s just do a Netizenbuzz and ignore what doesn’t fit into my preconceived worldview and move on.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

You, whoever you are reading this right now, are not this pretty.  Shannon seems like a nice girl.  Would go for an ice-cream with.

SHANNON LOVES RETARDS

Here’s a v-app video of Shannon and friends which is apparently causing some controversy for the Internet’s vast population of stupids.

Shannon could have guessed that Dani’s sheep noise at 39:20 was her imitating a spasticated retarded drooling shambling fuck but instead she said “special needs” which is the modern politically correct way to refer to someone with a severe mental disability.  The rules on this keep changing all the time.  “Spastic” is actually correct terminology (and is still in official use where I live), as is “retarded” (also still in official use) and now “special needs” is the latest official rubber-stamped correct jargon but every time someone uses these words in a negative context, dumb people get all offended and say “you can’t use that word”, instead of saying what they really should be saying which is “don’t use that word to insult people”.  So as a result, people get offended by the WORD instead of getting offended by the CONTEXT, and in response the people who look after spastics keep inventing new nice friendly terms to try and fix the problem (“disabled“, “handicapped“, etc etc), but as soon as people start using each new term in an insulting context (i.e a week later) then those people decide “oh wait we can’t use that word now, we need another word” which doesn’t change a damn thing.  It’s obviously the context that’s the issue, not the word itself.  You can make any word you want an insult against retarded people just by using it in an insulting way.  So what’s Shannon’s context?  Shannon wasn’t insulting anyone – Dani just made a spasticated retarded fucking bitch noise so Shannon quite reasonably guessed maybe that was what she was emulating, and said so in the politest way possible in 2016, out of thoughtfulness to not offend.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Even when she’s dressed in her grandmother’s knitwear and making a silly scrunched-up face Shannon is still way more attractive than you.  This should be acknowledged.

SHANNON LOVES GAYS

In the same video Shannon says “that’s so gay” (at about 11:50) when someone does a heart sign.  That’s because being gay is all about love and Shannon loves gays so it’s natural that she would associate such a loving gesture as a heart sign with her fondness for gays.  It’s also a promising indicator that she could soon replace Seth Putnam as the new singer and lyricist for grindcore group and trolling pioneers Anal Cunt, which nets her huge amounts of Kpopalypse points.  Anal Cunt’s next single – “Heart Signs Are Gay“.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

You will never be this attractive, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Unless you’re my girlfriend, but I doubt she would have the patience to even scroll down this far in one of my bullshit k-pop posts so she’s probably not reading.  My girlfriend > Shannon Williams >>>>>>>>>>> || >>>>>>>>>> rest of humanity.  Deal with it.

SHANNON LOVES BLACK PEOPLE

Shannon loves black culture so she listens to black music, just like all of us.  In the video mentioned above she sings along to a Beyonce song which shows that she has terrible music taste and it’s just as well that other people write her songs for her.  I can’t hate on a girl for liking shit music though or I’d have to hate 99% of girls ever.  Anyway at 7:30 she sings “mix that negro with that creole”, because… well, that’s what’s in Beyonce’s version.  What is she supposed to do – not sing that bit?  It’s not like she just joined the KKK (although that would be awesome just for the reaction and I hope someone in k-pop does – I’m tipping SNSD’s Seohyun, just because), she’s just innocently singing a song and it’s your racial prejudices which are turning it into a bad thing, not hers.  Even veteran black hip-hoppers who grew up in more racially-charged times believe that it’s ludicrous to ask fans of other races to not sing along to their songs just because of the language in them and that context is important.  Just as well Shannon’s music taste is shit and she wasn’t singing along to something decent like NWA, can you imagine?

Oh and omonatheydidnt in a glorious bit of confirmation-bias fuelled editorialisation says that in the same video she is “extremely bossy and over the top” and “keeps putting on a fake offensive accent thought to be cool” – yeah she’s talking like a Kardashian in some parts of the video.  That’s YOUR fault Americans, for spreading that particular cancer.  Now you’ve got the whole rest of the world’s teenage girls emulating her and doing that crap.  Thanks, cunts.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Here’s another picture of Shannon Williams being more attractive than you, which isn’t hard to achieve, you ugly gay special needs fuck.

SHANNON IS MAKING PEOPLE ACTUALLY STAN DANI

Wow something positive written about poor Kim Dani for once, a lovely girl who has been there and done that when it comes to being cyberbullied by the Internet’s worthless trashbags.  Shannon, know you can count on Dani for support, she has valuable experience in the area of ignoring oxygen-wasting netizen scum and can probably teach you a lot!

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Here’s Shannon dancing and singing.  Isn’t she pretty?  Yes, this appears to be an objective fact.

SHANNON DOESN’T WANT TO DATE THOSE FUGLY GUYS IN K-POP BOY GROUP SEVENTEEN

Vernon is “just a friend” and DK is “ew, gross” (at about 51:00).  Talk about keeping it real.  Shannon the realest.  I wouldn’t bang any of these dudes either, even if I was a heart-sign-making gay guy who would bang guys generally.  Most k-pop artists struggle to be this honest, lest their handlers scream blue murder and cancel their schedules.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Just another image of Shannon being pretty while you are ugly, nothing unusual at all, feel free to keep scrolling down.

SHANNON SPOILERS THE NEW BATMAN VS SUPERMAN MOVIE

I can’t find it in the video but apparently Shannon drops a spoiler in there somewhere about the crap new Batman vs Superman film, and good because superhero films suck and are for man-children who believe in the MRA movement and have a mental age of 6, so she just saved a bunch of people money that they could have wasted seeing that bullshit.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Shannon is more
Attractive than you

SHANNON DIDN’T APOLOGISE

This is important.  Good work Shannon.  We both know that you are in the right.  I’m sure that entitled spoiled-brat my-emotional-needs-first everything-is-my-business international k-pop fans will keep cyberbullying you and sending death threats until they finally force MBK to make you do an ISIS-style apology video, but for now, fuck ’em.  Hopefully MBK is culturally unaware enough to even notice that people are pissed off and you can just keep on being you, that’d be cool.

UPDATE: she did actually apologise, and in super-quick time, too.  Oh well, it was fun watching entitled morons bitch and moan about her while it lasted.

SHANNON IS PRETTY

Shannon is not only pretty but here is showing correct horizontal stripes usage and even pulls off duckface without looking disgusting which as far as I’m concerned is like some kind of magic trick.

Oh and hey Shannon your English skills are pretty fucking good, plus you reckon you have a “dry sense of humour” so I think that you and this blog would be a perfect match.  How would you like to do an interview?  I’ll expect your response fondly!

It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s take a look at this week’s new releases!

DIA

N-Soniq – Excalibur

The Garry Glitter style drums are cool, pity about the fairly average song plopped on top of them.

Girls Girls – Girls Girls

On the other hand this song has completely shit rhythms and some of the worst makeup in k-pop history but then the chorus happens and it completely redeems everything with some of the weirdest and most melancholy harmony I’ve ever heard in a k-pop song.  A complete failure as pure pop as it won’t fly with most listeners, but great anyway.

Boys Republic – Get Down

Wow it’s a k-pop lite version of Necro’s “White Slavery Pt.2 (The Human Traffic King)“.  Well, I guess if The Human Centipede is fair game, so is this.

Day6 – Letting Go

The Day6 kids are singing into those Shure 55’s every which way.  Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they’re singing into the top like k-pop stars usually do, and sometimes they’re actually signing into it from behind.  Come on JYP, teach these kids how it’s… oh wait he probably doesn’t know either.

Mamamoo – Woo Hoo

My Mamamoo bias keeps on changing.  It always seems to go to whoever has the darkest hair colour at any particular point in time.  For this video, it’s Solar, but they’ll ALL have to go with completely black hair before I can truly make up my mind.  I have to think about these things to distract myself from another one of their disgusting Sistar clone songs.  Oh and nice bait-and-switch with the Queen style harmonies at the start you fucking assholes.

CNBlue – You’re So Fine

You wouldn’t even know that this was supposedly a “rock band”, it sounds just like every other crap mid-paced k-pop/funk song.  Why do they even pretend to play their instruments, are they really still fooling anyone in 2016.

Bernard Park & Hyelim (Wonder Girls) – With You

Hyelim looks tons better here in casual clothes just being chill than she does in any Wonder Girls video.  Astoundingly, stupendously better, to the point where it actually fits the song.  I call this “the Snowyeon Effect“.

Danpyunsun And The Sailors ft. Kim Sawol – Lover

Some weird John Zorn style instrumentation and a creepy video doesn’t actually make this a good song, but I guess at least it’s different and breaks all the pure pop stuff up a little, seeing as how there wasn’t any new hip-hop or whatever this week.

Skull & Haha with Stephen Marley – Love Inside

Does Stephen Marley actually respect Skull and Haha’s contribution to reggae, or does he just laugh while collecting the appearance fee and try not to look too embarrassed?  I guess only he knows the answer to that, but he at least does a good job of pretending that he’s into this.  Or maybe it’s the drugs.

BONUS SONGS

10cm – What The Spring??

The only difference between this guy and Jay Park is that Jay Park actually gets laid.

Sam Kim – Mama Don’t Worry

Orchestras in LA will play any old crap if you pay them enough to afford their methadone clinic visits.

That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup – more next week!

This post contains all the results of the Kpopalypse 2016 survey of important trufax!

The Kpopalypse survey had a total of 652 respondents, and a completion rate of 98%, the highest yet!  It seems that adding a note on the front page about how long the survey would take to fill out paid off and helped more people finish it successfully, even if I did overestimate the time (most people only took about tem minutes to do the survey).

Question 1: Hi! How are you? Answer in as much or as little detail as applicable.

I added a footnote to this question saying “Yes, I do care, which is why I always have this question, and I always make you answer it.  I’m good, by the way.” but still plenty of you wanted to know why I was asking, or asked how I was, even though I had already answered this.  You weirdos.  Most people were good, some were not so good, and a lot of people complained about exams (Kpopalypse surveys tend to come around at about that time).  Here’s some of the many questions and comments you had, and some responses from me.

Dear Kpopalypse, is there something wrong with me? For the past two weeks I have turned my radio on at 4pm only to hear the DRIVE programmme and I don’t know if there’s something incorrect with my alarm or my radio or if you are on holiday but I worry it is actually a problem with me and I am somehow losing an hour every Monday afternoon.  Good day.

Every six months the timezone in South Australia changes as Daylight Savings comes and goes.  Daylight Savings is our government’s way of helping rapists by making the sun go down sooner in winter so there are more dark alleys for them to drag people off into.  You need to listen one hour earlier, until October when it will change again and then the rapists in Adelaide switch to morning activity.

I’m so stressed from my thesis (I told you about it the last trufax survey too, sigh) that I went off to look for a fuck buddy. Got home from a rave this morning and I’m still a little high from it that instead of working on my shit I’m answering your survey. I was wondering where Kaylia Kookie and Sindsoron were, when did they quit? I prefer them over Oreo Monster any day. Suho_ftw is the only 13th gen author I actually like. Hope she stays. Also, I need a Laboum article from Fany Pack. Make her do it.

Kpopalypse readers are living the high life, it’s trufax.  I don’t have any authority over Fany Pack or any other AKF authors though, but you could try asking her yourself.

I’ve been feeling pretty down, to be honest. I’m in that transitioning-to-an-adult phase where I have to make decisions about what I wanna do with my life, and I’ve been getting non stop harrasment from my family about it too. Oh, and they bug me about my weight, too, which sucks since foods one of my few outlets, besides k-pop. Thanks for your blog for helping alleviate some of my frustrations, by the way; you’re hilarious.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was young except be in a band and rock out.  Your day job doesn’t have to be your reason for existence, just get any old job so you can have money and afford to do cool shit when you’re not at work.  Another option is go to University and do a generic degree like a Bachelor Of Arts which really should be called a Bachelor Of Delaying Life Decisions For A Few More Years.

I’m doing great at the moment, but I think I might die of a rare disease very soon, I still don’t know which one but Hallervorden-Spatz Syndrome sounds rare enough to kill me in a funny way, and as a plus: it provokes Progressive Mental Retardation; maybe that retardation will allow my brain to understand korean netizens, who knows? Anyway, how are you? And why did you read all this shit? In any case, thank you for being so awesome.

Greetings from El Salvador, the world’s murder capital.

No, I’m not going to kill you if you start talking crap about Solar.

Saludos.

Hallervorden-Spatz Syndrome still sounds better than dying of Shit Music Disease, which is probably how I’ll go out after exposure to so many low-quality k-pop comebacks.

Neutral. Though actually now that I think about it, I feel disappointed. This is because everyone in K-pop at the moment insists on releasing shitty boring ballads. EVEN LIP SERVICE DAMNIT?

Annoying, isn’t it.

Hi! We know that you care (are people still asking you about that?), but you must know that WE care so you can’t take our “Thanks and you?” out and answer it beforehand in your own question!

So, how’s your throat? And your knees? Have you fully recovered from that fall from the bike or you can feel the weather changes like an old man? (to me it happen with the appendix, probably not a good sign)

I’m fine by the way, going to the gim, still postponing stuff, but starting to do some of it.

Throat is 100% now, knees are about 90%, I still have scars on my knees and legs from getting hit by that van nearly one year later and I still can’t kneel for long periods but fortunately kneeling isn’t required in Rainaism unlike many other religions so it’s no big thing.

I’m trying to learn how to bake and am waiting for my cookie dough to chill. What’s your favorite kind of cookie?

Chocolate chip.

Hello. I’m kind of stressed lately because i started learning wordpress and it’s a bit complicated. Also, i’m going to take my driver license. Help.

Driving is easy, just give way to the right.  Unless you’re in one of those countries that doesn’t do that.  Can’t help you with WordPress though, have you seen my web design?  I clearly have no fucking idea.

Emotionally ? I have a few mental disorders from childhood abuse, and physicall I stay up all night playing video games, then stay up all day to try and get on a normal sleep schedule again. I was up for 29 hours, then slept for 6 and woke up to pee, I was hungry so I got dressed to go to mcdonalds then had a panic attack about dying from sleep deprivation ( heard it happened to a kid in an internet cafe who had been gaming for a few days straight or something)

I was panicking thinking ‘what if I die?’ and ‘never again’ (referring to the staying-up-for-24-hours-straight thing). We’ll see if I start taking care of myself better.

Kpopalypse predicts that you will take care of yourself better in 2016.

Thank YOU oppar for noticing me last time. I hope you do this time TOOOOOAHAH!!

Sorry but I didn’t notice you this time.  Better luck next survey.

Bad, real bad meaning good bruh, I haven’t fucking slept for almost a week since last fucking week and I really want to fucking shove my fist up my ass tbh. If anyone else sees this just send my way a butthurt cream bc this hemorrhoidic icthy butthole of mine is shitting rocks rn bruv

You neglected to include a postal address.

Better now that I have your survey as something to do while I’m stuck in bed recovering from ankle surgery! My cat is doing awesome though.. I just ordered him a ball of condensed catnip, so he’s pretty high and loving it. How is the Kpopalypse cat doing?

Also, I feel a bit betrayed because the start button was grey and not blue.

The Kpopalypse cat is good!

Sorry about the start button not being the colour I said it was.  I am colour blind, you know.

I was feeling pretty depressed until I saw this and was all like “Kpopalypse oppai cares about me C’:” and instantly felt better. (Not really, I’m still really depressed but I hope that you’re day is super happy to make up for it C:)

Kpopalypse cares about all his readers!

None of your business. Bitch.

Even this one!

Im really fucking tired and its 4am and i have school tomorrow (not today) and im gonna end up waking up late af and not being able to sleep until 4 again and then i wake up 2 hours later and have to suffer through classes with people i hate especially my chem partner shes honestly fucking crazy and my ex best friend failed french so we in the same class so stressful and i found my crush on insta but all he posts are cloud pics i want some nudes AHHHH

If the cloud pic poster is reading, post nudes.  Thanks.

Fine, how about you?

P.S. I’m not really fine, I’m falling apart but I have to say that I’m fine.

There is no social obligation here, you can be honest!

Not that well, honestly. Graduating from college soon and realizing that I’ve just been going to college and doing well because I’m expected to and not because I want to. It’s been hard for me to make friends here and there hasn’t been a lot that’s been giving me enjoyment out of life. Also, student debt -_- I’m wondering if I need to be back on anti-depressants; Even if it won’t address my problems, at least it will help me survive. I seem to have a problem with being honest with people, so even if I have family members who care for me and are excited for me, it kind of makes me resent them because they project their attitude onto mine even if I feel differently in almost extreme ways. I kind of feel like a miserable cunt because of this.

College degrees are still useful even if you don’t want them, they give you more options.  I had depression for years until I saw a doctor who told me to get my blood levels checked and it turned out the problem was vitamin deficiency, a few injections and my depression about 90% vanished within a week.  Trufax.  Just stay away from ballads.

I am in so much shit for school rn.

But I’m also graduating soon, so yay me😀

Congratulate me, u cunt😀

Congratualtions, cunt!

You’re not allowed to already answer with how you are. You’ve made me have to think of an entirely new different thing to say this time around, and I’m going to be mean deliberately just to spite you for making me start the survey off with marginally more effort expended.

Mainly I let people know how I was to avoid constant boring references to Grace’s “I’m fine thank you, and you?” lyric.  It didn’t work, about 5% of all respondents answered the question this way.

Guy who liked Kpop a lot back in 2010-13. No more a big fan but likes to check what’s going on there once in a while.
By the way, your blog is funny.

Thanks!  I try to make my writing appealing to casual k-pop likers as well as crazy fans.

I’m okay. I hate kpop fandom a lot and I question my decision to start listening to this genre when these assholes are inescapable every day.

Because music >>>>>>>>>> dickheads.

Recently realized that I have no desire/reason to live anymore. So I try to spend the days doing various things that would distract me and stifle the voice in my head; mostly end up sleeping the whole day. Also trying to find a fool proof way to end my life (I just cannot afford to be one of those people who tried to commit suicide but ended up being a vegetable or brain dead).

Don’t do it! Depression makes people do strange things but remember that although we live in a world with “Hello Bitches“, we also live in a world with “Black Swan“.

Doing well, thanks. Still enjoying the blog, although I’m sad I’ve read the whole thing twice. My determination levels are high when it comes to learning Korean, and your blog was a big help in getting me interested in the language and the country through your uniquely cynical lens. Thanks in part to that, I have a bunch of Korean friends and I’m going to be moving there in August to teach, so, yeah; thanks. Keep up the good work.

Cheers!

Good, i’m only doing this to tell you to edit your post. You end up writing long ass text that are as boring as Yoona’s song. You could be funny if you take some writing classes or sth

I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that, I’m sure you do), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that, surely you do), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  Also, your grammar fucking sucks, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, cuntface.  But in fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that, I bet you do), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  I don’t think I write long text at all, in fact I think I’m quite brief.  I think there’s much longer text out there than what you’d normally find in a Kpopalypse post.  Plenty of people are much wordier than Kpopalypse.  In fact I’d say that I’m a lot more concise than a lot of people out there.  There are many people who write big long walls of text that basically go nowhere (or around in circles, don’t you hate that, yes you do), but I don’t feel that I’m one of them.  I think it’s important to have brevity and to get to the point.  I also think that a lot of readers don’t really have the patience to read very long passages of text.  It’s just as well that I’m considerate of their special needs to not have to read too much.  Who wants to read large blocks of text anyway, certainly not me.  I can’t imagine how some people put up with the large text passages that I see on other blogs, that’s why I try to be direct and succinct.  It’s good to know how to get straight to the heart of an issue without having to use extended text passages.  It can be very wearying and fatiguing for readers to read large walls of text with no variation, so I always to try to consider my readers first and keep text passages short.  I think it’s best for all concerned if I edit my words carefully.  Don’t you?

Question 2: How do you feel now that the Kpopalypse bi-yearly survey is here?

Everybody was happy or at least accepting about the Kpopalypse survey, otherwise I’m sure you wouldn’t have taken the trouble to fill it out.  That’s why I didn’t add any overtly negative options.  Kpopalypse is all about thinking positive thoughts!

Question 3: What are you viewing this survey on?

I was surprised to see that most people use laptops, I expected either desktops or mobile phones to be more popular.  Kpopalypse learns things, once again!  Also worth noting that more people would touch my mum than a touchpad, so here’s a video of Boram.

Question 4: This is a picture of Eunjung from T-ara.

What’s in Eunjung’s air travel bag?

Anti-netizen spray was the most popular guess – but only just!  Personally, I think it’s Oh My Girl’s visas, I think I can see one of them poking out of the top.  Only Eunjung knows the truth!

Question 5: Song quality seems to be low in 2016. What’s the main cause?

Only 15% of respondents felt that k-pop had no quality problems in 2016 so far.  The rest of you mainly singled out slow soft ballads as the cause of an underwhelming start to the year.  Vocal wank scored surprisingly low, which means that I clearly need to write more posts about how vocal showing-off is destroying music to educate/irritate you all.

Question 6: Kpopalypse never uses fanfiction ideas that are suggested by his readers, because this ruins the element of surprise.  Feel free to suggest a fanficion idea in the space below, this guarantees that Kpopalypse will never write about it.  This way, you can “lock off” ideas that you are hoping he doesn’t use.  You can skip this question if you’re cool about Kpopalypse writing about anything.  (DISCLAIMER: any guarantees in Kpopalypse surveys may be applied selectively if you answer in a really broad kind of way just to be a cunt about things.)

43% of respondents chose to answer this optional free-text question.  Out of those who did answer, about 50% didn’t actually read the question properly, and wrote about what they wanted me to write about, instead of what they didn’t want me to write about.  Oops!  No actual answers will be shared here, I’ll save them for “later use”.

Question 7: What position do you prefer in League Of Legends?  If you don’t play League of Legends, or don’t know what it is, feel free to interpret this question as “what sexual position do you prefer”.

The result is actually contrary to most League Of Legends lane popularity polls I’ve seen which tend to go Mid > Top > Jungle > Bottom > Support so I guess there were enough submissive types who don’t actually play the game to skew the results away from what gamers would pick.  Some people expressed annoyance about a League Of Legends question being here, or even that I played the game at all, so you can be sure that I’ll continue to talk about the game in future posts.  For those who might want to know, I play Oceania servers under the name BKitten, I main support and I’m really bad!  Add me on there if you want, and enjoy the fun that is Bronze V (League’s lowest rank).

Question 8: What should the next Kpopalypse cat video be?

My cat’s thoughts on Produce 101 were the most popular choice, so without further ado here is the requested video!  (My cat really wanted you to pick the mouse though.)

Question 9: Observe the following tweet:

Your reaction to this news?

The top two choices were exactly tied, taking out exactly 34% of the vote each!  However most people knew that Sistar won’t have any money-note spam because they can’t do money-notes.

Question 10: Which is the best song?

Many of you knew what was really going on – “which one of these things with the same name do you like more” is an incredibly boring fucking question to get on my ask.fm so I decided that I’d give you all who were asking me that type of shit a taste of your own medicine.

Question 11: Which is the best song?

Judas Priest had a pretty strong showing of votes for a k-pop website, I thought.  However the main point of this question was just to make my position on these kinds of questions clear.

Question 12: Why is it difficult for Kpopalypse to find people who will do Kpopalypse Interview?

The most popular answer is likely to be the truest, but I was surprised at how many people didn’t think that k-pop stars were drugged up to their eyeballs.

Question 13: The following question could be hazardous to your health. Kpopalypse accepts no liability for any personal misfortune encountered by survey participants arising from answering the following question.

You brave, brave people.  This question was number 13 for a reason.  For those still alive and reading after completing question 13 and 14, feel free to post your daring survival stories below in the comments.

Question 14: On the left is a picture of a dark grey rectangle and two cream rectangles with a small bas-relief dividing line between them.  On the right is a picture of Yoona from Girls’ Generation (SNSD).

Which picture offers more mental engagement and stimulation?

Most people didn’t give a crap, their minds no doubt lulled into hazy toxic submission by the terrifying lack of stimulation in the combination of provided images.  But for those who possessed cranial synapses that were still firing with regularity, Yoona proved to be on average approximately 55% more interesting than a collection of rectangles.

Question 15: Maths question – train A leaves the station moving at 85km/h but stopping every 5 minutes for 30 seconds.  37 minutes later train B leaves the same station moving at 95.5km/h and stopping every 30 minutes for 2 minutes.  Assuming a linear acceleration/deceleration time of 10 seconds for both trains when transitioning from a complete stop to full speed and vice versa, when will After School have a comeback?

Oh, you’re all so cynical.  Let’s all take some time out to remember that After School did actually release a music video in 2015.

Question 16: Do you buy products that k-pop idols endorse?

Some did, some didn’t, but regardless of the result you all have potty mouths.  You all need to take a shower with Bobby.

Question 17: Blah blah blah something something Produce 101?

Of course some people things stuff Produce 101 but something can’t be right because things blah blah company stuff reality TV this way how you can make proves the thing.

Question 18: This is a picture of Eunjung from T-ara.

Describe here what Eunjung is looking at on her phone in 25 words or less. You can skip this question if you’re a loser with no imagination.

80% of participants chose to answer this optional free-text question.  Quite a few of you said that she was reading my blog, which is probably correct as she’s wearing a hat in solidarity with Kpopalypse.

Question 19: Which song is CL’s actual American debut?

Most of you felt (as YG do) that CL’s American debut is still on the way at the time of writing.  Less than 1% of people (only two!) picked “Take The World On“.  I guess the world won.

Question 20: Is credibility important to you when reading Kpopalypse blog? Pick the response that best matches how you feel.

Just checking how much lies and bullshit I can get away with in future posts.  It seems like potentially quite a lot!  It’s fortunate for all of you that Kpopalypse blog contains strict adherence to trufax at all times, except the parts that are obvious fabrications.

Question 21: How do you feel about the Kpopalypse roundup series?

Most people liked the Roundup series which is great.  A lot of people also took the time to mention Roundup in some of the other free text answers and how it was helpful to get a weekly overview of k-pop songs so you guys didn’t have to put in so much effort tracking all the new stuff from week to week.  Those who didn’t know what it is I assume are probably Anti Kpop-Fangirl or Asian Junkie readers who don’t go to Kpopalypse blog, as the roundup posts aren’t featured anywhere else except here (as they’re very much related to the Kpopalypse radio show).

Question 22: This is a picture of Japanese Adult Video star Julia, drinking a Red Bull in a motor vehicle to prevent drowsiness behind the wheel.

Why does Julia need to drink Red Bull to stay awake on the road?

The new Red Velvet song was considered by the most people to be the cause of Julia’s drowsiness.  Most people also realised that Julia being a professional career woman with a busy lifestyle wouldn’t waste her valuable time following something as basic and stupid as Korean netizen comments.

Question 23: Help, I need to buy headphones, recommend me some headphones

People are always asking me about this shit.  Not sure why, headphones aren’t all that great folks.

Question 24: What type of phone do you have?

Some people complained about these questions with only one answer to them, but with a question like this there is only one sensible answer possible so there’s no point giving you any other options.

Question 25: Here is the 19+ video for Hyomin’s “Sketch”.

Does this video meet required underboob/sideboob standards?

I only scored an “oppression of women and minorities” ratio of 20%, clearly I need to increase my determination levels in this important area.

Question 26: What sexual position do you prefer? If you don’t have sex, or you don’t have a preference, feel free to interpret this question as “what position do you prefer in League Of Legends”.

This is exactly the same question as question 7 but just asked the other way around.  Mid lane was more appealing as a sexual position than a gaming playstyle.  What has any of this to do with k-pop?  Nothing really, but it probably annoyed some people to have to answer it, so it was “worth”.

Question 27: What really happened in “Suzy’s Cuts“?

Like my jokes, my fanfictions are a lot less fun for both myself and others when I have to explain them.  However out of the options presented most readers felt that “Suzy’s Cuts” was actually about cheese.  This is as valid a conclusion in my view as any other.

Question 28: Rate the following websites in terms of your enjoyment of their content.

Obviously I’m going to rate the highest on a poll on my own site, that’s to be expected of any site – I was more interested in what readers who like my own site might have thought of other sites.  The results were pretty much what I thought they would be.

Question 29: What is the most enjoyable aspect of Kpopalypse posts for you?

Insight and humour are the big winners.  A lot of people also mentioned in other answers that they’d like more technical and business posts – don’t worry, they are coming!

Question 30: Thanks for doing another Kpopalypse survey!

If you have any feedback about Kpopalypse posts or anything you’d like to tell Kpopalypse, you can do so here. Thanks for your participation!

Here’s a random selection of some comments and queries that people left for this last optional free-text question, and my responses.

tips on how to harvest more fangirl’s tears. pls. this is the only enjoyment i get out of life.

Think logical thoughts > post on the Internet > repeat

Post more shit about your cat. Actually, you should have a survey about your cat.

You’ll note cat content in this survey.  In fact I even unlocked the “Kpopalypse’s cat being a cat” video before reaching the required crowdfund threshold.

Why do you like LOL of Legends you fangay? Play sc2.

After school will have a cumback when uee fucks off and lizzy stops being anorexic. Send her some mass gainer protein powder and a hitachi magic wand. Also tell her to add me back on snapchat.

Actually I do own Starcraft 2 but I got bored of it halfway through the single-player campaign.  League of Legends is also a little bit easier, I can’t micromanage well enough at Starcraft 2 for multiplayer to be worth bothering with.

Lizzy please add this anon back on Snapchat thx babe.

I remember first seeing your posts around 2013. It’s been 3 years and I still follow you because your content never fails to entertain me. So really thank you a lot for providing me and a lot of other people with Kpopalypse content. ♡

Cheers!

I just want to point it out that being someone who is entering the entertainment industry in my country, it is great to have you pointing out some insight about the field without a heavy sugarcoat on the whole shit. Is specifically nice to have you talking about the production side of music and stuff as well, because most folks I have been talking to didn’t say anything worth my time. Keep up the good work and I’ll definitely keep coming back.

Thanks!  For the many people asking for more posts like these, they are coming.  It’s very time-consuming to post stuff like this though and I’m pretty busy these days but I know people like this sort of content and I’ll continue to cater to it.

[a very, very long and insightful comment about blogging and related matters that the respondent asked me not to repost here, but you probably know who you are]

I’m not in a position to know how correct your speculations are but your comments and detailed observations on various k-pop sites have been noted with interest!

Will there be any streams this year?

I’m not sure.  I get thousands of readers per post but the livestream chunks out a lot of my free time and has never attracted more than about 30 people even at its peak, even on occasions when I relentlessly promote it.  Seems like a waste of time for what it’s worth?  Maybe if there’s a special occasion for one I might consider it but it’s not a priority right now.

I really think you can empathize with exploited idols, since you live in Adelaide and that’s worse

Goddamn right.  Now you know why I care so much.

The antikpopfangirl authors need to try pegging to comment on it. The anal virginity is blatantly clear and they are clearly tryhards.

Don’t ruin my dream, man.  HYSF is offically k-pop’s pegging master until he posts a tell-all confessional stating otherwise (at which point I’ll react like a batshit crazy Kai fan – “that’s not a dildo, it’s a seal!”)

This survey was fun!!! I like Kpopalypse posts they are my favourites. I also love how he makes fun of vocal wanking. Once I mentioned the term to a friend and she said it was the most hilarious she has ever heard, so thanks Kpopalypse for making me cool.

Your friend probably needs to get out a little more, but glad you got some value out of my posts anyway!

Thank you for providing a unique viewpoint. The press on k-pop music in general is very lame and seems to be so full of its own bullshit it can’t provide any real news. Who cares about a post on pann with 1000 upvotes. As if that represents a valid point at all is beyond me. I guess its newsworthy though. The critiques you provide have validity and humor. This is outside the realm of anything koreaboo, soompi,…ect can provide.

K-pop news sites are largely a copy-translate-paste service for labels and their own agendas.  Soompi has been getting better lately with some original articles that aren’t too bad, but nobody is going to go where Kpopalypse goes besides Kpopalypse!

I want to fuck you in the ass, no homo. Also, I like your articles, or whatever you call these things you post, and I’m looking forward to more. Also#2 I enjoy your disdain for vocal fags and I’d like to see more of that since so many people think they’re vocal experts these days so fuck them.

Regards,

Some hobo jerking off in your backyard

I’m pretty sure I’m flattered by this.  Happy jerking times.

I’m a NEET who became this way because of a lifetime of physical, emotional, mental, and even sexual abuse by my “father”. Quotations because that fuckface doesn’t deserve to be given the title of a father. I still live with him to this day and I can’t get out. He has narcissistic personality disorder and I frequently dream about brutally torturing and/or killing him. Those thoughts fill me with pleasure but also take me one step closer to actually doing it. I don’t want to ruin my life because of this fuckhead but I want him dead. How can I kill him without legally being a murderer? I mean like what prayers can I do to increase the odds of his demise without actually being responsible for it by law? I mean if I pray that he will get into a car crash and die (and the other person lives so long as they aren’t a fuckface) and it happens, the question is what prayer should I do?

If you don’t respond I’m going to tell all of my waifus you are a shit and cry myself to sleep like I normally do. Ow the edgehog.

Don’t let your “father” set the agenda for your life, that includes any agendas about killing him or whoever etc.  If he fucks your life up, or somehow turns you into an asshole, he wins – why let him?  Forget about prayer, what you need is a plan to change your life in a positive way.  When I was a teenager I used to read Guitar Player magazine and there was an article in there that Robert Fripp (King Crimson etc) would write every week, it was unlike every other guitar article ever.  All the other articles would talk about shred etc, Fripp was more “holistic” in his approach to instruction.  He’d write “achieve the possible, and move slowly toward the impossible”.  A good way to look at life in general, especially when facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles of any kind.

You remind me so much of my fiancé, except for the fact that he can’t stand kpop. He’s seen me reading your blog so many times that he’s jealous and thinks I have a crush on you. I haven’t watched your cat’s videos in front of my cats because they might get jealous. Or they might just think your cat is hot, who knows?

I’m glad we finally got to meet up and that dinner was very nice.  You’re a really nice person and I’d like to see you again soon.  Hey guy if you’re reading over her shoulder I just made that up but I had you going for a second there didn’t I.

Hi, it’s Part Time S♡NE. I just wanted you to know that I’ve got a new number 1 bias thanks to you. I went on your Kpopalypse Roundup and you said that one of the Bloomy girls looks like a Raina/Jisook cross, so I watched the MV out of curiosity. Not only was she a perfect cross between the two, she was really cute, even more than Tiffany! Apparently her name is Jiyun. I wouldn’t even know of her existence if you hadn’t made that comment, so you have my gratitude.

You’re welcome!

Hire someone who’ll do fap posts about males in the kpop industry you misogynistic homophobic redneck cis whitie . Fucking privileged ass not adhering to my needs

Your wish is my command, Amy has got you covered.

The only reason I gave some of the blogs just a Cool is that the people that run these blogs are horny af and I’m just here for content not to hear about your sexual fantasies and the fact that you’ll fAP FOR ANYTHING SHOW ME THEM TITS URGGGGGH *cum splatter*
you guys sound like 17 year olds (you could be, whatever, no h8)

But then again, maybe it’s just me being unnecessarily annoyed because I AM a straight girl who is not thinking about sex 24/7
yknow what you do you be yourself

Also, my personal favorites are the Best of the Worsts and the Sunday Shitposts. k thnx baaaaaaaaaaai

(wait you do write those right sorry i don’t pay attention whoops I’ve only been keeping up with akf whoooooooops)

The survey is about Kpopalypse, not AKF as a whole.  I don’t write Best of the Worst or the Shitposts.

Is there another way to contact you other than leaving you comments in disqus and and wordpress???

Twitter @kpopalypse –  or ask.fm/kpopalypse if you’re too scared to not be anon.

You said it’d take me 15 minutes and it took me way less than that. Nevertheless, I had fun, oppa! Thank you so much.

Oppa, I hope for the sweet embrace of death everyday. I have no friends and never will and I have to come to terms with that. But it’s like coming to terms with cancer. I’m going to google how to cope with having cancer.

I don’t know why I find myself thinking about sex so much… Am I a thirteen year old boy? I just want to fuck everyone in the world, like Trent Reznor. How can I stop this? Is this a phase? Whatcha think?

I think you should learn music and join a rock band.  Don’t worry you’ll fit in just fine.  Learn bass, it’s easy as fuck, bass players are always in demand and you get laid down the house.

The Melbourne City Council have obtained a court order to seize 30 years worth of urine a man had been saving as part of some bizarre religious cult. The cult saved urine in glass bottles as it believed that it contained part of the human soul. James Hunt 46 of Frankston said of the seizure “It’s not the first time someone has tried to take the piss”

And people say Adelaide is bad.

Are you actually going to read all these?

Yes.

You keep mentioning new biases and then saying you’re not going to do another bias roundup because you don’t have enough new biases. What’s the deal?

It’s an ongoing process and I may get around to a bias post eventually but not soon.  It’ll be a more interesting post if I get to change up the list a little.

Thank you for writing oppar. It’s been hard to keep up with your blog lately, fucking school fucking shit, so every post I manage to read is a blessing. Just not if it’s nugu alert. Fuck that shit. Oh and I really need some tips on how to please a partner sexually because I’m an insecure tool and I feel like I need help, could you deliver such thing?

If you actually want to please your partner instead of just yourself then you’ve already won half the battle which is the “giving a shit” part.  Then just find out what they like, and do that.  Also, listening to nugus has been rumoured to help sexual prowess, try it sometime.

Not really survey feedback, but just something I was curious about. Does it ever annoy you when people ask you questions at the end of your surveys, instead of using your ask.fm? I mean, you answer each and every question there with such care and high determination levels, it must be grating when you see all these questions that you won’t answer at the end of your survey results, right?

Nah it’s cool.  I’m not so easily annoyed!

I didn’t know you had your own website, this survey has taught me something new.

Awesome.

I am proud to call you a fellow Australian due to your use of the word cunt and the fact that you dont care about what other cunts think about you using the word cunt to call cunts cunts in your surveys. Because fuck those fucking cunts

Cheers, cunt!  Those other cunts don’t understand us cunts.

DEBUT SPUNKMOP!

I’m still about $83m short.  Feel free to help, hahaha.

I’m still mad about the shitty feedback you chose for the guess your 2015 lists and while putting this piece of feedback in your survey results post won’t make up for it you’d be a cunt on the level of netizenbuzz for screening your feedback, except you’d be omitting negative comments rather than selectively choosing them so I don’t know which option you should pick not to be compared to her but fuck it idk.

We’re all hypocrites, the difference with me is that I lay my bias right out on the table.

A summary on your longer, non-fanfic posts would be great. That way I can quickly get an idea of what you’re writing about, and can go back and read the whole thing when I have more time. I’m time crunched during parts of the year and can’t really dedicate 20-30 minutes to read some of your articles until later in the year.

I try to give people an idea of this in the intros but it doesn’t always work out that way, depends on the content and the context.

Keep up the good work. You bring balance to my enjoyment of KPOP. If I wanna geek out and fangirl, I watch reaction videos but when I’m I need to be grounded back to reality, I read kpopalypse. Reading your posts makes me realize how much I do not know about music and the entertainment industry. I realized how fans (including myself) can be really selfish. We always demand music and content for our own consumption (RIGHT NOW!), never knowing how much creativity and effort and money and thought and passion and just plain hardwork are expended by people also needing to earn cash for their survival. Cao Ni Ma!

Thanks!

I have anxiety and am broke,where can I go for help? I like your blog, it helps me when I panic, cos your humour is funny.

Don’t panic.  Boram is in control.

I have a question for you: Do you know Mr. Bean? Who do you think in kpop resemble Mr. Bean? Please answer this with your usual witty and sarcastic joke..

Johnny Noh.

I really enjoy your posts and find them really insightful and interesting. As someone who was training to enter the classical world (I gave up because I wasn’t as good as my peers also the drug thing, because drugs are against my religion, I clashed with others in the field, and in the end I felt music wasn’t being appreciated or loved the way I thought it would. So I decided to be a translator instead; years of asian drama watching lead me to be quadlingual and I thought it would be a fun money making job, and that’s what I’m studying now) vocal skill means a lot to me, but I also recognize it means absolutely nothing in K-pop, which is why I enjoy reading your posts where you call out the vocal fags obssesing over vocals when people are lip syncing half the time. Despite the fact we have opposite music tastes (I love ballads because I find them vocally challenging, and all the music you call dogshit really), I appreciate your input, and hope you will continue to write for many years to come. I would comment more, but I’m too lazy to make a new wordpress account, so someday when I’m not busy or whatever, I will make one or something, not that it mattera to you anyway. This was fun, I’m gonna go eat a bagel now. Thanks.

Just putting this here because people don’t believe me when I say the classical music world is full of drugs but it really is.

you’re an old fart, but you’re a cool old fart who probably smells like jasmine.

Eww, no!  Fuck smelling like some hippie, I’m not Michael Caine’s character in Children Of Men for fuck’s sake, hahaha.

So this is fun! Although I will put in a request for pictures of Jiyeon alongside Eunjung next time. Also I would request some recommendations of metal to listen to for the kind of people who only know who King Diamond is because they borrowed that one book from a friend about Varg Vikernes and the sociology of various metal scenes. It was a good book, but not long on the music tutorials, and generally I’ve missed chances to review metal on The Singles Jukebox, and generally I suspect I’m missing a lot. Actually, I’m going to go listen to some Chthonic now while paying bills, as I’ve been curious about them for a while. Anyway — may you and your loved ones and your cat(s?) be blessed with good health.

I assume the book you mean is “Lords Of Chaos” which is definitely an interesting book, mainly because of the biases that the author himself brings to the table!

The Jiyeon with Eunjung pic to finish this post is for you.  That’s all for now, Kpopalypse will return with more posts!

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s take a look at this week’s new releases!

Yeri Band

NCT U – The 7th Sense

The debut song for SM’s new boy group CUN T shoots beyond yolo into some kind of almost ambient trip-hop territory.  Not sure if I really like the result, but damn what a great Trojan horse for songwriters SM is, they can make fangirls listen to and like anything.

NCT U – Without U

The other new song by CUN T is just your usual Coldplayish soft rock thing and it’s not really that great but it’ll please their ready-made fanbase who would probably lap up these boys’ runny diarrhoea from a tin can.

I.O.I – Crush

I haven’t been answering questions about Produce 101 because I’m planning to talk about that bullshit some more in an upcoming post.  In the meantime know that the “35 girls 5 concepts” mini-album has much better songs on it than this.

JYP – Still Alive

Song is alright plus he has a sense of humour and that’s always nice.  Clearly he’s cottoned onto how iconic the pants are.  I also take back what I said the other week about him not being able to use a Shure Super 55, sneaky caonima probably read my comment and thought “I’ll show him”.

Block B – Toy

I wish Block B would stop TOYing with us with these soft limp tracks, guess I’ll have to wait for the Bastarz sub-unit for something decent.

Taewoon (aka Wuno) ft. Nafla – Copy Ma Lyrics

Let’s not get distracted by red herrings – Taewoon imitating that screechy idiotic “It G Ma” style vocal sound is the only thing about this song that anyone should be upset about.  At least the beat is decent, pity I can barely even hear it over all the castrated yelping.

History – Queen

Not the group Queen, even though History do sound a bit like Queen in other songs of theirs.  The pitch-bendy sax riff is pretty cool and the song actually has some tempo, basically it’s a better version of CL’s “MBTD“.  Just make sure you’re listening on big speakers or you’re missing about 90% of this.

To-day – Secret

Not the group Secret, even though she even sings “Secret time” just to fuck with you.  I thought it was going to be another Coldplayish shitbird with that opening guitar with the delay that everybody uses but then the rhythm dropped and the song became cool.

LaBoum – Imagine More

Decent but just a little too “Girls’ Generation’s first album” for its own good, even Gfriend are gradually leaving this sound behind these days.  What really got me excited though was the music that played over the end credits, wish they’d made a feature song out of that instead.

JSB – Blank

Unfortunately just as boring as the pedestrian 1990s guitar-pop that it’s trying to imitate.  The 90s really was a shit time to be into guitar pop.

Bloodberry – Hysteric flower

I felt far more gender confusion when watching this than that idol group with the transsexual in them that I played the other week.  Is that a very attractive guy or a very ugly girl on the bass?  Shit, I feel so old being all like “girls and boys, you can’t tell ’em apart these days with their long hair” like my fucking dad… shit, someone get me my reading glasses.

BONUS SONGS

Punch & Silento – Spotlight

Taewoon may be a bit yelpy and annoying on his track but he’s surely got nothing on Silento.  How you feel when you hear Silento yapping away in this song like a chihuahua and ruining it is how I feel when I hear “good singers” do high notes.  Hard to say which is worse.

Hahyungon Factory – Spring Time

Song is boring but that guitar looks cool, anyone know where I can buy one, preferably for less than the price of turning 20 in Gangnam?

Chen (EXO) & Heize – Lil’ Something

Sad that the best thing to come out of the “SM Station” project (whatever the fuck that even is, not that I even care so feel free to not enlighten me) is this dull funk-lite.

BewhY – Shalom

Wow, a trap song that has some good production and doesn’t sound like it was cooked up in 15 minutes on Garageband.  Now they just need to make an actual beat with those sounds and we’re all good.

JYP ft Conan O’Brien, Steven Yuen, Jimin Park – Fire

JYP’s backings are straight out of a bygone era but unfortunately so are his melodies.  Also I’d rather have Park Jimin physically in the video than these two TV presenter clowns or whoever the fuck these losers are.  I’m sure you Americans expect me to know these pricks but nobody here cares about your shitty TV culture, sorry.  I’m boycotting this song until a Park Jimin MV version comes out.

That’s it for another week of Kpopalypse roundup!  More k-pop next week!

It hasn’t been that long since the last book review, but you caonimas keep sending me fucking books in the mail, so that means it’s time again for Kpopalypse to throw down on books about Korean music!  The subject of this book review is the autobiography of some guy who sung opera a few times on a talent show, Sungbong Choi.

Will Kpopalypse make it all the way through a book about some opera singer dude?  Will his head explode?  Read on and find out!

Singing Is My Life: A Memoir of My Journey from Homelessness to Fame

Author: Sungbong Choi

Fremantle Media, 285 pages, softcover, 214mm x 140mm

ISBN-13: 9781517229603

ISBN-10: 151722960X

RRP: US $16.95

Amazon link so the author doesn’t hate me for this snarky review and can still make a buck

My first thought upon looking at the cover of this book was “who is this Kurt Cobain-dressing motherfucker?”.  Fortunately, the back of the book was very informative:

Apparently this Sungbong Choi guy was hyped as “Korea’s Susan Boyle” and was a big deal or something, plus he was a homeless for about a decade which explains the grunge fashion.  If, like me, you’ve never heard of this guy because you don’t watch worthless TV talent competition shows, you might want to check out his appearances on Korea’s Got Talent in 2011 just to get up to speed.  Here’s his first appearance singing Ennio Morricone’s “Nella Fantasia” from the film The Mission, and this is apparently the performance that went viral:

Then he got invited back to the semi-finals, where he returned with more mature fashion sense and sung another Ennio Morricone film song, the title song from “Cinema Paradiso“:

And here’s his finals performance, where he sings “Nella Fantasia” again, this time with an orchestra.

Sungbong’s song selection is ace but he didn’t actually win the show outright, instead hitting second place to some crappy dance girl who can’t even pop and lock as well as Crayon Pop, but then that’s Korean TV shows for you.  However in a firm case of Yezi Syndrome, Sungbong was much more popular and successful after the show anyway despite not being the official winner.

Never mind all that though, what’s the book like?  Since we already know how the story ends, spoilers aren’t really an issue I’m concerned with here, so let’s go through it all chapter by chapter.

Preface to the English edition

Sungbong doesn’t go into any details at all, but apparently the process of publishing an English version of this book was a right cunthole and took about 2.5 years.

Preface to the Korean edition – I Grew Up On The Streets

Sungbong mainly expresses concern that you might not like him much after reading his book, because he’s not going to pull any punches on what his life was like.

Acknowledgements

Sungbong thanks a bunch of people, including the readers of the book (i.e me) who he “cannot thank enough”.

Part 1: An Unforgettable Childhood That Is Best Forgotten – Ten Years On The Streets

Sungbong talks about running away from an orphanage at age five because he didn’t like all the being ordered around.  He wanders aimlessly for days with no food, ends up in some shithouse red light district and learns from other street kids how to buy gum, then mark it up and sell it in venues so he can buy stuff to eat.  He sleeps in corners of nightclubs and public toilets, and hangs around with gangsters and prostitutes.  He survives being abducted by a human-organ-selling gang, being buried alive, being raped, being hit by cars multiple times, being stabbed by cunts (he also stabs a few back), being used by an older prostitute girl to help score rental accommodation by posing with the hooker and her client as a mock family so they can rent out a hotel room for a few hours to fuck (while he sits in the corner and watches), and most terrifying of all, being duped into grinding for items by MMORPG-gaming gold-sellers.  He also becomes addicted to hard drugs, but ends up kicking the habit by default because he pisses off the drug-selling gangsters so much that he can’t really maintain supply.

Part 2: Setting Out into a New and Strange World – Three Years in a Night School

Sungbong finally gets somewhere to live (of sorts) because someone at a night school is cool enough to let him sleep on a couch there when the building isn’t being used, I guess they figured it’s cheaper than hiring a security guard.  Sungbong doesn’t attend classes or do much though except beg a lot and really annoy the fuck out of everyone.  One of the students introduces him to church and Sungbong doesn’t completely reject the idea out of hand because they basically bribe him with food and kindness which is pretty much how the church works with homeless people.  Sungbong also becomes a thief for a while, gets into some legal trouble, and finds out that he actually has parents when the police run a check on him – and predictably the parents don’t give a single fuck about him.  He also learns dancing for a while but he has to stop because of health reasons, because he has no change of clothes or way to shower.  Oh and maybe he gets raped in this chapter instead of the last one, I can’t remember.

Part 3: Would I Be Able to Live like the Others? – School and Music

Sungbong hears opera in nightclubs (what nightclubs play opera and why is anyone’s guess) and decides to study and to do music.  He goes to school but because he’s a street urchin who can’t relate to anybody he hates everyone and they hate him so he quits and takes the GED instead idol-style, continuing music study privately.  He takes a bunch of shitty manual labour jobs (while also collecting welfare) so he can eat and afford to live in a cockroach-infested basement that he ends up in after the night school finally get sick of him being annoying and tell him to fuck off, plus he needs money to afford expensive singing lessons.  He has a sketchy relationship with the people trying to help him, and fucks off to a different neighborhood for a year only to end up miserable and doing even more shit manual labour jobs, so he returns but is too miserable to even sing anymore.

Part 4: Will I Be Happy Now? – One Step into the World

Sungbong starts to realise that he has some mental issues from his (lack of) upbringing so he checks himself into a psych ward, but then leaves two weeks later when it’s revealed that it’ll take years for them to make him “normal”.  Sungbong gradually becomes more depressed and suicidal to the point where when it’s suggested to go on Korea’s Got Talent he’s really not that keen on the idea and has to be badgered like fuck to even try out for it.   He eventually relents, resulting in his life looking up drastically as he’s swept away by viral fame and his income increases almost overnight from starvation level to poverty level.  The book then swiftly becomes a lot less interesting as he boringly talks about god and faith a lot and how lucky he is, because it’s not a book written about Koreans and music unless there’s incessant god-bothering and extreme humility every few pages.

Epilogue: To All of You Who Gave Me the Reason to Live: Thank You and I Love You

You get the idea.  Moving on.

Interviews: Attesting To Sungbong Choi’s Life

There’s some interviews here with some of the people who looked after him, which are fairly redundant for anything except verification purposes, as they correlate pretty much exactly with Sungbong’s own chapters.  It makes sense that these interviews would be included for verification as I’m sure a lot of people would be cynical and think that he didn’t really spend ten years on the streets and that some falsehoods were told to make his struggles seem more appealing to the heartstrings.  Koreans especially on the Internet are human garbage willing to make up lies to attempt to destroy musicians’ careers (see Tablo, T-ara, etc etc) so being forearmed against the hive-mind of fuckheads is certainly sensible, but sadly these interviews as a result aren’t that insightful and feel like a retread of the same information.  A lot more interesting is the interview with the Korea’s Got Talent production team who reveal some interesting things, including that the finals performance was actually a pre-record (i.e mimed to a pre-recorded backing track, including a mimed orchestra, something which happens all the time but few people believe).  Watch the above videos again – can you tell?

Glossary

A glossary of some Korean terms but it’s fairly useless as all of these terms are footnoted when they first appear in the text anyway.

BUT KPOPALYPSE YOU HAVEN’T TOLD US IF YOU LIKED THE BOOK OR NOT YOU CAONIMA

Being a poverty-stricken musician for a large portion of my adult life and having slept on a few piss-soaked floors of my own means that I’ve rubbed shoulder-to-shoulder with many of the same types of people that Sungbong has, which means that not much in this book surprised me in terms of the horrible shit that happens to Sungbong, in fact while reading I predicted almost all of it (or maybe it’s just my Boram-given ESP).  However Sungbong’s high determination levels were/are certainly very impressive.  While I’ve never been homeless myself, quite a few people I know certainly have, and I know how hard it is for people who’ve been homeless for extended periods to reintegrate themselves into a “normal” lifestyle and socially adapt because I’ve seen them try and regress so many times.  I read through the entire book before I saw the videos of him singing, and the fact that he managed to cultivate such a good voice is impressive, but not as impressive to me as the fact that he gave serious academic study a red-hot go after ten years on the streets with no schooling whatsoever, which must have been one hell of a culture shock.  Sure, I give religion a lot of shit in my posts but hey if belief in the Tooth Fairy or the Unicorn Queen can give someone the strength of mind to increase their determinations to make something positive from their lives, then I’m all for it, whatever works for them.

So in other words, even jaded-as-fuck Kpopalypse found something worthwhile in this book.  I honestly couldn’t stop reading the thing once I started and blew through it in about a week of public transport rides, it’s highly engaging and moving stuff, really.  Also because of his lack of manners due to his upbringing, Sungbong is hilariously rude to people who deserve it, which is fantastic and brings much dark humour value.  This interaction with someone at church is one of many Sungbong iljin highlights:

One day as I was leaving the worship service, I saw a lady staring at me.  I knew right away what was in her eyes: disregard or contempt.
“What school did you attend?” she asked.
“I didn’t go to school.”
She laughed.  She laughed unpleasantly.  It was a sneer, meaning that it was just as she had expected: Why would a thing like me ever be at a place like this?
“Fuck, am I not human because I don’t go to school?  Why are you sniggering like that and bullshitting around?”
“My, kid… you need to watch your mouth when talking around adults.”
“You’ve heard about how when they hit you on the left cheek, you should also give them the right cheek, right?  Do you want to be hit exactly like that?”

Although I’ll never learn to like opera singing (I much prefer the instrumental originals to Sungbong’s versions of the Ennio Morricone songs), at least ideologically, Sungbong is the hero Korean music needs.  I want some idols who make music that I actually listen to to follow his example, and it probably won’t happen especially now that Sungbong has learned how to be all nice and shit, but I can dream.  In the meantime, I highly recommend this book and I’m giving it four Unicorn Queens out of five.

However make that five Unicorn Queens if you’re a vocalfag-hater like me and you appreciate Sungbong steadfastly refusing to discuss the technicalities of vocal technique at any stage during the book as much as I did.  Even opera singers know that that shit is FUCKING BORING AND NOBODY CARES.  Bless Sungbong Choi and good luck to him for the future.