Are you confused about some of the imagery and terminology used by Kpopalypse?  Having trouble differentiating your Cao Lu from your Cao Ni Ma?  Ever scratched your head when Kpopalypse referred to something that didn’t seem to make any sense at all?  Never fear because the Kpopalypse Lexicon is here to the rescue, to explain all those confusing terms just for you!

Believe it or not, I never deliberately set out to write blog posts in a way that was enigmatic or confusing for anybody, but as the k-pop cultural references and in-jokes piled up, it was inevitable that the blog took on its own kind of secret language.  This might be alienating for new readers though, so isn’t it nice that I’m here to clarify things for them – yes it is.  Some general k-pop knowledge terms and facts that will also ease understanding of Kpopalypse blog for newcomers to both Kpopalypse and k-pop in general are thrown in as well, just for good measure.  The Kpopalypse Lexicon is my best friend, is the Kpopalypse Lexicon your best friend?

THE KPOPALYPSE LEXICON

Ailee – pictured above.  A solo k-pop singer and darling of vocalfags who has released classic songs early in her career, and utterly shit songs more recently.  Proof that the human voice is a weapon that can be used for both good and evil.  Also target of a failed career takedown attempt by The Great Satan.

Anti Kpop-Fangirl – a site that I write for.  You can visit it here, and I recommend that you do so.  Strange and mysterious as it may seem, I am only one of many writers at Anti Kpop-Fangirl.  There are many other writers, with many other opinions, sometimes the same as my own, sometimes not.  Know this as trufax.

Asian Junkie – a site that I write for.  You can visit it here, and I recommend that you do so.  Strange and mysterious as it may seem, I am only one of many writers at Asian Junkie.  There are many other writers, with many other opinions, sometimes the same as my own, sometimes not.  Know this as trufax.

Bad Meaning Good – part of CL from 2NE1’s iconic spoken-word breakdown in her solo debut song “The Baddest Female“.  If bad means good, then by logical conclusion, the worst song ever is the best song ever, which means that CL’s debut is the second-best k-pop song ever made.  Click here for more great songs released that year.

Bias – k-pop individuals to whom preference is shown, the only important preference for Kpopalypse purposes being fapability.  Kpopalypse’s bias list is here and a continually-updated list of bias ratios for all reasonably active or known k-pop girl groups is here.

Blackjack – a fan of k-pop girl group 2NE1.  Often a target for derision as Blackjacks tend to actually believe YG Entertainment’s wacky marketing.  As 2NE1 have reached a quality nadir, Blackjack density (both in numerical quantity and brain matter viscosity) has increased, possibly due to YG’s clever deployment of Bad Meaning Good ideology.

Black Ocean – refers to k-pop fans in an audience turning off their lightsticks to show disapproval for a performer or group, because they’re too pussy to throw rocks or bottles.  Only one confirmed black ocean exists in k-pop history, which I have discussed previously at length here.  The group involved, Girls’ Generation, went on to become the most successful girl group in k-pop history to date, which just goes to show that k-pop fans are as dumb as they are powerless.

Bom Realdoll – singer for k-pop girl group 2NE1.  Often mentioned with the “Realdoll” suffix attached due to her sexy resemblance to the popular life-size sex doll brand.  Many speculate that this is due to plastic surgery but it is possible that Bom just got prettier.

Boram/My Mother – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group T-ara.  Similarities between Boram and my mother include facial features, height, dancing ability, hairstyle choice, clothing choice, interest in Buddhist philosophy and aptitude at cooking chicken.  As a result it is difficult to tell Boram and my mother apart in many circumstances, including the above picture which could easily be either of them.

Bread Shuttle – targets of bullying in the very messed up Korean school system.  The term comes from bullies forcing students to buy bread from a local shop and bring it back within an unrealistically short timeframe – when the victims invariably fail, punishment is given.  Other types of shuttlers also exist but the term “bread shuttle” in Kpopalypse blog can refer to any type of shuttler.

Bullying – an activity that many k-pop fans love and participate in on a regular basis, this is obvious by the way they comment in online articles, making extra effort to always victimise celebrities who are females and younger and therefore weaker, softer targets – a common bullying pattern is to pick on the weak.  Since many k-pop fans probably also experience bullying, I made a help post for bully victims, use it wisely.

Buttplug – any mention of buttplugs on Kpopalyspe blog is a reference to the bullying rumours surrounding k-pop girl group Lovelyz, where it was alleged that Seo Jisoo was (among about 57 other things) an inserter of buttplugs into the anuses of other girls.  This laughable and obviously fake rumour was later proven false, surprising nobody with a brain but also sadly robbing the k-pop world of its first GG Allin.

Buzzfeed Of K-pop – Kpopalypse term for Koreaboo, a k-pop news website that has become notorious for posting cheap and morally sketchy low-content click-bait list articles.

Calmly Accept – reference to KARA’s press release declaring their enthusiasm for the entrance of new group member Youngji.  Kpopalypse believes that it is important to calmly accept many things in life, such as death, taxes, unrequited love and whatever Bravesound release this week.

Cao Ni Ma – can refer to “fuck your mother/motherfucker”, Sulli from k-pop girl group f(x), and/or the “Grass Mud Horse”, as discussed in-depth here.  Also refers to the Kpopalypse fandom i.e Caonimas.

CF – Commercial film.  A TV advertisement, and where k-poppers make a large percentage of their money (NOT music sales or chart performance).

Chanmi – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group AOA (Ace Of Angels).  Sometimes referred to as “Fat Chanmi” but that’s just the fatness of the layers of clothing combined with the fatness of your skull.  People are just jealous because the pretty girls are AOA.

Classy-Sexy – means “sexy in a subtle way” to most people, but to k-pop fans means “video play-rape“.  Many k-pop fans have women-hating tendencies so seeing women get raped in music videos is very cathartic for them and bestows utmost feelings of classiness and enables smooth fapping action.

Coffee Filter Changer – when used in Kpopalypse blog, a reference to the idea that people tend to talk up their music industry experience in unrealistic and exaggerated ways in order to seem more connected into the music industry than they really are.  For instance, if you were the cleaner in a music studio, you could change the coffee filters in the studio coffee machine.  Then you can tell all of your friends that you “worked in a music studio” or put that on your resume.  They will then (hopefully) think you did something big and impressive, they won’t know that you know nothing about music or sound and all you did was change the coffee filter, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Confirmation Bias – an extremely common thought pattern among modern Internet users, and especially k-pop fans.  It refers to when people decide the result of their “research” before they even undertake any, and therefore then only collect information that reinforces their pre-existing belief.  In the meantime they filter out or automatically dismiss any data that might contradict their beliefs, challenge their point of view or make them feel uncomfortable.  Explained in more detail here.

Cyberbullying – regular bullying, but over the Internet.  A favourite sport of netizens, especially netizens who are bully victims in real life and looking for an outlet for their inner angst.

Cyclops – see Jiyeon.

Dara – pictured above.  Singer for k-pop girl group 2NE1.  No other notable features, as you can see.  Gosh, that background is pretty, don’t you think?

Determination – a very important quality to have in any workplace scenario, such as being a member of a k-pop group.  The word “determination” was made iconic by k-pop girl group T-ara who righteously and correctly told their ex-member Hwayoung off for “lack of determination”, due to her not performing due to a leg injury (something that never stopped any other T-ara members in the past, who would routinely attend schedules on crutches) at extremely short notice (only a few minutes before stage time) as well as lying about the injury’s severity, pretending that she had to go home to rest it and then skipping off to the beauty shop to get her nails done while the rest of T-ara sweated it out onstage trying to cover her parts.  The rest of T-ara let Hwayoung know how they felt about her “difference in determination levels” via Twitter later, as publicly naming and shaming the lazy hoe was probably the only way to get her ass into shape.  Then later on Hwayoung got the boot from the group for not meeting required standards.  Of course, Koreans being the laziest workers in all OECD countries sympathised with Hwayoung because they could relate more to Hwayoung’s laziness than the notoriously hard-working remaining T-ara members, and then proceeded to attempt to wreck T-ara’s career with fake bullying rumours.   Of course lazy people can’t do anything right, so inevitably Korean netizen cyberbullying pressure tactics failed and T-ara are still around and stronger than ever at the time of writing.

Dog-Whistle Message -a dog whistle is a whistle of a frequency that dogs can hear but humans cannot.  A “dog-whistle message” in a k-pop song, or MV, movie or anything else is a message that is targetted specifically at a certain section of the audience and that only they can fully understand, while the rest of the audience may instead perceive a completely different message… or no message at all.  Explained in more detail here.

Eat Your Kimchi – sometimes shortened to “EYK”.  A v-logging duo both loved and hated in approximately equal measure by k-pop fans.  Kpopalypse has no horse in this particular race however, he just likes Martina’s boobs.

Eunjung – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group T-ara.  As the person in k-pop most heavily targetted by obviously fake bullying rumours, Eunjung’s image has been co-opted by Kpopalypse blog as a symbol of anti-confirmation bias and pro-rational thinking.

Expect Us Fondly – the phrase “expect us fondly” doesn’t come from anywhere specific but is often used at the end of cringeworthy press statements by k-pop groups who are hyping up their audience in anticipation of a forthcoming music video, concert or other activity.  Variations of this message are often used by Kpopalypse to lampoon the superficial cheesiness and ultra-vapidity of many aspects of k-pop culture.

Faggot Bitch – an iconic phrase coined by Zico of Block B in his rap song “Tough Cookie“.  Don’t worry kids – he’s not anti-gay!  “Faggot” just means “loser” or “idiot”, so it’s totally acceptable to say “faggot bitch” at any moment.  Getting offended about it is just getting a bit carried away, after all who would be offended by the word “loser”?  Feel free to use the phrase “faggot bitch” informally with friends, lovers and acquaintances as well as in polite company, when landing that important business deal, to lighten the mood at the dinner table with your significant other’s parents, when ordering food from a flight attendant or at any other moment.  Gosh, it’s good that Netizenbuzz has explained this clearly so nobody hates on Zico, the poor kid has enough pressure from all those people upset about his Confederate-flag-waving.

Fangirl/fanboy – people who follow k-pop and idolise k-pop idols to the point of irrationality.  The adulation is superficial and fickle in nature, thus fangirls/fanboys are easily capable of turning their opinion on a dime, suddenly hating their previously loved idols when they are revealed to be normal humans instead of the flawless angelic creations from heaven that they imagine them as.  Fangirl/boyism is a symptom of mental illness and entire websites are devoted to helping those in the most need.

Fanfiction – fiction story written by a k-pop fan, usually about their favourite k-pop idols.  Always crap, because the story tends to focus on making the idol seem glorious, attractive, cool or Mary Sue instead of actually telling a decent story that somebody would want to read.  Kpopalypse writes fanfiction partly as a way to explain realities and potentialities of the k-pop world and its fans, and partly as a way to counterbalance the typical insipid crappy fanfiction that abounds elsewhere on the Internet.

Fap – masturbation.  Fapping is healthy, fun and also useful for personal sexual research purposes wchich will pay off later in life (if you can’t get yourself off, how is anyone else expected to know how to?).  Kpopalypse supports fapping.

Fei – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group miss A, who have four members, three of whom are not Suzy.

Fourth Wall Of Fap – refers to the theatre term “the fourth wall“.  When the “fourth wall of fap” is broken, it means that the fantasy that you’re fapping to starts to lose credibility, usually due to elements which detract from the fantasy’s constructed illusion of authenticity.  Discussed further here.

Gain – pictured above.  Singer in k-pop group Brown Eyed Girls and undisputed master of the classy-sexy concept.  Gain has been classy-sexy in more k-pop videos than any other idol.

Got Prettier – received plastic surgery.  This is a reference to YG Entertainment’s laughable press release that responded to rumours about Minzy from 2NE1’s plain-as-day nose surgery.  The press release claimed that she just “became prettier, there’s nothing more to it than that” and one of the fake netizen comments also mentioned that she “got prettier“.  YG later admitted that they lied about it and that she did in fact receive plastic surgery.  Not that anyone with a life cares, and hey if there are spare parts from Bom‘s face lying around it’d be a waste not to use them somewhere.

(The) Great Satan – Kpopalypse term for Allkpop, ultra-trashy “news” site which is mostly just a k-pop press-release-republishing site, with small amounts of extremely poor journalism, lame opinion and unethical scandal-mongering added.  The phrase “The Great Satan” comes from Middle-Eastern dictators who would use this term frequently to describe the USA and other western countries, and is used by Kpopalypse blog only for its comically exaggerated tone of extreme vilification.  Kpopalypse does not like Allkpop, find out why here.

Hanbok – traditional Korean dress.  Most of the k-pop girls in this list are wearing hanbok or modern hanbok variations, and hanbok pictures also feature in the article index as well as a few other posts, mainly just for colour-adding purposes.

Hey! – iconic line used by AOA (Ace Of Angels) in many of their songs, and almost always spoken by Jimin.

Hitomi Tanaka – a JAV star with extremely large natural breasts.  Relevant to k-pop because of JongTomi… and because of extremely large natural breasts, which are always relevant to everything at all times.

Hive-Mind – the ability for people to all think the same thing just because it’s trendy and everybody else around them is doing it.  Examples include Nazis at the peak of Hitler’s popularity, the Zerg, netizens on a witch-hunt and Blackjacks.

Hold Hands And Think Pure Thoughts – what two pure innocent people do when they go out on a date together.  This reference comes from the “Central Scrutinizer”, who narrates the album Joe’s Garage by Frank Zappa.  How the hell a Frank Zappa fan started writing about k-pop is a question that you could legitimately ask yourself at this point.

Hyomin – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group T-ara, and like all T-ara members, an expert netizen troller.  Hyomin took her netizen trolling to the next level on her solo song “Nice Body” which was a pretty average song musically but delivered netizens some important life lessons.

Ilbe – a satirical Korean website, the closest western equivalent probably being either 4chan or Encyclopedia Dramatica, in humour content, political content as well as generally being “that site lots of people look at but nobody wants to admit that they look at”.  Kpopalypse articles have been reposted to Ilbe.  Some say that Ilbe’s political aspect is disturbingly ugly but I think miss A’s Suzy in hanbok is more disturbingly ugly.

I Likey Likey Dis, I Likey Likey Dat, I Like Dis Like Dat Yeah – iconic rap line from the greatest k-pop feature track of all time, T-ara‘s “Roly Poly“.  The rap part is genius for its incredible inane stupidity, and notable for the fact that even though it’s ulimately crap it doesn’t actually fuck the song up at all but just serves as a welcome interlude between the song’s actual decent sections.  Also noteworthy because it was the first and last time that ex-member Hwayoung was ever asked to do anything of cultural relevance, so this quote is often used when referencing Hwayoung.  There is no Hwayoung entry in this lexicon because this post took many days to complete and I’m lacking in determination.

Iljin – the cool kids in Korean high school that you can’t hang with because you’re such a faggot bitch.  Several k-pop stars are accused of being iljins, which probably just means that they smoked a cigarette, drunk a bottle of soju and had oral sex every now and then after school while you slaved away on your homework and fapped to Sailor Moon.

IU – pictured above.  IU is a solo k-pop singer who originally traded on an image of having never been kissed (like Britney Spears), but later was revealed through an accidentally-uploaded photograph as a potential rampaging cum-dumpster.  Netizens were very upset about being sold such a lie of innocence and purity, which just goes to show how dumb netizens are that they believed such an obvious lie in the first place.  IU’s image has since been appropriately sexed-up to match this newfound perception of her so everybody is now a winner.

JAV – Japanese adult video.  The Japanese may fail at pop music but they meet required standards for pornography production.  JAV typically features more classy-sexy behaviour than porn from other countries, plus it’s the closest Asian country to Korea with an active and openly-operating porn industry, so many k-pop fans and idols are fapping to JAV.

Jessica Jawshave – Jessica, ex-member of k-pop group Girls’ Generation (SNSD).  Referred to as Jessica Jawshave because her facial profile indicates potential jaw surgery.  Read all about the potential fun of jawshaves here.

Jimin – Jimin can refer to Park Jimin of k-pop girl duo 15&, Park Jimin of boy group BTS (Bangtan Boys), or even actress Han Jimin, but when used in isolation in k-pop terminology Jimin most commonly refers to Shin Jimin of the group AOA (Ace Of Angels).  Be sure to always refer to one of the other Jimins whenever someone starts talking about AOA’s Jimin.  Jimin says “Hey!” a lot, and also carries a lot of AOA’s iconic spoken interludes, such as “The pretty girls are AOA“.

Jiyeon – pictured above.  Singer in k-pop girl group T-ara.  Also often referred to as “cyclops“, “cyclopean overlord” etc due to her eyes being closer together than those of most k-pop idols.  It has been speculated that when focused correctly, beams of pure energy emanate from her eye and are capable of immense destructive powers.  Netizens should be careful.

JongTomi – the only one true ship in k-pop, boy group SHINee’s Jonghyun and JAV actress Hitomi Tanaka.  Evidence here.

Jpopalypse – someone who you should ask questions about j-pop to, instead of me.  Kpopalypse does not care about j-pop, a genre with literally one solitary good song.  Don’t try to convince me otherwise, you’re wasting your time (no, really).

KKS – Kim Kwang Soo, ex-CEO of Core Contents Media, fun-loving figure of mirth and general all-around spectacular guy who has given you such great products as T-ara and been responsible for churning out a higher percentage of Kpopalypse biases than any other CEO.  He also gave my mother a job which means that he’s a swell guy.  Read more about the wonderful things that KKS has done to improve the quality of your life here.

Krystal – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group f(x), and Jessica Jawshave‘s less attractive sister.  That’s why Jessica gets to be in the big mainstream pop group for global appeal and Krystal gets to be in the artsy-fartsy left-field semi-experimental pop group.

Let’s Light It Up And Let It Burn Like We Don’t Care – part of CL from 2NE1’s iconic spoken-word breakdown in her solo debut song “The Baddest Female“.  YG Entertainment later showed exactly what they meant by this when they lit up and burned Taeyang’s music video backdrop like they just didn’t care.

Luna – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group f(x), and the “nice” one according to rumours.  These probably-bullshit rumours have inspired her exaggerated characterisation as a goody two-shoes in certain Kpopalypse fanfictions.

Martina – female component of v-logging duo Eat Your Kimchi, noted by Kpopalypse for her outstanding physical appearance, much to the chagrin of all other k-pop followers everywhere.  The only person in the world of k-pop to score a perfect 10 in Kpopalypse’s guides to k-pop’s biggest boobs.

Mary Sue – a character in a fanfiction who is written to be “special” and “flawless”, or alternatively, flawed to the point of syrupy cliche.  K-pop fanfiction writers often can’t resist characterising their favourite idols in this manner, which is why Kpopalypse more often portrays idols as abrasive, rude or just incredibly ordinary people underneath the surface (which is the most likely scenario in reality).

Meets Required Standards – sometimes shortened to “MRS”.  An indication that were I to be single, if I met the person discussed, they would qualify for activities of a sexual nature, should they be interested in such activities with myself.  This phrase is my own invention and is deliberately nonchalant and emotionally detached in tone.   The purpose of the phrase’s detached flat nature is to provide a counterbalance to the annoying spazzing over favourite idols that exists in all other corners of the k-pop world, thus highlighting how emotionally immature and stupid such activity is.

Minkyung – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl duo Davichi.  Minkyung is the more attractive member of the group, meaning that she gets more hate from fangirls, who are doing their best to drive a wedge between the duo despite the fact that none exists in reality.

Nana – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl groups After School and Orange Caramel.  Considered the “hot one” by most k-pop observers, but the “not one” by Kpopalypse.

Netizen – abbreviation for Internet citizen.  Somebody who comments on the Internet and/or is active in Internet communities.   Sometimes such people are mature, rational and level-headed folks who consider evidence carefully before making comment… but usually not.

Netizenbuzz – a website devoted to collecting and translating the replies of Korean netizens to articles in the Korean pop media.  Despite not being a news site, actually does a far better job of sharing news than other official “news” websites such as The Great Satan.  Also does a much better job of spreading scandals, which are sometimes clarified and contextualised for the benefit of the site’s mostly dumb, reactionary and easily-led audience, sometimes not.  Read more here.

Never Been Kissed (Like Britney Spears) – a common marketing position for k-pop girl groups and female idols portraying an “innocent” image.  Recent k-pop examples include IU and Apink.  The reference to western pop idol Britney Spears is because Britney also (ludicrously) claimed the same marketing position for her first two albums.

Nugu – means “who?” in Korean, used to describe k-pop groups that do not have market popularity and/or that nobody cares about.

Nugu Alert – Kpopalypse blog series devoted to increasing nugu awareness.  As someone who has played in various nugu groups of my own for decades, I can sympathise with the plight of the nugu wholeheartedly, and having seen thousands of groups of all fame levels perform over the years I am more than aware that popularity doesn’t always equal quality.  Nugu Alert attempts to bring to the reader nugus of all types within the k-pop world, giving you my opinions but also enabling you the reader to make your own decisions about what you might think is worthy of more attention and interest.

Oh Hye Rin (Raina) – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl groups After School and Orange Caramel.  Considered the “not one” by most k-pop observers, but the “hot one” by Kpopalypse.  Reigning #1 Kpopalypse k-pop bias, Raina has also inspired her own religion, Rainaism.

One True Ship – “One True Partnership”, often abbreviated to “OTP”, an imagined pairing that in the heart of the k-pop fan, must be true.  In Kpopalypse’s case, the OTP of choice is JongTomi.

Oppressing Women And Minorities – something that Kpopalypse does often, according to his critics.  Can you feel the oppression emanating from this very page, ensnaring you and holding you back from your true potential?  Be sure to let him know, so he can reflect and return with a more mature image.

Press Release – a media statement released by an entertainment agency, designed to give media outlets something to base their articles on.  Lazier media outlets won’t actually bother to write their own articles though, they’ll just copy and paste the press release verbatim instead because it’s quicker and easier to do so, plus it makes the agency happier to essentially get free advertising this way instead of an actual thoughtful article that may contain an opinion that differs from the “official line” of the press release.  Read more about the hidden language of k-pop press releases here.

(The) Pretty Girls Are AOA – iconic line from the song “Like A Cat” from AOA (Ace Of Angels), a delivered by Jimin, the source of all iconic lines in all AOA songs.

Project Luhan – subject of a Kpopalypse fanfiction series.

Pseudofeminism – the act of pretending to be a feminist while simultaneously engaging in or condoning behaviour that actually impedes the advancement of women’s rights.  The classic example is slut-shaming women who don’t wear a lot of clothing in music videos and thus attempting to deprive those women of income via Internet pressure (remember that noted feminist Madonna also never wore much clothing in music videos, and made millions doing so), but there are many others.

Puer Kim – pictured above.  K-pop solo singer notable for her bountiful rack and physical resemblance to actress Tura Santana from Russ Meyer’s 60’s boobsploitation film “Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!“.

Qri – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group T-ara.  Owner of the Qri nose mole, the only truly iconic facial blemish in k-pop.

Qri Doesn’t Care – she really doesn’t.  Kpopalypse has noted that Qri not caring is a statement of correct trufax.  The name “Qri Doesn’t Care” comes from a T-ara fan who uses the same moniker.  If you wanted to know more about Qri not caring, you could ask them about it.

Raina – see Oh Hye Rin.

Rainaism – religion based on Raina.  Read more here.

Raincoat Market – in the days before home video, those who wished to fap to JAV had to go to the local adult cinema.  These intrepid explorers of fap would often bring their raincoats so they could fap in the cinema seat without getting jizz on their clothes.  With the advent of home video, this practice dwindled sharply, therefore all of the “raincoat crowd” are very old now, much older than me (I grew up in the VHS home videocassette era, whereas these people were sexually mature pre-VHS).  Anything aimed at the “raincoat market” is therefore targetting this particular section of elderly gentlemen fappers.

Redistribution – a funding model adopted by Way’s Girls.

Reflect And Return With A More Mature Image – a typical cliched statement of the type common in k-pop press releases after an individual or group has been caught up in a controversy.  Normal controversy-thwarting tactics employed by k-pop agencies are not to argue that the controversy is baseless (even if it is) but to enter a “reflection period” where the artist or group ceases activities for a while so the public has time to forgive and forget.  Of course, this tactic usually only works with male groups, who can be forgiven for just about anything over time by k-pop’s legions of crazy fangirls – female groups and individuals on the other hand are never forgiven and cyberbullied mercilessly over events many years old regardless of any reflection period undertaken (or not).

Rise – pictured above.  Ex-member of k-pop girl group Ladies Code, sadly now deceased due to a car accident that claimed her life as well as the life of groupmate EunB.  Read more about the Kpopalypse take on this horrible and tragic incident here.

Roly Poly – a song by T-ara, noted by Kpopalypse as the best k-pop feature track of all time.

Sasaeng – crazy k-pop fans in Korea who stalk their idols by following their cars in rented taxis, harassing them at airports, stalking their dormitories, etc.  Sasaengs in Korea form organised gangs and are very scary and weird.  But don’t worry, a solution is underway…

Sea Of Cancer – Kpopalypse term for the international netizen community that follows and comments on articles at Korean translator site Netizenbuzz.

Seolhyun – pictured above.  Singer in k-pop group AOA (Ace Of Angels).  Included here because the pretty girls are AOA.

Shinsadong Tiger Bangbus – noted and prolific k-pop songwriter and producer Shinsadong Tiger mentioned in an interview that he has hooked up several idol couples with the use of his motor vehicle, as the motor vehicle affords them the privacy they would be denied in a hotel or other public location.  This vehicle has been dubbed the “Shinsadong Tiger Bangbus” by Kpopalypse in reference to the (presumably similar) vehicle in the “Bangbus” series of “reality” porn videos.  Read more here.

Ship – imaginary partnership usually dreamed up by fangirls between various idols (usually male-male or male-female, very rarely female-female unless one of the women is Amber) and a common subject of k-pop fanfiction.

Showering (is not hip-hop) – noted veteran hip-hop legend Bobby from IKON was recently asked to draw on his decades of experience with hip-hop culture and reveal what it is that defines true hip-hop.  He revealed that going to school without showering was a key component of the hip-hop lifestyle.  Having met several young people in my own town’s local hip-hop scene, I have no reason to doubt this information!

Shure Super 55 – a faux-vintage stage microphone that almost nobody in Korea knows how to use correctly.  More info here.

Spazzing – acting like a fucking spasticated retard just because your favourite person in a k-pop group did something that you like, such as looked at you, moved their arm a bit, or breathed in air.

Sulli – see Cao Ni Ma.

Taeyeon – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group Girls’ Generation and vocalfag favourite.  The picture above is a fairly old picture of Taeyeon, she doesn’t look much like this anymore, I guess this means that she got prettier.

T-ara – iconic k-pop group with the most impressive hit-miss ratio of quality songs over an extensive time period, as well as a high ratio of fappable members and a reliable ability to annoy Korean netizens and general hive-minded idiots thus making them the closest thing that k-pop has right now to the perfect k-pop group.  T-ara will continue to be featured heavily by Kpopalypse in future posts to annoy the maximum amount of people who deserve annoyance.

Thoughts? – the most common (and boring) question that I get on ask.fm is “Thoughts?” followed by a link to a video.  If you’re a frequent user of my ask.fm please try to do a lilttle bit better than this with your question – maybe adding your own thoughts to the question might be a good idea, or letting me know specigfically what you would like me to focus on or comment on may also be more interesting.  Just a “thought”.

Trufax – means “true facts”.  This is a term that comes from the English science fiction book Riddley Walker, where the protagonist of a post-apocalyptic scavenger era speaks in a bastardised future dialect of English with many words simplified and shortened.

Tsk Tsk – common Korean netizen expression used to express condescending disapproval.  Co-opted by Kpopalypse usually to express condescending disapproval of condescending disapproval.

Uji – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group BESTie, who meet required standards.

Underground Jelly Arena – housed in a top-secret location and often referred to in Kpopalypse fanfictions.  The underground jelly arena is the preferred venue for jelly wrestling tournaments and may or may not appear in future Kpopalypse posts.

Victoria – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group f(x), Victoria is Chinese and therefore would know exactly what Cao Ni Ma means.

Vocalfag – refers to someone who cares excessively about vocal technique to the point where the obsession with whether someone is “singing well” and ticking all the right vocal technique boxes actually takes precedence over whether they actually enjoy the music that the person is signing.  Often this twisted obsession develops because for crazy k-pop fans with a thin grasp on rationality, legitimising their favourite artists as “talented” in the eyes of others is often more important to them than enjoying the music that they create.  The term can also refer to the vocals themselves – someone who sings with the primary intention of showing off how well they can sing, at the expense of signing something that is actually the most effective and suitable for the song, could be said to be “vocalfagging”.  It’s the vocal equivalent of a guitarist who plays 1000 notes per minute just to show off how good they are at playing with fluid technique at times when three or four notes would have been more effective and made a better musical statement.

Way – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group Crayon Pop, and completely harmless nice person who is in no way involved in any criminal activity of any sort.

Way’s Girls – is a Kpopalypse fanfiction which can be read here.  Let me stress that this is a work of fiction and in no way relates to anything that Way or any other Crayon Pop members are doing or could be doing in real life.  Way’s Girls, I hope these entries are good enough, can I please see my family members now thank you.

White Coater – fap content with a thinly-veiled scientific, pseudofeminist or research-based justification.  Examples and further discussion here.

Witch-Hunt – vilification or trial-by-public-opinion of a subject which ignores proper evidence, lacks investigation into superficially fitting but incorrect claims or judges a victim based on no-win criteria.  The term comes from witch trials in the Middle Ages which largely disregarded judicial process.  Witch-hunting is an extremely popular netizen sport, victims include Tablo, T-ara, Lovelyz, and several others.

X – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group [Y].  Included because everybody loves a blind item post.  Who is X?  First person to guess this blind item correctly without using software or websites to help wins the satisfaction of being correct.

[X] Is My Best Friend, Is [X] Your Best Friend? – iconic line uttered by Tiffany, member of Girls’ Generation, when her group won Best Music Video at the YouTube Awards in 2013.  Tiffany exclaimed “YouTube is my best friend, is YouTube your best friend?” to a nonplussed audience who mostly didn’t even know who she was let alone have any chance of comprehending the sheer density of air-headed cheesiness in her acceptance speech.

You’re The Best Ever Cum In My Life – iconic line sung by buttplug-friendly Seo Jisoo of Lovelyz in the classic New Order-esque k-pop song “Candy Jelly Love“.

Yura – pictured above.  Member of k-pop girl group Girl’s Day.  No other notable features, let’s just move on.

Zico – member of k-pop boy group Block B and faggot bitch, also a true hip-hop playa because instead of showering (which isn’t hip-hop) he bathes in dirty cookies in the music video for the song “Tough Cookie“.

Zinni – pictured above.  Ex-member of girl group GLAM, who recently disbanded due to one of their other members being extortion-friendly and thus blowing the group’s squeaky-clean k-pop image right out of the water.  In my eyes this makes them more interesting as a group, not less, but I don’t know what’s up with faggot bitch k-pop fans.

I hope you all enjoyed the Kpopalypse Lexicon!  This post won’t feature on any other sites because it’s a dynamic post which will be added to over time, and it’s too much work to edit two copies of the same post continually.  As new terms enter the Kpopalypse Lexicon they will also make their way into this post!  Expect them fondly!

Being a fan of a Korean pop idol might be something for which you require guidelines.

For this tutorial, you will need:

Let’s begin.

1.  Select your k-pop idol

Select a k-pop idol.  Eunjung has been chosen here for illustrative purposes, but any idol will do, it really doesn’t matter.  Every idol has at least a few fans, so your choice is unlikely to be an issue for anybody.  The choices are nearly endless!  You could even choose someone like CL or G-Dragon if you really wanted.

2.  Note any characteristic features of your chosen k-pop idol

Study their features carefully.  This will help you identify your selected k-pop idol from others in k-pop group lineups, or when they are wearing different clothing and makeup from what you’re used to, this could save you embarrassment later.  For practice, look at the picture in Fig. 2 and see if you can find the k-pop idol in Fig. 1 above.  If you’re not sure, clicking the image will show you the answer.

3.  Listen to the music of your selected k-pop idol

It’s important for music fans to listen to the music of their favourite artists.  You’d be surprised how many people skip this important step and prefer to natter about k-pop on forums all day without even listening to the fucking songs.  So why not try it?  If your idol is in a group, you may not be able to tell at which times they are singing (unless they’re 2NE1’s Bom or AOA’s Jimin), but don’t worry – often neither can they.  Just listen to the music, and enjoy it – or not.

4.  Watch videos featuring your chosen k-pop idol

K-pop is a visual medium as much as it is an auditory one, so watching music videos is especially important.  Music videos also help you keep up with your idol’s latest look.  Aside from regular promotional music videos, there are also live TV appearances and fancams, and if you’re really lucky your idol will also get on regular TV shows that you could watch.  However don’t watch anything with “teaser” in the title, these short segments contain virtually nothing and are a waste of your valuable time.  Also don’t forget to install Adblock Plus!  Don’t feel bad about blocking YouTube’s annoyingly intrusive advertising – unless they’re Psy, your idol has a shit contract which ensures that they’d be lucky to afford an ice cream with the amount of annual YouTube revenue that actually goes into their pocket.

5.  Interact with a fan community and discuss your idol

There are many fan forums and communities on the Internet that discuss k-pop, full of members who also like your chosen idol.  If your idol is well-known, they might even have a dedicated fan community just for them, which is a great place to get new information about your idol… but watch out!  Several fan community members and even moderators and admins can sometimes be batshit crazy insane obsessive-compulsive fucksticks from hell.  Look out for this extremist element and keep your distance, as their inane caterwauling and blowing out of proportion of insignificant matters can easily ruin the entire k-pop idol experience for you.

6.  See your idol in person and take photographs or video

If it’s possible, why not meet your idol?  Don’t forget to take your camera so you can record the moment for posterity, however don’t get so caught up in the technicalities of equipment that you forget to experience the actual moment that you’re recording.  Meeting your idol will also be educational because while you’re there, you’ll also see other people who also want to meet your idol, and you’ll notice that these people do not always behave rationally.  Identifying irrational behaviour will help you with the next point.

7.  Stay calm – your idol is an employee, not your long-lost friend

There are some important practical matters to remember when following an idol.  The first one is that idols aren’t allowed to tell you off or slap you in the head for acting like a spasticated fucking retard fuck in front of them (although their security might).  When you come to a fanmeet and shove the same thing in their face to sign that they’ve already signed for the 550 people before you in the queue, or bail them up at the airport when they just want to get on the plane and get the only sleep that they’ll be getting that day during the two-hour flight, they have to act happy about it and be nice to you even while you’re screaming in their ear like a little cunthole.  They also have to smile and wave a lot and pretend to notice you at concerts, be nice on TV even when other people are being rude to them (or else), and so on, because it’s their job.  Maybe they like it, or maybe not, but until they leave the k-pop industry and write that tell-all memoir, you won’t know either way.  In the meantime, if you really like them and really are a fan, act like it and be cool so there is less stress for everybody concerned.  Don’t be like this person:

Acting like a spasticated retarded fucking bitch in public will upset your idol as well as everyone else around you, and could even lead to you being held up to contemptuous ridicule by snarky and condescending Internet bloggers.

8.  If your idol is a bit of a douche sometimes, relax – this is normal

It’s good to remember when following your idols that they are usually young and with youth comes cultural inexperience, which is then exacerbated further by their environment.  When someone enters the k-pop music industry at a really young age, many of the personal freedoms and opportunities for personal growth that other people their age take for granted no longer exist for them.  Leisure time, education, access to the Internet and even access to family members (and thus parental guidance) are either removed completely or at the very least highly restricted, replaced with constant work and music business culture (i.e organised crime).  The combination of youth and such a strictly closeted environment creates a situation where people don’t get a chance to grow up normally.  Lack of life experience and cultural knowledge may cause your idol to misuse social networking, say ignorant statements on TV (because they are ignorant), and generally respond in a dumb, uneducated way to many things.  The k-pop system is designed to turn kids into machines of pristine malleability, not educated, culturally aware, intelligent young men and women.  Underneath it all they’re just teenagers and young adults with the same flaws as everybody else, amplified by an environment where they have zero autonomy and little opportunity to emotionally mature.  This is why while it’s definitely okay to like your idol, it’s not smart to look to them as a role model.  It’s possible that your favourite idol might be even dumber and less experienced in life than you are.  If you don’t place your idol on a massive pedestal, you’ll feel a lot less let down when they inevitably say or do something stupid or that you disapprove of.

9.  Remember most idols don’t make their own decisions – about anything

You may find the following video at 3:08 helpful to understand how autonomous idols are allowed to be.  Hayana from nugu k-pop group EvoL doesn’t even know what she’s meant to be doing on the music video set, because nobody’s shared with her this information.  She’s just been told to stand there and wait, and obviously anything else is shared with her on a “need-to-know” basis only.  Then the video director gets her to do some ass-shaking thing, which she’s unprepared for and actually seems highly embarrassed by:

Fangirls might look at the final music video that the shoot is for and think “oh, what a slut”, but the appearance of positive, fun-loving autonomous sexuality in the MV is an illusion created by the editing process – Hayana did the ass-shake simply because she was told to.  Now watch the same video from 19:05:

Are you allowed to go out and party?

We’re actually not allowed to go out.

It sounds like when you sign the contract, you’re theirs.  They own you, right?

Yeah, they own us.

It’s a lot of sacrifice, isn’t it?

Yeah.

I’m going to stop asking you questions because you might get in trouble I think.

For someone who is a huge star it would be different, their added market traction would make them an asset and give them the power to call their own shots, but that would be the 0.1% at the absolute top of the tree.  The majority of k-pop situations would be like EvoL’s at the time the above video was made.  Remember this when your idol does something that you dislike – they may not have had any choice.

10.  Enjoy the k-pop idol fan experience

K-pop should always be a positive experience for everybody involved, so don’t forget to enjoy yourself!

Yes that’s right it’s back again, the k-pop video series that you love to hate to love:

Kpopalypse is going back into nuguland to check out some more nugus! This episode’s theme is drugs.  Everyone I speak to says that drugs aren’t really much of a thing in the k-pop business, but I’m calling bullshit on that.  If you ask me Bumkey’s arrest is just the tip of the iceberg and there’s a wealth of dealing, using and abusing going on underneath k-pop’s squeaky-clean surface.  I’ve discussed why I believe this in previous posts, but what I haven’t done yet is throw down on any likely culprits.  We all known about Bom’s unusual diet and Daniel’s business on the side, but what about the ones who haven’t been caught yet?  If there really is a wealth of drugs being traded in the k-pop scene, doesn’t that mean that nugus would also frequently encounter drug use?  With this question in mind, I scoured my nugu vaults and came up with three videos that I believe show extreme drug influence.

A quick disclaimer before we begin:

Okay, now that’s sorted, let’s get on with the business of showing you some completely fucking drugged-out nugu k-pop music videos.

Icycider – Jjangga (Chan Song)

Icycider have quite a few music videos (the one above is just the most popular one I could locate) and they’re all pretty much the same, i.e completely FUBAR.  The songs in most of them are delivered by a cartoon character, in this case the singer is a guy with blue skin (a known drug side-effect), a penis on his head that gets erect, who is also crying and seems to have trouble with mobility and keeping his balance.  The song’s also rather good, which of course makes drug use even more likely, as any rocker worth their weight in E strings cites drugs as a songwriting influence.  Just to hammer the point home, there’s a tambourine that looks suspiciously like an opium poppy with eyes when it’s zoomed up on at 0:28.  Even if I’m wrong about the opium poppy and that’s not a deliberate drug reference, did it ever occur to you during school band practice to draw eyes on a fucking tambourine?  Of course it fucking didn’t, and that’s because you’re not anywhere near as drug-fucked as these guys probably are.

YouTube views at time of writing: 18142

Notable attribute: even in a cartoon drawing Korean groups still mostly can’t get their placement of the Shure Super 55 right

Nugu Alert rating: average

K-Trance – Hey Hey

Hey hey this song is honestly decent, and hey hey these people are probably taking a lot of fucking drugs.  The video has a clearly identifiable Primal Scream/My Bloody Valentine look to it and those are two groups which pretty much made getting fucked up their manifesto, so I think it’s a pretty safe bet that the “trance” part of “K-Trance” isn’t just a musical reference.  All that annoying fucking around with the video colours and saturation levels is a “early 90s English LSD casualty group” signature and only the most drug-shitting comatose-on-the-floor artists back then actually thought that fucking nonsense was a good visual choice.  Then there’s the music which is distorted and bass-heavy yet dreamy, melodic and spacious, the perfect accompaniment to curling up in a foetal position on the floor of a nightclub toilet sweating and drooling after a bad combination of ecstasy and methamphetamine cut with too much baking soda.  Of course I wouldn’t know anything about that kind of thing firsthand but something tells me that K-Trance might, hey hey.

YouTube views at time of writing: 8643

Notable attribute: female singer might actually be cute but the colours are so fucked nobody can tell

Nugu Alert rating: high

APLUS – Again & Again

On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that anybody in APLUS imbibe in any kind of illicit substances, they all seem like squeaky clean mature girls who got their inner dope-smoking crystal-meth-sniffing wild-child out of their system fifteen years ago.  The people behind the scenes who created this monstrosity, on the other hand, are all clearly ripped off their tits.  Things start off badly with tons of annoying strobing and blurriness for no particular reason, which then continues on and off all throughout the video as if the viewer is experiencing some sort of obscured vision from drug-related heat exhaustion and is about to pass out.  Then there’s the tacky appearance of the group name on the brick wall with CGI at 1:24 and the “glowing teeth smile” at 0:56 which gets both the placement and the timing of the “tooth gleam” completely wrong.  Best of all are the lame baby-slaps that the guy gets at the end of the video for dating multiple girls – I can just pictured the completely stoned director saying to the girls “don’t hit him too hard, man… you’ll kill the vibe”.  The guy is even visibly trying to hold back a smile through some of it.  Someone was obviously high as a kite and just didn’t give a fuck on the day they had to shoot and edit this one down.  No great loss here because the song is pretty poor in this case but I’ve got to feel sorry for the APLUS ladies who seem to be the victims of criminal video-editing negligence.

YouTube views at time of writing: 791

Notable attribute: I’m still not sure if the three girls in the actual video are the same as the three girls in the intro photographs, or their mothers

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

That’s it for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Kpopalypse will return soon with a very special EXTREME EDITION of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Until then, don’t do drugs, kids!

People seem to like my technical posts, and for ages people have asked me to write a technical post about rap music just for k-pop fans.

Always eager to please, I have done exactly as asked.  Read on and be entertained as Kpopalypse answers all your important questions about rap music and k-pop!

So, what is rap music?

AOA’s Jimin knows all about what rap is and is not, because she’s listened to Dr. Dre’s “Detox” album, and in fact all the answers to all of your rap questions are on this album but only Jimin knows the secrets.  I approached Jimin for an interview but she’s not telling anything, so in lieu of this vital information I’ll do my best to unravel rap for you.

Rap music is any music with rapping in it.  Rapping is a vocal style.  It refers to talking with a rhythmic meter, essentially making the human voice a rhythmic musical instrument without specific pitch (like a drum) rather than a melodic musical instrument which generates specific pitches (like a piano). This is the defining characteristic of rap – the strict adherence to rhythm matched with the deliberate lack of adherence to specific pitch.

Someone who is using their voice with both defined rhythm and defined specific pitches is not rapping, they are singing.  Let’s use our friend Jimin from AOA as an example.  In “Like A Cat”, her vocal section from 2:06 is not a rap, because she is hitting specific pitches with her voice, therefore it is sung, because that’s what singing is – pitching vocals.  The fact that her part is sung very quickly at a typically rap-style speed does not actually make it a rap.

However Jimin DOES rap in other songs, such as “Get Out” from 2:29:

Rapping being a rhythmic form is usually matched with rhythmic music, although it doesn’t have to be – it can be matched with any type of music at all, or even no music at all (also known as “a cappella”).  Think of rap as poetry but delivered vocally with a specific defined sense of rhythm, rather than just a free-form “say the words whenever you please” style.  Just like poetry, rap doesn’t have to rhyme… although just like poetry, the more popular examples usually do, and in rap music the rhyming is used to deliver syncopation.  More on that later.

Okay, so what is hip-hop then?  Is rap and hip-hop the same thing?  If there are differences, what are they?

Hip-hop is a cultural movement, comprising of the following elements:

• Rap vocal style
• Beats or tracks (a generic term for backing tracks that go behind rap vocal, which may or may not include an actual beat, but usually do)
• Certain styles of DJing (scratching, certain beat-mixing techniques)
• Beatboxing (mimicking instrumental sounds of drums and other instruments with the voice only)
• Certain art styles (graffiti art, etc)
• Certain dance styles (breakdance (b-boying) and other forms)
• Certain clothing styles (various types of hip-hop fashion)
• Not showering before going to school
• Hanging out with friends and high-fiving each other

It could be debated that hip-hop is also a type of political movement, but to anyone who thinks that all I can say to them is that IKON’s Bobby probably doesn’t know anything about politics and he probably showers less than politically-focused rappers like Immortal Technique therefore you are wrong.

I don’t care about this though.  Let’s cut to the chase – is [my favourite Korean pop idol] a good rapper or not?  That’s all I really wanted to know when I clicked this.  How do I tell?

Never mind if they are a “good rapper”, there’s a larger question here which is what actually defines a “rapper”.

Oh no Kpopalypse, you’re not going to give us a boring fucking rap history lecture are you?

Hey, you’re the one who begged me for months to write about this boring crap.  I was all ready to write about T-ara vs AOA jelly wrestling, but no, you cunts didn’t want that, you said that you wanted a technical trufax rap post, I said I didn’t want to write it, and you kept fuckin’ asking me about it, so here it is, so now you can fuckin’ shut up and deal with it.

Okay.  I’ll just be in the other room for a while fapping to those AOA videos.

Rap music as it is currently known first solidified in the USA but the birth of the form actually comes from the Jamaican club and house party scene.  Clubs and parties would have that annoying creepy guy who tries to talk you into going into the club when you walk past (it probably says a lot about Australian culture that in Australia we have a special word in our dialect for this type of person – a “spruiker”) and over time the role of this person integrated with the role of the MC or Master of Ceremonies, a term that comes from the Catholic church but basically means “the person who runs the party”.  The improvised dialogue that the MC/spruiker would use to entice people to be part of the revelry became more interesting and complex as clubs and parties competed with each other to draw a crowd, as naturally people wanted to be at the party with the best MC where the most fun was being had.  As time went on simple talking was replaced with the rhythmic “toasting” style of vocals, this became more and more popular and then was exported to the USA’s urban ghettos via immigration where through the inflections of the American accent it transformed again into the rap style that we know and love/hate today.

Understanding the cultural origins of rap will also help you understand the following points about rap music:

• Rap music essentially started as a cross between entertainment and advertising, this is why rap music to this day often seems very egocentric to an outsider (and why it could never have evolved in Australia’s self-deprecating culture).  “I’m so awesome, you’re not” raps are actually very true to the original culture, other permutations like the “political”, “gangster/social comment” rap styles as well as the “I love you girl” pop stuff all came later.
• The competitive spirit of the Jamaican club scene is still present in the competitive spirit of rap music today, hence “diss tracks” where rappers criticise each other on record, and “rap battles“.
• Jamaican macho male culture is commonly sexist and homophobic as shit, and this is still reflected in rap lyrics today, and is also why when worthwhile female MCs do appear in that scene they are no-bullshit as fuck, because they have to be tough to rise above and be heard and taken seriously over all the men pretending to not by gay while secretly tugging each other’s dicks.
• Most importantly of all, a very high emphasis was, and still is, placed on being able to wow the audience with a unique and cleverly timed/insightful/funny lyric or turn of phrase.  This is still the #1 quality that a good rapper must have, and this outweighs every other factor for people involved in that scene by something like a 1000:1 ratio.  Keeping people entertained and maintaining the attention of the listening audience (whether they be in a club, a party or on the other side of a computer screen) with clever lyricism was and still is all about having this quality.

Er…. okay, that’s nice.  So where are you going with this?

The final point above – uniqueness and cleverness of the content and timing of the lyric being the #1 most important factor that far outstrips every other consideration – has some important implications for k-pop fans who want to evaluate Korean rap.  Are you ready?

Uh oh.

Firstly: if a rapper didn’t compose their own rap, their rapping prowess simply cannot be evaluated as either good or bad.  It’s no secret that very, very few Korean idols get to write their own lyrics – most idols have no say in this area at all.  If Jimin from AOA busts out a rap part in her next song that was actually written by a 40 year old guy in a suit in a boardroom committee meeting, it’s THAT person’s rapping skill that you’re evaluating when you say “Jimin is good” or “Jimin is shit”… not Jimin herself.

But what about things like vocal tone and breath control, isn’t that important?

Of course not, take your favourite k-pop agency’s dick out of your ass and think about it for a second.  Eminem has a vocal tone like a rusty gate and is widely considered to be one of the best rappers ever.  Kool G Rap sounds like he’s continually gargling marbles, and is also widely considered to be one of the best rappers ever.  The reason why is that both rappers strongly meet the criteria of clever self-composed lyricism.  Rapping is just talking in a rhythm so if you know how to talk with breath control (something we all mastered by about age six), you know how to rap with breath control.  Most rappers who specialise in rap only don’t know the first fucking thing about the kind of vocal techniques that singers use, and happily remain ignorant of it because those techniques aren’t needed in rapping, which is just talking.  If you can talk, and you have a sense of rhythm, you can put two and two together and therefore perform a rap.  The only rappers who practice vocal technique are the ones who also do a bit of actual singing occasionally as well – pure rappers don’t give a shit, and I’ve never met a single rapper who ONLY rapped who ever underwent any vocal training whatsoever.  Why do you think the “dancer” in a k-pop group always gets the rap parts.  Regard anyone who applies “vocalfag” criteria to rap music as a complete and utter brainless idiot with no clue, or alternatively, a deluded obsessed fool who is just trying to clutch at straws of nothing in order to push their personal bias list onto you.  They’re either stupid, delusional, consciously lying, or some combination of these three.

Now you know WHY rappers are considered to not be rappers if they don’t write their own material – because delivering the lines takes no technical skill at all whatsoever (besides the technical skill of speech, which everybody reading this has – even that ultra-fast rapping Koreans are oddly in love with isn’t that much harder than ultra-fast talking).  Therefore, rapping someone else’s raps is actually a really easy thing to do… it’s the act of coming up with those raps in the first place which is difficult and the part that requires skill.

But I just love the vocal tone of [my bias] and that’s why I like their rapping!

This may be true, but “I like the sound of their voice” isn’t the same as “someone has clearly identifiable rap skill”.  Liking the way someone sounds when they speak is subjective, and you may indeed love the sound of [your bias] but that doesn’t mean they can rap well (or that they can’t rap well, for that matter).  Rap skill, because it relies on wit and cleverness, can be measured objectively, much like a comedy sketch which can be measured by the humour quality of the jokes… and you might like shit jokes, but that doesn’t make them any less shit, it just means you’re a dumbass.  Which brings us to our second point…

I’m not going to like this, either, am I.

It is literally impossible to evaluate a rapper’s true skill if you don’t speak the same language that they are rapping in.  Not just tricky – impossible, even with subtitles.  To evaluate the true skill of anybody who raps exclusively in Korean, you need to understand Korean fluently… and not just regular Korean speech, but also all the slang and cultural references being used as well as the way words intersect and rhyme, as it’s the interplay of rhyming words with their meanings and often double-meanings (which subtitles generally won’t convey) which forms part of the cleverness of a good rapper.  This skill is what is known as “rap flow” (a term which has nothing to do with vocalfag stuff).  Allow me to demonstrate using a video that showcases two completely different styles of rap flow in one song, and it’s definitely far from my favourite track from anyone involved here that’s for sure, but it’s a good example just for educational purposes.

At 0:22 DMC from 80s rap superstars RUN-DMC raps.  DMC raps (no doubt deliberately) in the style that he’s known for – mostly strict rhyming couplets.  Rhyming words happen in the middle or end of the bar and pretty much nowhere else, and everything is delivered in much the same consistent rhythm.  This sounds dated today but it was the norm for mid-80s rap when RUN-DMC were at their peak.  Rap flow wasn’t as advanced then as it is now and while his flow does have a retro charm for those who remember those days, if a new rapper surfaced and rapped only in that style they wouldn’t make a dent on today’s hip-hop scene.  At 1:38 (after that fucking hideous chorus, what were they thinking) Necro raps.  Necro might be a scumbag like Kpopalypse but he has a much more sophisticated modernised flow by rap standards, with complex syncopated rhymes (not always delivered at the end of each line but chained together at varying points to produce their own rhythm within the rhythm), plus his usual outlandish slang and pop-culture references that fly by pretty quickly and need a few listens to absorb with the context intact even for a fluent English speaker like myself.  Imagine how someone who doesn’t even know any English language apart from “hello” “thank you” and “please notice me oppa” would go trying to evaluate Necro’s rapping ability in that song – pretty fucking dumb, right?  Now you know how fucking dumb you might look when you throw down your opinion on Korean idol rappers and how great their often basic lines are when you can’t even speak the fucking language and therefore have no idea what you’re actually talking about.

There’s got to be someone in k-pop who I can evaluate the rapping of though, right?  Please, throw me a bone here.

Of course we all know CL is shit by rap standards because she was in that English Dr. Pepper song so we got to hear her rap disastrously in English, in her own words. We know that she writes her own words too because her label is always banging on about what a supposed creative genius she is, and YG Entertainment never lies, so you can totally blame her for this crap:

I bet she showers every day, too.

Okay, so is that it?  Are you finished making me feel like I’ve wasted my life now?

Not quite, there’s one more point that I should cover which is the idea of “authenticity”, often referred to within rap songs as “keeping it real”.  Authenticity of the original rap creation is a big thing in rap music and the most severe of insults are reserved for “biters” – people who steal lines and ideas from other rappers, precisely because it’s so easy to do.  As covered in the first point, it requires really no special skill beyond grade-school level to deliver a rap line, only to think up a rap line, therefore people who say “I’m a great rapper” while using other people’s lines are generally treated as not just intellectual property thieves, but also as musically fraudulent on a basic “you don’t actually even have any rap skill” level – someone who might like rap but doesn’t understand it or even know what they’re doing.  Obviously in a style where almost nobody is writing their own raps (k-pop) authenticity isn’t even an issue – people who are interested in rap music dismiss k-pop idol rappers out of hand because they are not the writers of their own material.

The value of “authenticity” in the rap scene goes further than this, it also extends in other directions.  To take just one example, threatening physical violence in rap songs is generally a metaphor for rap battles rather than an actual intention to kick anybody in the head but these lyrics when used in rap gain extra power from the idea that they might be real given the circumstance (2Pac/B.I.G. being the obvious example, but there are others).  Such verbal threats in rap style are often transposed directly over to the world of k-pop idols when the companies are trying to give their idols a bit of modern rap flavour, but in such a scene where idols have to be polite and their behaviour is tightly controlled at all times, this language looks frankly laughable to a rap fan.  The lyrics when delivered by idols lose their double meaning (an invitation to rap battle plus a potential physical threat) and therefore part of the gravity that makes them work in their original context is lost.

All values in the rap scene are filtered through the lens of “authenticity” and it’s easy to understand why some rappers get hate and some don’t if you understand this point.  Vanilla Ice wasn’t hated by the rap world because he was white, he was hated by the rap world because he was “fronting” (putting up a false impression): he said in interviews that he was “from the ghetto” when he very obviously wasn’t.  Iggy Azaelia isn’t hated by rappers today because she’s a white Australian, she’s hated because she’s a white Australian trying to sound like a black American – if she used her own accent most people wouldn’t have any problem with her, just like they don’t have a problem with Hilltop Hoods who are highly respected.  The race isn’t the issue, the lack of authenticity is the issue.  Every Korean idol on the other hand is sitting at roughly Vanilla Ice levels of authenticity, and it shows when they start actually talking about rap music.

But what’s authenticity got to do with the actual music?  It doesn’t affect the way it sounds, I just know when I like the sound of what I hear.

AND THAT IS THE CORRECT ATTITUDE.  WHICH IS WHY YOU SHOULD STOP BANGING ON ABOUT ALL THE OTHER FUCKING SHIT.

It’s fine to like what you like (yes, even CL) and dislike what you dislike.  The problem with Korean pop fans is that they feel like they constantly have to make excuses and justify their music taste by “proving” how great their favourite idol is with a bunch of lies, made-up bullshit and terms they don’t even understand properly.  You don’t have to do this and with Korean rapping idols you can’t anyway, because these people are mostly objectively not even rappers by any standards with which proficiency in the style is actually measured.  I personally quite like a lot of raps in k-pop songs, because I like the way they sound, but I don’t try to kid myself that these people are “real hip-hop”.  You people with your Korean idol rap obsession talking about rapping idols and trying to pull everything apart and be analytical and justify shit are basically comparing a bunch of apples and asking yourselves “which one is the best motorcycle”.  Just forget about it, stop making yourself look like an idiot and appreciate an apple as an apple.

At the end of 2013 I did a favourite songs list and a worst songs list, but I never made an honourable and dishonourable mentions list, simply because the thought didn’t occur to me at that time.  Since the 2014 honourable and dishonourable mentions list was received quite favourably, I thought why not backtrack and do the same type of list for previous years?

Once again this list is a Kpopalypse website exclusive and won’t be reposted anywhere else (mainly due to lack of relevance given that these are older videos now, but also because reposting a 32-link YouTube list takes a lot of time to re-edit and I’m too lazy).  Previous years will be done in future posts.  In the meantime, read on and enjoy these alphabetically-sorted lists of some songs that I liked and didn’t like from 2013!

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Apink – Nonono

Keep telling yourselves that Apink are “cute” and “innocent”, fangirls.  In the meantime I’ll enjoy the near-constant ass-shaking, generous upskirt angles and figure-hugging girl-next-door fetish wear.  From memory the song’s pretty good too but it’s been a while since I listened to it – I don’t usually watch porn with the sound up.

B.A.P – One Shot

This video cost $1m to make, and if you’re a fan you’d better appreciate every last cent because B.A.P themselves paid right through the fucking nose for it out of their royalties and live performance money.  At least the music rocks and the label didn’t give them some softcock R&B bullshit like they do for every second B.A.P comeback these days.

D-Unit – Talk To My Face

D-Unit were great but their timing was unfortunate.  They stopped releasing cool songs like this at around the same time their obvious mentors 2NE1 also stopped doing anything decent.  Had D-Unit waited until 2015 and debuted they would have been hailed as the second coming of rhinoplasty-pop.

F-ve Dolls – You Cheated

No m-n- album was better than F-ve Dolls’ m-n- -n 2013 and th-s song was the type of n-ce cru-sy sh-t that CCM cons-stently get r-ght and other labels get wrong.  – also really apprec-ated the v-deo, you can tell that the g-rls have been ordered to stand “just so” so that the-r boobs reflect the l-ght at exactly the r-ght angle.  KKS -s a fuck-ng gen-us… aga-n.

G-Dragon – Crooked

The problem with G-Dragon isn’t a lack of ability, it’s a lack of taste.  He can produce really good pop songs like “Crooked” when he wants to – he just usually doesn’t want to.  There’s still hope however that one day in the future he may again be this reasonably-above-average so I’ll sit and patiently wait by the harbour for G-Dragon to return from Traponia, Fabled Domain Of Yoloswags.

KARA – Damaged Lady

“Damaged Lady” is about as obviously heavy metal as Sweetune is probably ever going to get.  Hell, they even plugged their guitars in this time.  DSP delivered the goods for the last hurrah of the KARA 2.0 lineup (I’m pretending those shitty songs for the Japanese market didn’t happen) both musically and with copious wet-T-shirt fanservice.

LC9 feat. Gain – MaMa Beat

LC9’s nugu agency clearly couldn’t afford the surcharge for Gain’s asscheek flesh to actually appear in the video, but her token contribution is the least interesting thing about this song anyway, severely upstaged by a driving rhythm and more idols getting punched in the face than any netizen could ever want.

Lee Hi – Rose

Very similar to but not quite as good as Ladies Code’s “Hate You“, “Rose” was still pretty fucking good and proof that maybe grafting Diana Ross’ head onto Gollum’s body wasn’t as bad an idea for the world of Korean music as it sounded like in theory.

Lim Kim – All Right

“Indie” my fucking ass, if Mystic89 qualifies as an “indie” label, so does JYP.  Some people will believe any old bullshit marketing crap labels throw out there, but the song is decent so whatever.  Trivia: apparently Lim Kim gets her unusual vocal tone by pushing her larynx down, an activity which sounds like a job for Kpopalypse.

Stellar – Study

The last song Stellar did before their label went “fuck it – nothing else we try is working, let’s just get their tits and ass out, it’s obviously what people want”, “Study” was musically almost as worthy of success as “Marionette” anyway, and the group’s later career trajectory prompted some serious “study” of my own.

Tahiti – Love Sick

Tahiti have always had consistently good songs, which is probably why they’re forever stuck in nugu land, Koreans have consistently shown that they’re only interested in crappy ballads and twee softcock nonsense.  How groups like T-ara and Orange Caramel have found a way to thrive in the k-pop market is a minor miracle.

Trouble Maker – Now

4Minute’s Hyuna turned up the skank factor to 11 in the excellent “Now”, leaving Beast’s Junhyung looking decidely unbeastly and way out of his depth with a severe case of DiCaprio Syndrome.  Feminist bloggers went apeshit about the song promoting domestic violence or whatever but they all made the mistaken assumption that people were actually noticing the MV’s plot in the first place.

2NE1 – Falling In Love

Ask a room full of people “hands up who wanted a reggae comeback from 2NE1 in 2013″ and you’ll see less extended limbs than at quadriplegic bingo night.  However ignoring the fact that it wasn’t the IATB 2.0 that 2NE1 fans desperately wanted (and still haven’t been given yet, YG) the song actually rocked in a “I can’t believe they did this lame fucking reggae-lite bullshit again but oh well the bassline is nice and gets it over the line this time I guess” kind of way.

2PM – A.D.T.O.Y.

Mesmeric and hypnotising, like a dream of being trapped in an endless vortex of SM-style box-like rooms “Being John Malkovich” style, “A.D.T.O.Y.” is the perfect k-pop song to fall asleep to, but in a good way.  Just don’t dream about Jay Park, or JYP will whisper his name in your ear until you wake up screaming.

Two X – Ring Ma Bell

The combination of heavy face-smashing ravecore electro-bass thump and twee melody really works in this beautifully melodic and thoroughly danceable song.  It’s like being pegged by Tinkerbell.

DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS

After School – First Love

Pledis cracked the whip at After School for months to try and teach the girls basic stripper skills but just ended up inadvertently sending half of them to hospital.  If they’d only thought about flagellating their songwriter as well we might have at least got something better than the k-pop girl equivalent of some shitty Barry White song.

BESTie – Pit-A-Pat

BESTie took quite a while to escape Nuguville and the reason why is that their first crop of songs were all messy bullshit like this.  To their credit the girls try their hardest to distract from the horrible music quality with copious amounts of ass-waving, so it’s not a complete waste.

Block B – Very Good

It’s said that artistry thrives under conditions of oppression.  I guess that explains why Block B’s music stopped being any good as soon as they escaped from their shitty first record contract where they all dormed together in a toilet cubicle and made about enough money in 12 months to buy one McDonalds Happy Meal.

Davichi ft. Verbal Jint – Be Warmed

Davichi seem to consistently be the exception to the “CCM know how to give their artists ballads better than everybody else” rule.  That’s what you get in k-pop when you can actually sing – songwriters serve you hideous vocal-wank shit like this to perform instead of actual songs.

Delight – School Bell, Ding Ding Ding!

If you think that song title is a bit confused and awkward, wait until you hear the song itself, an incredible train-wreck of 80s rap shoehorned in between weird bullshit nursery-rhyme melodies.  Is it good for me, or is it good for you?  I’d suggest neither.

Fiestar – I Don’t Know

Speaking of nursery rhyme bullshit melodies, Shinsadong Tiger took a break from writing actual songs to throw Fiestar a remake of “Ten Little Indians“, of all things.  Maybe he was targeting k-pop’s newly emerging pre-schooler market, but then that makes no sense because the video is mainly about perving at tits, so perhaps he was just trolling the group because they weren’t cooperative Bangbus riders.

F-ve Dolls – Soulmate #1

The only dud on the excellent F-ve Dolls m-n-, th-s screechy, n-ghtmar-sh th-rd rate clone of T-ara’s “Roly Poly” got the retro fash-on r-ght and the mus-c -ncred-bly wrong plus -t features one of Korean g-rl pop’s most unl-stenable choruses ever.  – do not l-key l-key d-s, – do not l-key l-key dat.

4Minute – Is It Poppin’?

If “What’s Your Name?” is the aural equivalent of being anally raped with the blunt end of a theremin, then “Is It Poppin?” is the aural equivalent of having someone apply soothing anal cream immediately afterward.  It might feel slightly better than the theremin did, but your asshole is still gonna hurt.

GI (Global Icon) ft. Dok2 – Booshit (Don’t Lie)

As if “Beatles” wasn’t a stupid enough song name (good luck Google searching that one), GI’s label went the whole hog with a follow-up song purely designed to get them banned off TV, because being consigned to nugu status is important.  Just to rub salt into the would, they then got Dok2 involved.  No wonder GI are suing, their label must really hate them.

GLAM – I Like That

I’m surprised that I don’t like this much because I usually enjoy the music of hardened career criminals like Burzum, GG Allin, David Allan Coe and Crayon Pop, but really the only good thing about “I Like That” is Zinni’s breakdancing move at 0:24… and she wasn’t even an accessory!

Hello Venus – Would You Like Some Tea?

Yes, I would like some tea.  What I wouldn’t like is some shitty k-pop song that rips off Pachebel’s “Canon In D” so kindly fuck off with that shit, thank you.

MBLAQ – Smoky Girl

Featuring probably the single most repetitive k-pop chorus hook in the form’s history, even T-ara’s “Bo Peep Bo Peep” chorus has more variety and depth than what’s on offer here.  When a song’s lyrical message is intellectually outclassed by a bunch of girls with fox ears making cat gestures while pretending to be sheep, you know you’re in trouble.

miss A – Hush

“Hush” threatens to be great, but each time the song sounds like it’s finally going somewhere vaguely interesting, the whole arrangement just flops over and dies right in the ass.  There’s a silver lining though – nobody hired E-Tribe to write songs after this, so if this was the song that made them reconsider their k-pop songwriting career maybe some good has come out of it.

Sistar – Give It To Me

Hey, everybody, let’s get KARA’s excellent “Pandora“, slow the thing down to about half speed, remove all the cool keyboard and guitar riffs, and replace it with a bunch of lame “oooh oooh” crap.  Yeah, or let’s not.  At about 3:25 the video director can’t handle it and stops the proceedings, saying “it isn’t enough”, I guess even he couldn’t stand by idly and watch this utter bullshit unfold, even when collecting a paycheck for it.

Taeyang – Ringa Linga

When I did the dishonourable mentions list for 2014 I originally included this song by mistake even though it came out in 2013 instead, that’s how desperate to shit on this disgusting slab of generic yolotard I was at the time.  Pity me.

T-ara N4 – Jeon Won Diary

I wanted to like this song as much as the next rational person, but after using the delightfully snide lyrics to gleefully shred the arguments of herd-mentality netizens who irrationally hated T-ara for the 295th time I had to finally admit that the song itself was a confused mess nearly as bad as SNSD’s “I Got A Boy“.  Also the song goes on for too long, there’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long. There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  There’s just too many sections, it really could have used some editing down.  There’s a few bits that go on for ages and don’t really add anything new or interesting, they just go on for a long time.  There’s no point going on for so long like that.  Your average k-pop song rarely exceeds 3 and a half minutes so there’s really no need.  Why have a pop song that overstays its welcome by going on for too long.  It really should have been a little bit shorter.  I think they definitely could have shortened it a bit.  Also there’s some bits in the song that just go on for a bit too long.  There’s no reason to make something so long like that when it doesn’t need to be, especially if it’s not really adding anything.  There’s really no excuse for it when these groups are working with such a tight pop song format.  Why have something go on so long when it doesn’t need to.  It’s not really adding anything at all except just extra bulk.  It’s absolutely not necessary to have some parts of the song go on for such a long time, especially when nothing’s really happening.  They really could have edited it down a little, it wouldn’t have killed them.  Don’t they know that the average pop song is shorter than this for a reason.  It really doesn’t need to be this long.  Why are there some parts of the song that go on for such a long time?  I really don’t feel that it’s necessary.  I don’t think that the songwriters thought through the arrangement very well because some of it is just too lengthy for a pop song.  There’s just too many different parts and they could have easily chopped some of it out and got a better song as a result.  In pop music there’s no need to go on for so long.  Don’t you think?

Some of you have noticed that Kpopalypse has a sharp sense for picking the truth in a k-pop scandal, even before the truth is revealed.  How is this possible?  Is it magic?  Is it divine intervention courtesy of the Raina god?  Or are the sinister forces of logic and rational thinking at work?  Read on as Kpopalypse reveals all!

The Korean pop industry is too powerful and embedded in the Korean political/legal structure (read: criminal) for what gets written in the media to be any true threat to the status quo.  Korean politics, gossip sites, netizens and k-pop have a symbiotic relationship which is all-too-obvious – without k-pop creating such a hefty side-culture of bullshit, people would have a lot less to whine about and might have to actually redirect their focus onto something real that actually matters.  Since actual journalism and healthy debate isn’t a palatable idea in Korea’s “sweep problems under the rug because we must keep up appearances at all costs” culture, pop scandal is a convenient distraction for everybody to concern themselves with instead.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a deliberate “bread and circuses” conspiracy on anybody’s part to have pop culture as this massive distraction (conspiracy theories generally are political junk food for the fuckwitted) but it’s certainly a good situation for those in charge and no doubt they realise it.  Imagine for a moment, if every EXO-L were as passionate about the fate of their country as they are about EXO, and you’ll quickly realise it too.

That’s why I don’t care about scandal.  I don’t care if the things the media says or that netizens speculate on are true or false, and that’s why I’m generally not in a rush to cover any of it.  I applaud anyone who doesn’t give a fuck about k-pop scandal.  I only care that:

• Music I like continues to surface
• There are sometimes hot girls

Since I really don’t give much of a shit, plus I have a bit of experience in dealing with scandal from the other side (i.e I personally know people who have been the subject of “entertainment scandals”) I believe that this affords me a certain point of view which others might be lacking, and certainly which I’m not seeing much of in many other places, or at least not as much of as I’d like to see.  So here’s a short list of three things you can look out for whenever you hear about something happening in k-pop and you might be wondering about how real it is.  All of these should be red flags that indicate that whatever you’re being told to believe might, just maybe, be a complete pile of shit.

1.  Black and white thinking

Here’s a list of all the things that Seo Jisoo from Lovelyz was accused of when Lovelyz debuted:

• Being a lesbian
• Spreading nude photos of other girls
• Date rape
• Animal abuse
• School bullying
• Inserting buttplugs into other girls
• Taping hidden sex cameras
• Blackmail
• Being an Infinite sasaeng
• Creepy online roleplay
• Being the best ever cum in your life

My bullshit detector went off immediately upon seeing that list because it’s such an obvious shopping list of “things many Koreans find 100% despicable and wrong”, but of course nobody would believe me, preferring to give the benefit of the doubt to some shitty gossip sites.  Eventually all of these rumours were thoroughly debunked, meaning that I was proved right all along… except the roleplay, but that just puts her on a par with about 99% of the k-pop fangirls accusing her of all the other shit, and the “best ever cum in your life” which is probably true.  So how was I so sure?

Whenever someone tries to paint a person or group of people as 100% villains, and another person or group of people as 100% saints (in this case, the “victims”, who actually turned out to be a male with a buttplug fetish), I call bullshit.  It’s a sure sign of fabrication, and I’ve seen it before – it’s what the media always does when they want to put a spin on a story, they’ll remove anything that conflicts with their chosen spin and exaggerate their chosen angle as much as they can.  Netizens do it as well when they decide that they want to demonise somebody – suddenly all their previously-noted good qualities mysteriously vanish.  As soon as you see that happen – look out, the bullshit circus is on its way.

People tend to take what they read in the news and on websites mostly on face value, or at least with a “I guess I can’t be sure, let’s wait and see” attitude, but the media’s spin becomes really obvious when an article appears about something that you actually know a fucking lot about.  Example: many years ago I was on my lunch break from work, and I picked up the newspaper.  I was astonished to see that on the front page was a guy who I knew quite well from the local heavy metal scene.  Unfortunately he wasn’t on the front page because his band had hit the big time, instead it was because he had been shot dead at a city nightclub.  I read through the article, and it was hilarious – they talked about what a wonderful guy he was, how he had a great relationship with his parents and his girlfriend, how he loved feeding the ducks by the pond and listening to Beethoven.  If you were to read this article and take it on face value you’d think that the man was a perfect angel.  Of course they left out anything that might contradict this picture-perfect image of him – that he was in a reasonably well-known local thrash metal band, that he liked smoking marijuana, that he had a mouth on him and was a real shit-stirrer who wouldn’t hesitate to hurl abuse and even get violent with people he didn’t like (which was probably what got him shot).  However these aspects of his character didn’t fit the narrative, so they were excluded from the newspaper story.  I laughed as I read it, I thought to myself “wow, feeding ducks – that’s a new euphemism for dope-smoking that I hadn’t heard about until now, he would laugh if he could read this now”.  The newspaper weren’t about to let truth and a fully-rounded picture of him as a person get in the way of the “he was a flawless angel” article that they wanted to write.

If you want a k-pop example, think of the recent incident between Lee Taeim and Yewon.  The media picked a side – they wanted to demonise Lee Taeim so that’s what they did, even changing the dialogue to turn a shades-of-grey situation into a black-and-white one.  Then the truth came out and the media outlets now look stupid… but usually that doesn’t happen and people just carry on believing whatever bullshit is written about.

Media loves to portray things as black-and-white as possible and they’ll fudge the truth to make that happen constantly.  When Australian spree killer Martin Bryant’s images were released to the public, his eyes were subtly doctored by the media so he looked more bug-eyed (and hence “crazy”) than he really was.  On the other hand when Rolling Stone published an image of the Boston Bomber that just looked kind of normal, they were accused of glamorising him by an angry public.  Today’s hive-minded morons can’t comprehend shades of grey or the idea that their villains are any less than 100% pure evil so the media play to the lowest common denominator and give the people what they want.  Expect it fondly from your k-pop media as well, and know that when it happens, the truth is usually a lot more nuanced, because in real life nobody is the “bad guy” or the “good guy” 100% of the time.

2.  Evidence without evidence, proof without proof

K-pop fans have a fairly strange relationship with the words “evidence” and “proof”.  Apparently, little do they know that “proof” has to actually prove something to be proof, and “evidence” actually has to make something evident to be evidence.  Let’s take this well-known example:

Here’s what this picture makes evident:

• Singer IU and Super Junior’s Eunhyuk know each other well enough to be in the same room together
• IU and Eunhyuk are close enough as friends/fuckbuddies/lovers/acquaintances/whatever that their faces can only be a few inches from each other in a photo
• IU is wearing pajamas
• IU is really shit at taking photos
• IU deleted this picture pretty quicksmart after she uploaded it (not quick enough though)

That’s all we know, the rest we’re guessing and making up.  Some things that we could guess about or access our internal reservoir of confirmation bias to speculate on and consider the likelihood of:

• IU might be wearing pajamas because she was sick, as the Loen/1thek press release stated.  Or maybe she just put them on after a good fucking from Eunhyuk.  Maybe she left them on during the fucking because Eunhyuk has a pink pajama fetish.  Maybe IU just wanders around the place in pajamas all the time because it’s comfortable.  The photo was taken in early November and I understand it’s pretty cold in Korea at around that time, maybe she was just cold and her pajamas are warm.
• Eunhyuk may have that expression on his face because he just came and then wiped his dick on IU’s pink pajamas, or maybe he has that expression because it’s a really awkward pose for him to bend over like that so he’s in the shot for IU’s wonky-as-fuck camerawork.  Maybe this is the tenth photo they took together and he’s just fucking tired and over this selca bullshit, “bitch hold the camera steady for once in your fucking life, what’s with you chicks and your fucking selcas of everything” perhaps that’s what he’s saying.  Maybe he has a headache.  Maybe he functions on only a few hours sleep per night as many idols do.  Maybe IU really is sick and he’s worried about catching it so he’s cringing a bit and trying not to inhale any germs.
• IU and Eunhyuk might be on a bed together.  They might also be on a couch together.  They might be sleeping together.  They might have spent the night together.  They might have just sided up next to each other just for this one photo.  Maybe they stayed together all day, as close as this.  Maybe Eunhyuk left the building five seconds after IU insisted taking this photo because she was all like “I’ve always loved SuJu can I please have a photo with you” and he said “ok you annoying bitch here you go, can I fucking leave now?”.
• Maybe IU deleted this from her SNS because she was worried that her affair with Eunhyuk would become public knowledge.  Or maybe she deleted it because she isn’t having such an affair but she can see that a photo of her in her pajamas with Eunhyuk could be misinterpreted.  Maybe she removed it because she thought that it would upset SuJu fans, or IU fans, or both.

Personally I’d like to believe that they both fucked all night with multiple cameras rolling and edited down a professional-looking video and then left the tape with a note for the cleaner the next morning with instructions on which AV network to leak it to.  But I don’t actually give a shit, and in the meantime the picture proves nothing of the sort (unfortunately).

Here’s more “evidence”, the notorious “Boram broke Hwayoung’ umbrella” screencaps, and I hesitate to even post these because the T-ara scandal is so boring and played-out, but it’s a good example as any other and I think my mum would be proud that I finally covered this:

Here’s what this screencap makes evident:

• Hwayoung is holding an umbrella, which is broken
• Boram is behind her at one point

And that’s it.  We don’t even need to speculate on this one because a full video shows what really happened:

The umbrella was clearly broken already, before Boram even came up to her.  I knew my mother wouldn’t do a thing like that.  All of the T-ara “evidence” is just like this, easily debunked once put into context.  Yet people still call it “evidence” or “proofs” anyway – let’s hope that they don’t consider a career in the legal profession.

These “evidences” although inconclusive at best (like with IU) and downright lies at worst (like with T-ara) are still powerful because they only show part of the picture, and they leave people’s imaginations to do the rest, and people’s imaginations are hugely powerful things, especially when we’re talking about young and dumb k-pop fans.  The important thing to remember here is when you look at “evidence” look at what is actually happening, not what you imagine could possibly be happening, lest you look like a fool and Kpopalypse makes fun of you with a post like this and holds you up to contemptuous ridicule.  If you see anything like the above pictures paraded out as “proof” in future scandals, you’re probably being massively lied to, so you know already to be wary and get that bullshit-detector on full alert.

3.  Laughable netizen “detective” work

I always chuckle to myself when people talk about “netizen CSI” – it’s an apt description, but not for the reasons that people think.  Comparing netizens to CSI makes perfect sense only because CSI is complete fiction and absolutely unlike the kind of work that police investigative units actually do in reality.  Really, netizens are the most shit detectives ever, and how they got a reputation as even vaguely competent at detective work is anybody’s guess, because they fail time and time again to meet even the most basic standards of logical processing of information.  I bet they couldn’t even do common police work like write a GUI in Visual Basic to track a killer’s IP address.

Let’s look at IU again, just because I’m too lazy to think up a more recent example, and also I generally like looking at IU so why the fuck not:

The top photo is Eunhyuk’s bedroom (apparently).  The bottom photo is IU’s eye from the pajama photo before.  Supposedly, the light reflected in IU’s eye is the light from Eunhyuk’s bedroom.  This is a pretty typical example of “netizen CSI” at work – obsessing over tiny details while failing to grasp what they might mean in the bigger picture, like a retard suffering from high-functioning autism who can count playing cards in a deck but can’t stop getting his drool all over them to the point where he’d get kicked out of the casino before making any money from his card-counting abilities.  Here’s what we know about this collection of pictures:

• There’s something square and bright reflected in IU’s eye
• The light in Eunhyuk’s bedroom is square and bright

Here’s what we can guess:

• Maybe they’re the same light.  Or maybe they’re not.  Maybe there’s more than one square light on a ceiling in the whole of Korea. Maybe it’s the same model of light, in a different room.  Maybe all SM artists get the same standard-issue square lights for their bedrooms, which would actually make sense because why have different fittings for each room if you’ve got a ton of rooms that are exactly the same.  Hotel rooms don’t have different light fittings in each room either, and the better SM dorms seem like hotels.  Maybe IU and Eunhyuk were in Shindong’s room having a threesome.
• The two square lights don’t seem to be quite the same shape, but maybe it’s the angle that’s a factor – diagonal in the bedroom photo, straight-on in the IU selca.
• Maybe it’s something else square and bright reflected in IU’s eye, like a window opposite.  It certainly seems to be rather big and vertically long suggesting typical window dimensions rather than a ceiling light fitting.
• If it was a ceiling light fitting, why would it be reflected in the middle of IU’s eye suggesting an object placed on her horizontal plane (like a window), rather than the top of her eye as one would expect from the angle of a ceiling being… you know, up?  But then maybe IU is lying in a weird position so that’s what makes it look that way (remember Eunhyuk might be grimacing because he’s uncomfortable with IU’s insistence on taking such an awkwardly-angled selca).
• Why the fuck is there a weird teddy bear in Eunhyuk’s room, and why is it staring straight to camera?  Is this Five Nights At Freddys, SM Edition?  Why aren’t the netizens onto this?  If I were them I’d be concerned.

Congratulations netizens, you have correctly identified a square thing as being square and another square thing as also being square.  While it’s good to know that you were paying attention to shapes class in pre-school, perhaps the world of hardcore detectivism (that’s a word, because it’s my blog and I said so) is beyond you and you should spend a little more time there identifying stupid-looking hip-hop jackets before venturing out into the big bad world you fucking losers.  In the meantime, let’s not kid ourselves that these people have any special abilities beyond being exceptionally obsessive-compulsive.  Whenever you hear “netizen detectives” are on the case, be prepared for some major bullshit… yes they might be right, but a drunk person pissing in a pub toilet while blindfolded also might get most of his piss in the bowl, that doesn’t mean he’s a fucking genius with a PhD in urology and fluid dynamics, it just means he stumbled around with his dick out and got lucky.

So that’s it for me, kids.  Remember next time you see a scandal developing and want to know who is feeding you bullshit, remember:

• Kpopalypse has it covered
• Use your brain
• Nobody cares, especially not Qri
• Lists with dot points are cool

See you next time, caonimas!

That’s right cockheads, Kpopalypse is back again, and this time he’s bringing to you a very special edition of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!

In this special EXTREME EDITION of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, the nuguest nugus that ever were nugu will go toe-to-toe in an ultimate nugu battle of nugu nuguness!  Can you handle the extremity?

Girls’ Generation – Gee

You can tell a lot by a group’s name, and when your group name is not only excessively wordy but has an apostrophe in it AFTER the s, you know your career is basically fucked right out of the gate and you’re going to spend most of your adult life polishing floors with a dishrag to make ends meet.  Never mind that the song sounds like a compilation of Tinkerbell’s wet electronic farts, that’s the least of these girl’s problems and I’m sure that they gave up on k-pop by now and are flagging down passing cars for $10 blowjobs on a freeway underpass near you.  Check out the start of the video where they’re all pretending to be mannequins, and they’re wobbling around on their pedestals trying to be as still as possible and failing.  They had one simple task at that point and that was to just fucking be still you fucking whorebags and they couldn’t even get that part right, so let’s not get them to try and do anything else anytime soon, not that anyone would.  The only reason why they got Black Ocean’ed all those years ago is because nobody knew who they were or had a lightstick for them in the first place.  It’s a good thing I’m here to raise the profiles of groups like this to help get them off the street because I’m such a caring soul.

YouTube views at the time of writing – nobody cares

Notable attribute – I could fap to a couple of these girls

Nugu Alert rating – high

BigBang – Fantastic Baby

Only about ten people could be bothered rocking up to this group’s shitty riot scene, presumably shot on leftover mounds of dirt and corrugated iron left over from a District-9 themed backyard party.  I’m thinking that maybe the guys with the white masks are all like “get me away from this shithouse music that’s playing so I can hide in your soundproof paper-mache riot trucks” and the police guys are all “nope, get back behind the barbed wire, faggot bitches”.  Nobody cares anyway because this song sucks and all the group members have now faded into complete obscurity… or started making horrid yoloswag shitbirds of solo songs, same difference because nobody listens to that shit either.  I’m pretty sure G-Dag and F.L.O.P or whatever their names are this week are sitting under a bridge sharing infected needles as I type, so for fuck’s sake click on this video a bunch of times and get these people out of the gutter.  Maybe if we all pitch in together they can get back on their feet enough to get a resume together and get a nice job being productive to society by stacking supermarket shelves or something.

YouTube views at the time of writing – one or two

Notable attribute – I could fap to a couple of these girls

Nugu Alert rating – very high

2NE1 – I Am The Best

There’s a certain air of desperation in calling an artist “to anyone”, it’s like saying “we’re desperate for fame as all fuck, come on, someone, anyone, listen to us… please, we’ll give you money!  We’ll give you money AND blowjobs, just listen!”.  As it happens stroking on a few throbbing knobs is a handy side-occupation to help obliterate a few years of trainee debt plus all those expensive plastic surgery bills, and let’s hope these girls are pretty good at it because nobody has heard a peep from them since this clanger came out.  It’s little wonder as the intro sounds like Skrillex taking a shit in Lady Gaga’s mouth and it doesn’t get any better from there.  The lyrics are trash too even by low, low k-pop standards – people who are genuinely good at stuff don’t have to wander around saying “I Am The Best” because their abilities are self-evident and need no pronouncement, so if you feel the need to actually call your song “I Am The Best” then you really are just jerking off in everybody’s face.  Mind you I wouldn’t be against the idea of sitting under Bom Realdoll’s vagina in this video while she furiously masturbated and squirted all over my chin if she wasn’t wearing studded BDSM clothing, the chafing from that shit is incredible.

YouTube views at the time of writing – do Blackjacks even know what YouTube does?

Notable attribute – I could fap to a couple of these girls

Nugu Alert rating – extreme

PSY – Gangnam Style

I’ll definitely be accused of being a hipster for bringing this guy up.  Who the fuck even is he.  Kids these days have now gotten wise to k-pop’s “get in debt quick” scam, so having exhausted every willing high-schooler in the country, k-pop labels are now reduced to scouring the streets for panhandling ex-Army vets to front their latest thinly-veiled car commercial masquerading as a pop music video.  It’s a good thing that nobody has heard of this song because if something like this ever became popular and hoodwinked enough people into thinking that they were listening to something worthwhile it could signal the downfall of civilisation.  There’s no fear of that though, nobody’s going to listen to a z-grade clone of LMFAO’s “Shuffling Up Your Ass” or whatever it’s called, performed by some bored dad who decided that he’s got nothing to live for and took up crystal meth as a hobby to occupy himself now that the kids are all grown up.  With a rapidly aging population in many developed countries this kind of thing may become more and more of a problem so let’s not encourage it – or next thing you know the cancer will spread further and we’ll have mature-age snarky k-pop bloggers popping up with horrid unfunny joke review posts, now that really WILL be the end of society.

YouTube views at the time of writing – less than your mum

Notable attribute – I could fap to a couple of these girls

Nugu Alert rating – off the chart

That’s it for another Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  I hope you enjoyed laughing at these people who wasted their lives in the entertainment business when they should have been picking beans in a field… but don’t laugh, pity them, give their videos some traffic and if we all work hard with our mouse fingers, we can make a difference to their incomes and they may soon earn their first dollar.  They’ll never forget your kindness and generosity.  Everyone, let’s do it.  Do it for k-pop.  Do it for Kpopalypse.  Let’s help these nobodies live the dream.

Many k-pop fans are excited about the potential shown by Red Velvet, SM’s newest girl group.  Many of them are also very confused, and have been asking Kpopalypse the following question:

Never one to let down the k-pop fan community, Kpopalypse is here to help you in your important quest for k-pop knowledge!

I’m not just making this shit up, by the way.  People really are confused by this shit.  A simple Google search while researching this topic revealed that the general k-pop fan population is confused as a motherfuck about which Red Velvet member is which at any given moment.

As you can see by the last result, there’s speculation that the Red Velvet members may have gotten prettier, and that this may be the cause of the confusion.  If you’re someone struggling to become a k-pop idol and you’re looking at your options for becoming prettier, you basically have two choices:

1. Get famous, then become prettier while you are under the public eye, with all the gossip and scrutiny this entails
2. Get prettier during your training period when you are safely locked in the dungeon and cameras aren’t looking at you

It makes sense to choose the second option, however it could also be the case that SM Entertainment just scouted for a bunch of girls with the same look in the first place.  Either way, there’s no doubting that the girls in Red Velvet do look strikingly similar, for whatever reason.

Let’s introduce the Red Velvet members one by one so we can help better differentiate them.

JOY

Here’s Joy.  Joy is from Red Velvet.  Her hair has been colour-coded GREEN by SM Entertainment for easy identification purposes, because they knew that you would have trouble with this shit without some help.  She has a pretty face, a cute smile (when she’s smiling), long hair and big brown eyes.  Remember these distinctive features.

IRENE

Here’s Irene.  Irene is from Red Velvet.  Her hair has been colour-coded PINK/RED by SM Entertainment for easy identification purposes, because they knew that you would have trouble with this shit without some help.  She has a pretty face, a cute smile (when she’s smiling), long hair and big brown eyes.  Remember these distinctive features.

SEULGI

Here’s Seulgi.  Seulgi is from Red Velvet.  Her hair has been colour-coded ORANGE/YELLOW by SM Entertainment for easy identification purposes, because they knew that you would have trouble with this shit without some help.  She has a pretty face, a cute smile (when she’s smiling), long hair and big brown eyes.  Remember these distinctive features.

WENDY

Here’s Wendy.  Wendy is from Red Velvet.  Her hair has been colour-coded BLUE by SM Entertainment for easy identification purposes, because they knew that you would have trouble with this shit without some help.  She has a pretty face, a cute smile (when she’s smiling), long hair and big brown eyes.  Remember these distinctive features.

YERI

Here’s Yeri.  Yeri is from Red Velvet.  Her hair has been colour-coded BLONDE by SM Entertainment for easy identification purposes, because they knew that you would have trouble with this shit without some help.  She has a pretty face, a cute smile (when she’s smiling), long hair and big brown eyes.  Remember these distinctive features.

Now that you’re fully up to speed on what these girls look like and all their distinctive features that make them look individual and special, you are ready for:

The Red Velvet Identification Test

Question 1: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 2: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 3: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 4: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 5: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 6: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 7: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 8: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 9: which girl is which?  Click the picture for the answer.

Question 10: rumour has it that a member of Red Velvet was a Miss South Korea beauty pageant contestant.  Can you identify her from the photos of the contestants below?  Click the picture for the answer.

If you got all ten questions right, congratulations!  You’ve now mastered the art of identifying the members of Red Velvet!  If however you were struggling, feel free to take the test again, share with friends for tips, or search deep inside your soul for the meaning of existence.  Good luck!

It’s no secret that the Kpopalypse ask.fm has become ludicrously popular.  When I started using ask.fm I just thought I’d get a couple questions a day about my blogging at the most, but those who follow it know that on a typical day I get inundated with dozens of questions.  While it’s certainly very flattering (and weird) that people care so much about what I think about various trivial topics, it’s also very repetitive.  I get asked the same questions all the time, so here’s a collection of the most common questions and answers, so I can save myself some typing in the future.  If you’ve been linked here, the answer to your question is probably below!

I’ve decided to make this post separate from the FAQ.  The Kpopalypse FAQ has questions and answers which are very relevant to Kpopalypse blog as a whole, this separate post is to cover those questions which really don’t belong in a FAQ as they’re fairly trivial and don’t have much to do with my blogging, but that still get asked a fuckload.  This post may also get added to over time.  Please now enjoy this question and answer selection!

What are your favourite k-pop groups?

When it comes to k-pop I’m really more into songs than groups, because the groups generally don’t write the songs.

Come on man, that’s a cop-out.

As far as music goes, certain groups have better hit-miss ratios than others, but that’s more luck/coincidence than anything else.  The groups can’t really take the credit for that.

Girl groups with the best hit/miss ratios: T-ara, Orange Caramel, Crayon Pop, f(x).

Boy groups with the best hit/miss ratios: (recent) BigBang, 100%, SPEED, Infinite.

What about in terms of prettiness of the members?

Covered in the bias compendium.

Do you like J-pop?

No.  It’s all hideously twee nonsense aimed squarely at the raincoat market.

What… none of it?

Okay, here’s one good j-pop song.  That’s it.  Everything else sucks donkey dicks.

Worth nothing that Japan is often quite good at all sorts of other genres… just not pop music.  Generally speaking the weirder and more out-there the music style is, the better Japanese artists are at doing it… however Japan needs to stay as far the fuck away from commercial pop and rock music as humanly possible.

I do occasionally still listen to new j-pop and keep tabs on it just in case it stops sucking one day.  Hasn’t happened yet, don’t hold out much hope.  In the meantime don’t link me any.

Note that k-pop artists entering the j-pop market, I consider that stuff k-pop, not j-pop, because it’s being driven by the k-pop industry with a k-pop team behind everything, and as a result the quality is often (but not always) better.

Do you like Visual Kei?

I like X Japan.  There’s one or two other Visual Kei artists that have an isolated good song or two.  The rest is mostly nu-metal crap.

Do you like anime?  What are some of your favourite animes?

There’s two types of anime that are worth bothering with:

• Miyazaki/Studio Ghibi stuff, which is generally acceptable
• Hentai (porn)

Everything else is rubbish.  Anime always has the laziest-possible animation quality with every corner cut that can possibly be cut, universally horrible and always creepily misogynist characterisation and portrayal of any female characters, stupid plots that make no sense and always with lame “esoteric” endings, and poor writing all round.  And yes I have seen all the supposed “classics” of the genre like Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Perfect Blue, and many others… all absolute retarded fucking shit so don’t recommend me any more of it as I’ve wasted enough of my life watching the garbage and won’t waste any more.  Miyazaki gets over the line because they actually put some effort into animating it, and sometimes the stories are sensible.  Hentai also gets over the line because unlike regular anime at least hentai is honest about what it is when it’s portraying women.  Honesty goes a long way.

I’ve also never understood why western k-pop fans like anime.  Two things with absolutely nothing in common other than that Asians are making them.

Do you like Korean dramas?  What are some of your favourite Korean dramas?

I’ve tried watching a few of them but I always give up, they’re generally insipid and the Korean sense of humour is something that I can’t get with – they have to make every joke completely obvious like you’re a fucking idiot and won’t get the joke unless it’s repeated and/or massively exaggerated.  The more serious dramas on the other hand I just find lame and boring.  Even having a k-pop girl in them that I like doesn’t create enough motivation for me to watch Korean dramas.

What about Korean movies, then?

Koreans are quite good at making horror and action films, almost as good as Japan and definitely better than Hollywood (most places are).  Oldboy is the classic Korean film of course and combines both action and horror elements, but there are many others, too many to list.

Also, Lies is a bizarre favourite and shows that Korea could have a great porn industry one day if they ever loosen the government restrictions a little (sadly unlikely).

What are your favourite Korean actresses?

I don’t really pay much attention to who is in which film.  I’m sure there are other blogs out there that focus on this.  My blogging has almost no actor/actress content because I don’t really care about the specific people, just if I enjoy the film or not.

What do you think about [insert shitty western pop/rock artist here]?‎

I don’t think about [insert shitty western pop/rock artist here].  You can usually safely assume this.

So what western artists DO you like?

When I was really young (pre-teen) the first music that I really liked was actually not pop music, but music that accompanied computer games on the Commodore 64, and also classical pieces that I’d play on the piano.  I was oblivious to the fact that a lot of the time the computer game songs were actually reconfigured instrumental versions of western pop songs, but hearing these probably gave me the ear for listening to melody/harmony/rhythm/texture first rather than lyrics first.  Later on I found actual pop music via Saturday morning TV where the weekly Top 40 would be broadcast, my first pop faves were Australian groups Icehouse and INXS, and later on in high school I discovered hard rock like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and then later heavy metal and rap, and then other styles from there such as experimental and industrial music.  Becoming a DJ at a radio station also broadened my musical horizons considerably, because once that happened people would send me music all the time (this was before the Internet meant that anybody could access just about any music at any time).

If there’s a common thread between all the different music I listen to and like it’s probably some form of “extremity” – consistently applied sound in a particular direction.  K-pop appeals to me more if it’s extremely poppy just like metal appeals more if it’s extremely heavy – tapping that vein of “what makes something more of what it is, and less of what it is not” is part of the appeal.  K-pop is at its worst when it’s a bland haphazard genre mush.  Metal is at its worst when it’s soft and limp, or so messy and distorted that nothing solid can be discerned.  Rap is at its worst when it’s smooth, nice and offensive to nobody.  Industrial music is at its worst when it tries to incorporate pop or metal elements to the extent that the core industrial sound is diluted.  Etc.

Ten favourite non k-pop albums in no particular order (because you guys like lists), with tracks linked from each one:

Celtic Frost – Into The Pandemonium
Mobb Deep – Hell On Earth
Swans – White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity
Ministry – Psalm 69
Current 93 – Soft Black Stars
This Mortal Coil – It’ll End In Tears
Darkthrone – A Blaze In The Northern Sky
Anti-Nowhere League – We Are … The League
Front Line Assembly – Caustic Grip
Lolita Storm – Girls Fucking Shit Up

Far from a complete list, I could have made this a lot longer.

That list isn’t very pop though.  What is some more pop type stuff that you like?

Some more albums that I like, this time pop (sort of):

La Roux – La Roux
CSS – Cansei De Ser Sexy
Belly – Star
Alizee – Gourmandises
Miss Kittin & The Hacker – The First Album
Cocteau Twins – Head Over Heels
New Order – Substance
Throwing Muses – Limbo

Also, all Australians like Queen and ABBA, this is mandatory for all citizens.

What do you think about Sia Furler?

Sia gets a special mention because she’s a pop performer who comes from my town and presumably for this reason I get asked about her at least once a month.  I saw her old band Crisp in the 90s a few times (not by choice), they were popular locally and had a couple albums out which sucked.  They were fucking boring as shit.  Nothing she’s done since has changed my opinion of her music since, none of which is as horrible as Crisp was, but none of which I’d exactly call “good” or listen to by choice.  Also I never saw any of this supposed “public anxiety” business from her back when I used to see her around, in fact quite the opposite.  She was always quite outgoing on stage and wouldn’t perform live with her back turned like she does now, so either something really fucked with her head between then and now or that’s just some quirky marketing bullshit.

What do you think about Beyonce/Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston/[insert western singer known for their vocal prowess here]?

Absolute dogshit, some of the worst music on earth.  Oh, except Mariah’s “Without You”, which is okay.  Everything else is awful.

What do you think about Madonna?

Her music is very hit-and-miss but conceptually she’s a very important influence on k-pop (read more here).  Best albums would be Like A Prayer, Bedtime Stories, Ray Of Light, rest of her albums have too many dud songs to be worth bothering with.

What do you think about The Beatles?

I thought they were okay in their early days when they were basically a pop group.  Later on when they grew their hair and got into transcendental meditation I thought the music went completely to shit, I think “Sgt. Peppers” album and everything after it is total crap.  One of the only things I ever agreed with my mother about regarding music.

Is it true that your mother looks like Boram?  Can I see a picture?

Yes, it is true.  Of course you can see a picture!  Here it is:

As you can see the resemblance is very close.

What’s your ancestry?

German on my father’s side, Chinese, English and Irish on my mother’s side.

Your name is really clever. How did you come up with it?

While joking around with a friend at the radio station, I referred to my sudden addition of several k-pop releases into the station record library at once as a “kpopalypse”, in reference to the idea that other DJs would be generally unhappy about it (as my station doesn’t focus on pop music generally – many of the DJs there hate commercial pop and like other styles).  A few months later when I started the radio show I remembered the name and used it, I’m not sure exactly where I got the idea from, but I was probably thinking of the film “Apocalypse Now“.

How old are you?

Older than you.  Don’t you know it’s rude to ask an old fuck how old they are?  Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?  You should be ashamed of yourself.

Are you married?

No, but I’m in a long-term relationship.  Get in the queue.

Do you have children?

No.  I don’t think the world will ever be ready for the kind of children that I would produce.  There’s enough people on the planet anyway fucking things up, I feel that it would be selfish for me to create more of them to fuck things up further.

I know everything about you!  [insert links to scandalous doxx here]

Believe it or not, I don’t have a secret identity.  All of my personal details are public and easily accessible through my Facebook page which you can find a link to via the radio show page.  I even use my real name on there.  I’ve never understood why people bother to “doxx” me, there’s really nothing to see that my own writing plus a Google search won’t tell you.

Why don’t you ever post links about your own music or other activities that you’re involved in?

I don’t want to use my blogging as a vehicle for self-promotion, I like to keep the blogging and the music and other work stuff that I do completely separated.  Nothing to do with secrecy, it’s more out of respect for my readers.  I’ve seen too many blogs that make really interesting points and then piss in the bathwater by finishing up with “oh and by the way I’m a recording artist and here’s what I do and here’s some other stuff that I also do and here’s where you can buy my stuff and here’s how you can help me make money, please support me”.  Cracked has quite a few cringeworthy articles like that and it’s just insulting.  What I do shouldn’t matter that much to people anyway, besides the stuff which is obviously relevant for the more industry-focused and “technical” posts.

If you’re against making money, why do you have a donate button?

I’m not against making money, I’m just against making money using the clickbait-and-switch tactics described above.  The main reason that I have the donation button is not to receive donations (very few people donate) but so I can annoy pushy people who want me to write about this or that when I don’t want to by saying to them “pay me motherfucker and I’ll consider it”.  Of course they never do pay, and that’s fine – I’m more interested in shutting them up than taking their money anyway.

Are you an alpaca?

I am if you want me to be – however the alpaca is actually symbolic of freedom of expression.  No it is not a reference to Amber of f(x), she may call herself a llama or whatever but I don’t care about that, the real alpaca in f(x) isn’t her.

Are you really a sad old man with no life?

No because this would make it impossible for me to also be an alpaca.

Why are you such a cunt?

To annoy you.

I think the word “cunt” is offensive, why do you use it all the time?

Shut up slut.  Look, I used the word “slut” instead of “cunt”, I did that so as not to offend you, you should be appropriately grateful.

Do you like sport?

I’m a musician – sport is against my religion.

How come you recently said [statement x] when in a previous post you also said [statement y which contradicts statement x]?

It could be that my opinion has changed over time – opinions have a way of doing that.  Or perhaps statements X and Y aren’t as contradictory as they appear and contain subtleties that you haven’t perceived.  Or perhaps I was trolling you or taking the piss with statement X but serious with statement Y, or vice versa.  Or perhaps I’m a massive hypocrite.  Pick one.

Why don’t you have Instagram?

I lack the determination to take the minimum required amount of photographs of my meals to qualify for Instagram membership.

Why is your Twitter mainly just ask.fm reposts?

I don’t really give much of a fuck about Twitter or social networks in general.  Ask.fm is useful because it’s good for people to ask me shit.  Facebook is useful because it’s a good place to collect radio show requests.  I haven’t found a really good use for Twitter yet.

Do you play video games?  Which ones?

Yes.  I play League Of Legends quite a bit, and although I’m not very good at it I do enjoy it.  Username is BKitten and I play Oceania region servers only, feel free to add.  I like lots of other games too, other favourites for now are Insurgency and Minecraft.  I grew up with the Commodore 64 so I have an affinity with gaming, although I lack skill due to being old and having shit reflexes plus colour-blindness.

Are you really colour blind?  What’s that like?

It’s just like being not colour blind except you can’t see colour properly.  More info and answers to your further colour blindness questions here.

Are you really bald?

Almost completely, yes.  I have alopecia where hair randomly falls out.  It’s not like the pattern baldness that old men get, it looks very different.

Why don’t you livestream more often?

I seem to have a lot of technical problems, also the livestreams have never been that popular plus they’re time-consuming to do for something that’s only of marginal interest.  It doesn’t seem like an effective way to reach people given that I usually only get 20 to 40 hits on a livestream vs thousands per blog post.  I might occasionally do more of them but it’s not a priority.

Why do Reddit hate you?

I don’t know, but a lot of them they definitely do!

Do you hate Netizenbuzz?

No.  Overall I think it’s a good and useful site, just flawed.  I could probably say the same about my own site!

Does NB meet required standards?

Not my type.  I prefer Martina!

Do you really think Martina is hot or are you just taking the piss?

I really think Martina is hot.  Simon gave off a bit of a gay vibe when I first saw him so I initially hoped that their coupling was a lavender marriage and I was in with a shot.  However on further investigation I noticed that Simon’s pretty good at trying to get Martina to show her tits in a positive light for the camera when the opportunity presents itself which is exactly what I would do in his shoes, so I think we’re actually pretty much on the same page there.  That’s a shame because it probably means I’ll never get to feel those boobs, but if Simon is feeling them for me it’s kind of like I’m there in spirit.

Would you ever consider v-logging like Eat Your Kimchi?

I’ve thought about ways to incorporate self-made video content into my blogs for a while now but each time I think about it, I usually just end up thinking “I could just do the same thing more effectively in writing somehow”.  That’s not to say that I’m ruling it out, just that I can’t think of a really compelling reason to do it.  Also I’m not really a fan of v-logs, plus my bald head isn’t as interesting as Martina’s boobs… well, not to me, anyway.

How can you honestly say that [idol X] is prettier than [idol Y]?

How can you honestly not realise that sexual tastes are subjective?

Do you think [idol X] has gotten prettier?

Who knows, I don’t care whether people get surgery really.  It would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone was happy enough with their appearance where they didn’t feel the need to get surgery, but at the same time it’s their body so whatever.

Are you looking forward to or excited by the news of [upcoming debut or comeback by X]?

No, I don’t look forward to anything.  I wait until it happens before I decide if I’m excited about it or not.

What do you think about the teaser video by [X]?

I don’t watch teaser videos.  Music videos are really advertisements, so teasers are advertisements for advertisements and so I feel like an idiot for watching them.  Half of the time the actual song sounds nothing like the teaser anyway.  Wake me when the full video comes out and not before.

What’s your opinion about [kpop scandal X]?

I don’t care about scandals.

What does [phrase, term or statement that Kpopalypse doesn’t use] mean?

I don’t know, ask [the person who uses that statement].

Ask/tell them, not me.

Thoughts? [insert video link here]

Meh (usually).

I had a question and it’s not here.

You could try the FAQ.

I already looked at the FAQ and it’s not there either.

Well I don’t mind if you ask it via ask.fm, maybe your question will end up in an edited version of this post, which will be added to over time as more questions become common!

That’s right folks, it’s Kpopalypse fanfiction time again!  This post is dedicated to those who wonder why Kpopalypse doesn’t write “sexy” fanfiction.

In truth, the reason why I don’t write sex fanfics is because that’s what everybody else does.  You can read that kind of stuff in many other sites dedicated to fanfiction.  However, the constant questions got me thinking – if I were to write a fanfiction that focused on sexual themes, how would I do it?  Read on and find out – if you dare!

–

It’s a hard life being a male online feminist k-pop activist.  Nobody really understands you.

When people find out about your hobby of writing pro-feminist posts deconstructing the gender issues surrounding k-pop, they always react negatively.  When you tell someone who doesn’t know or care much about k-pop about it, they look at you with disdain – “it’s just pop music, why are you wasting your life with this?”, they say.  On the other hand guys who do care about k-pop think that you’re a virgin who is in denial.  “You sad fuck, you’ll come around to fapping to Girl’s Day eventually”, that’s the typical kind of comment.  Or they call you “whipped” and make comments like “which girl is making you write this bullshit”.  However girls certainly aren’t, and they are in fact even more cynical about your hobby than the guys!  You thought that being an online feminist would gain the admiration and respect of females but oddly the reverse is true – they’re all convinced that you’re a slimy sleazeball just itching to get inside their pants.  You know this isn’t true… well, okay, you would like to fuck some of them, but that’s just coincidental, it’s not why you’re doing it.  You just care about society and social issues.  I supposed you could say that you’re a “social justice warrior” – but what’s wrong with fighting for social justice?  You never understood why people use that term as an insult.  It hurts that girls hate you for what you’re doing but you’ll continue to fight for their rights to be respected and not objectified.  Maybe they’ll thank you for it one day.

There you were, sitting at home just before bedtime putting the finishing touches on a new forum thread “Why Gain Is Classy And Hyuna Is A Slut part 15″ (tl;dr – “Hyuna shakes her tits but Gain makes art that raises questions”) when you notice the red bubble at the top of the forum that denotes a new private message.  This is exciting – people don’t private message you very often.  You open up the message, it’s from fellow forum user PinkPandaLuv, a user who friended you on the forums a couple months ago and has been one of your few active supporters since, occasionally liking and upvoting your posts:

Of all the criticisms that you receive for your online activity (and there are many), the one that always burns the most is the occasional observation that you’re an “armchair critic”.  It stings because it’s true – so far you haven’t really done anything about the ills of the k-pop world except post about it online.  Mind you it’s not from a lack of will, more just that you wouldn’t even really know where to start with any kind of on-the-ground activism.  It all makes this offer very appealing, and what a perfect way to silence the critics who say that people who care about k-pop never actually do anything about it!  You get back to PinkPandaLuv immediately:

A minute later, another red bubble at the top of your forum page, PinkPandaLuv has replied:

You log off and go to bed, smiling to yourself at the thought of finally making a tangible difference in the unfair and cruel world of k-pop.

–

The next night, you’re browsing the forums again before bedtime, checking out the replies that came through for “Why Gain Is Classy And Hyuna Is A Slut part 15″.  It’s the usual mixed bag of replies that you normally get whenever you make a post, mostly negative:

Seohyunfap666 – This post is ignorant.  It’s not like these idols have any choice, these girls do this because they are paid to.  You can’t blame the companies either.  They’re just giving people what they want, and people are biologically programmed to want tits and ass.

4niacation – I’m a woman and I like dancing to 4Minute, I take offense to the idea that I’m “dancing slutty”.  Hyuna is a powerful and rich woman who is doing what she wants.  You’re just jealous because she could buy you.  I bet you never get laid by anyone as good looking as her in your life, you fucking loser.

Eunjigod – I think this post is alright.  I’m sick of the sexy concepts.

Imeanitman – Gain might “make art that raises questions” but I’m still fapping to the answers.

PinkPandaLuv – Preach!  There’s not enough voices of reason out there in the k-pop community!  We’re not all disgusting pervs!

Yoloswag420 – Too many words, you just should have written “I like fapping to rape more than I like fapping to dancing” and left it at that.

All of a sudden you notice not one but two private messages come through.  Wow, you’ve pretty sure you’ve never had two private messages sitting unread in your inbox ever!  Are taking a quick screencap of the red dot with the number “2” in it for posterity, you open them.  The first one is just a short message from PinkPandaLuv:

The other post has a document attached for printout, which is a guide and schedule of the day’s activities.

It’s all so exciting – it’s actually happening this weekend!  You’ll definitely be there to make a difference.  This news completely cheers you up after all those negative online comments.  You print out the schedule and go to bed, counting the days.

–

On Sunday, you wake up bright and early, a lot earlier than you’re used to.  You had trouble sleeping anyway, with the excitement of the big day weighing on your mind and keeping your thoughts active.  You put on some warm clothes and head on down to the SM Entertainment building.

Such an imposing structure, it makes you feel weak and ineffectual.  The niggling feeling that maybe this protest is pointless starts creeping up on you, especially as you’re a little bit too early and nobody is here yet.  Then you feel something on your shoulder.

“Hi are you from the forum?” a voice says.  You turn around to see a group of six skinny guys in their teens and early twenties, holding schedules which are exactly like the one that you’re holding.  The one who is talking to you, a skinny teenager with coke-bottle glasses, carries a small cardboard sign with “NO NUTS 4 SLUTS” written on it.

“Yes!  Are you PinkPandaLuv?”, you reply.

He looks disappointed.  “No.  I thought maybe you were, since you’re here early.”

You shrug.  “I haven’t seen him.  Do you know what he looks like?”

“No idea.  I’m Eunjigod by the way, pleased to meet you.”  Eunjigod extends a glove-covered palm and you shake hands briefly.

One of the other members of the group interjects, a chubby guy in his mid 20s.  “You know, that’s a terrible slogan.  ‘No nuts 4 sluts?’  What does that even mean?”

Eunjigod looks angry.  “At least I made a sign, fatass.  I don’t see your sign, all I see is your fat rolls.”

“Hey, don’t objectify me!  We’re supposed to be anti-objectification!” the guy retorts.

“But you are fat, that’s a physical truth.”

“Well your slogan is shit, that’s a physical truth.”

“I’ll admit it’s not the best slogan but I couldn’t think up anything better in a hurry that was catchy.  At least it’ll get attention.  That’s what we’re trying to do, right?”

The other guy has no comeback for this and Eunjigod smiles to himself.  In the meantime a few more people have worked out where the protest is and joined the group, there’s now about fifteen of you.  Somebody notices that it’s now 8:30 AM and blows on a vuvuzela, signalling that the protest has commenced. Everybody stares at each other, waiting for someone to do something.  It becomes quickly evident just from looking around, without anyone saying a word, that nobody has done this before or knows what to do at a protest rally.  You have a little bit of an idea, having seen protests on TV.  “Erm… does anyone have a protest slogan?  Aren’t we supposed to chant things?” you ask.

Immediately, Eunjigod starts chanting “NO NUTS 4 SLUTS!  NO NUTS 4 SLUTS!” over and over.  Several other people in the group facepalm and cringe but eventually “no nuts 4 sluts” becomes a chant by the whole group, simply because nobody else seems to have any other ideas.  It feels good to chant something in unison with a group of like-minded people, even though you’re still not entirely sure what “no nuts 4 sluts” actually means, and you’re not sure if anyone else in the group does either, including the person who thought it up.  Oh well, at least the people inside SM Entertainment HQ can see that some people are angry outside, maybe it’s making a difference somehow.  Who can tell?

–

Later that day, the protest group is gathered around the Chrome Entertainment building.

“Why are we here?  Crayon Pop don’t have sexy concepts?”, Eunjigod asks.

“Bob Girls”, someone replies.

“Ahh, of course.  How did I forget those whores.”  Eunjigod nods.

“Fuck I’m starving, when’s lunch?” asks someone else in the crowd.

You look at your schedule.  “We’ve got FNC/MBK after this, then a lunch break.”

“Okay, let’s get to it.  What about NO OBJECTIFICATION!  NO OBJECTIFICATION!  NO OBJECTIFICATION!”  Eunjigod starts chanting, but nobody joins in, everyone else just looks at him.

“Sorry, but… how do you pronounce that?” someone asks.  Everyone else listens closely to Eunjigod, trying to ascertain the pronunciation, but are struggling as he’s saying the word slightly differently each time.

Eunjigod continues chanting – “NO OBJECTIFICATION!  NO OBJETIFICATION!  NO OBOJETIFICATION! NO… ” then stops and sighs.  “Okay, I’m getting tripped up on my words.  Maybe this isn’t the best word to use.  Does anyone know of a word that means the same thing as ‘objectification’ but has less syllables and is easier to say?”

Blank looks from everybody.

Eunjigod is determined.  “Okay fine… what about… LESS SEXY, MORE CUTE!  LESS SEXY MORE CUTE!  LESS SEXY, MORE CUTE!”  Everyone in the group starts joining in, chanting “less sexy, more cute”.  However not all the protestors seem to be aware of where the phrase starts and ends, so it’s a bit of a muddle.

Eventually someone in the group yells “Wait!  Stop!”

“What is it?”  Eunjigod is clearly unhappy about getting his chant interrupted.

“Why are we chanting ‘cute less, sexy more’?”

“No, it’s ‘less sexy, more cute’, that’s what it is, don’t get it twisted!” shouts Eunjigod.

“I thought you were chanting ‘sexy more, cute less?”, asks someone else.

You interrupt: “Honestly, it’s a bit hard to tell where that one begins and ends.  It’s easy to mishear.  Do you have anything less confusing?”

“Fine then!” Eunjigod exclaims, and starts chanting “NO NUTS 4 SLUTS!  NO NUTS 4 SLUTS!”.  The rest of the group groan and reluctantly start to join in when they are interrupted by the brief switching on and off of a loud police siren.  You’ve all been so busy arguing with each other that nobody has noticed the large police presence that has surrounded the group, consisting of several squad cars, a large police van and at least twelve officers.  A female cop wearing mirrored sunglasses and a motorcycle helmet approaches you.

“You people don’t have city permission to operate this protest.” she says, readying her handcuffs.

You remember the messages you were sent.  “Yes we do!”

“No you don’t.  Turn around please.”

The officer swings you around and cuffs your hands behind your back.  You comply with the officer – you wanted to protest peacefully, you definitely didn’t sign up for any police trouble.  You then watch as the other members of the protest are also cuffed.  “It was PinkPandaLuv who got council permission, which one of you is him?” you ask to the others.  Everybody looks at each other, shrugging.  Nobody can find him, or seems to know who he is.

“She emailed me the documents, I’ve got them in my jacket!” says a cuffed Eunjigod.  The officer who cuffed you walks over to Eunjigod and removes a piece of paper from his jacket, unfolds it and looks at it, then puts it in her back pocket a few seconds later.

“Thanks for those.  Okay, everybody into the van, let’s go!” says the officer as she gestures toward the large police van.  You follow the officer into the van and sit down.  The van has just enough seats to accomodate the entire group, plus the female officer who arrested you.  It’s a tight squeeze, and feels claustrophobic because the heavily tinted windows don’t allow much natural light to get inside.  Once everybody is inside the van, it starts moving slowly.

“This isn’t right, we have permission!” yells Eunjigod.  The officer takes out her truncheon and taps Eunjigod lightly on the head as a warning.  Eunjigod gets the hint and becomes quiet.

This is new territory for you.  You’ve never been arrested.  “Excuse me officer?” you ask.  The officer looks at you.  “What’s going to happen now?”

The officer says nothing, but instead removes her mirrored sunglasses and looks at you.  Suddenly she looks oddly familiar… but where from?  She puts her fingers up to her lips, gesturing for you to be silent.  Given that she’s still holding the truncheon in the other hand, you figure that’s a good idea.  All of a sudden, you notice something.  The police van has stopped, less than one minute after starting.  The officer puts her sunglasses back on and exits out the rear exit, then closes the door behind you.  With the vehicle not motionless and no police now in the rear section of the van, everybody stands up and starts looking out the windows.

“This isn’t a police station.” someone says.

“It’s not?” you reply.

“We’re around the back of a building.  I don’t know what building it is… but I don’t see any police cars.”

You look out the windows, it’s so dark that it takes a while to discern anything at all, but once your eyes adjust it becomes clear that you’re in a parking lot behind a building and there’s just a few normal cars here, definitely no police vehicles.  You start looking around for a clue as to where you might have been taken, but it obviously isn’t far from the front of the Chrome building as you were only moving for about a minute.  You can see the officer in the carpark, she’s talking to another female officer, dressed exactly the same, even with the same sunglasses and police motorcycle helmet.  No police motorbike in sight however.  There’s a back entrance in the distance with something written on it, but you can’t see it very well, so you start squinting at it in case it contains a clue.  It’s difficult to read through the strong tinted windows which severely darken everything, and then suddenly starts becoming even more difficult to read, kind of foggy actually.  Then you realise that the fog isn’t on the outside of the van but on the inside.  That’s the last thing you remember.

–

You wake up.  You’re in a large room, some kind of gymnasium, you’re sitting down on a chair.  The lights are off but you can still see your immediate surroundings well enough as your eyes become adjusted as there’s a very small amount of ambient light coming from somewhere behind you that you can’t see.  The chair is wooden and it hurts your back a little, also the part you’re sitting on has a hole in it which your ass sinks through, it’s uncomfortable.  Your arms are tied behind your back, you can still feel the handcuffs digging into the sides of your wrists, and your feet are also tied to the chair legs.  You look around, all the other members of the protest group are with you.  They’re also tied to chairs of their own.  You notice that they are all gagged, which then leads you to realise that you are also gagged.  You’re all sitting in an orderly semi-circle of chairs which would look almost quaint if you were there by choice.  You notice that the chairs aren’t just wooden, there’s some kind of wires hanging off them.  The wires have two little pads on the end, but they aren’t attached to anything, they are just hanging down.  There’s also some lights attached to the wires.  Most of the group is awake.  You all look at each other, unable to talk or move but you can tell by the eyes of everyone in the room that they are panic-striken.  Nobody else is in the room, it is eerily quiet.

A light goes on.  It’s blinding.  Someone else has entered the gym, you can hear footsteps behind you.  It sounds like more than one person.  Someone walks right up to you, behind your back.  You can feel their breath on you.  Then you can feel someone touching your face, someone has attached one of the pad things to your neck, just under your jawline and off to one side.  You turn around and it’s…

AOA’s Choa… in a onesie?  She smiles at you and presses on the electrode to make sure that it’s firmly fixed.  She then moves around to your front, sits on the gym floor, unzips your pants, grabs another wire with a pad attached, pulls down your underwear and places it on the shaft of your penis with workmanlike nonchalance.  You feel incredibly awkward – women aren’t supposed to act like this!  She then moves onto the next person in the semi-circle and performs the same procedure, attaching the pads to their jaw and their genitals.  Once all sixteen members including yourself are accounted for (since everyone is sitting in an orderly fashion you’re finally able to count them properly) Choa sits on the floor in front of you.

“Okay, it’s on, let’s test it!” shouts a female voice behind you.  You’re not able to turn around far enough to see who it is.

Choa starts making cute aegyo-faces at you, in her onesie.  You look down at her – she’s so adorable!  After a few seconds a green light attached to the wire plugged into your jaw electrode comes on.  Choa looks at the light, then slides over to the front of the next person and continues to do the same aegyo one by one, for each other person in the room.  Everybody’s lights go on.

“We’re all working!” says Choa, to the person behind you at the back of the gym.

“Great!  Now let’s try the other one!”, she replies.

Choa strips off her onesie to reveal some tight jeans and a crop-top, and starts posing for a few seconds in front of you, while maintaining eye contact.

Try as you might to resist, you feel an involuntary stirring in your loins.  After a few seconds, a red light attached to the wire leading to your genitals illuminates.  Choa observes the red light and moves onto the next person, repeating the procedure.  Everybody’s red lights go on… except Eunjigod.  Choa looks Eunjigod up and down, and Eunjigod looks more panicked than ever.

“We’ve got a faulty machine” says Choa.

“Swap it out for another one.  It might not be the machine!”, comes the reply.

Choa removes the electronic contraption from Eunjigod’s penis and walks over to you with it.  “Hey, you worked well before, you can test this one too.” she says to you, while attaching the electrode.  Choa then starts waving her ass at you, and you feel your erection stirring again.  Choa then looks at the red light, which illuminates quickly.   She talks again to the back of the room: “You’re right, the machine is fine!  What do we do?”

“Well there’s no point having him here, is there?” comes the disembodied voice.

“I guess he’s sealed his fate right out of the gate, hasn’t he.”  Choa scratches her head.

“Bring him over here, we’ll take care of it.  In the meantime, let’s get things set up properly and we’ll tidy the gym up a bit.”

Choa takes the extra machine that she took from Eunjigod away from you.  She then unties Eunjigod’s feet, stands him up, and walks him to the back of the room.  Eunjigod tries to struggle, but having been confined for so long his legs collapse with weakness.  Choa pulls him back up and continues walking him, muttering in his ear something that you’re too far away to hear, until they’re both out of your vision range.  You wonder what is happening to Eunjigod – is it good or bad?  Will your fate be better or worse than his?

More footsteps approach from behind, several people.  You look around, it’s all the other members of AOA!  You watch them as they go about their business, ignoring you and the other people tied to the chairs.  They’re moving stacks of chairs around, they start laying out chairs behind you in rows, one girl stack some tarps in a corner, another is laying down a bunch of rubber mats in front of you.  Once they’re done, Seolhyun and Mina walk right in front of you and the others and lay down a large clump of green and purple plastic.  Seolhyun feels around for a valve and starts blowing into the plastic, inflating it.  It’s a slow process, but the plastic clump gradually takes the shape of a large inflatable pool.

“Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve had to blow something this much to get what I want!”, says Seolhyun.

“Usually when you blow things, they deflate!”, smirks Mina.

They both laugh and test the pool for firmness, then the members of AOA gradually finish tidying and all leave the room.  The last girl to leave turns out the lights.  You and the other protestors are still captive, tied to your chairs, sitting in the dark.

–

About what feels like an hour later, you’re still sitting in the dark, when you hear the gym door open again behind you.  You hear footsteps moving toward you, but the lights remain off.  You then hear the sound of plastic bowls being placed under everyone’s feet – bedpans.  You guess the cleaners realise that even tied-up prisoners need to go to the toilet sometime.  “You’ve got five minutes, then I’ll come back to collect!” says a female voice before scuttling back towards the gym door and closing it behind her.  Everybody does their best to relieve themselves for the next five minutes, in the dark.  The smell is revolting.

Five minutes later the lady returns and collects the bedpans.  You then feel something at your back, she is putting something in your hands.  Two things – something sharp and metallic, and also a piece of paper.  You assume the paper is a note, but you have no way to read what’s on it because you can’t bring your hands up to your face, plus it’s too dark to read anyway.  The sharp object is long and pointy, perhaps it’s a lockpick?  The lady didn’t say anything.  You wonder if sound in the room is being recorded.

You play around with the lockpick and try to get it inside the lock of the handcuffs.  It takes you about ten minutes to work out an optimal position where you can manipulate the pointy metal thing inside the lock, but once you get it properly inside, you manage to pick the lock in about 30 seconds.  Cheap handcuffs maybe?  You bring your hands around to your sides in relief, and look at the handcuffs… they’re not high quality, the sort of cuffs one might use for theatre rather than police work.  You quickly untie your legs and are just about to remove your gag, when you hear the door open.  You place your hands behind your back again and do your best to keep them locked together so hopefully it doesn’t show that your handcuffs are unlocked.  The lights go on.

Several people enter the room from behind you, it sounds like 50, maybe 100 people, maybe more.  They are all excited and having conversations, although it’s hard to discern exactly what they’re saying, you manage to pick up some key details:

• There’s an event happening soon that everyone really wants to see
• AOA are involved somehow
• Quite a large amount of money is exchanging hands in the form of bets
• You and the other captives are part of the event too, but exactly how isn’t clear

A bell rings and the lights dim.  A spotlight shines at the front of the gym, and Choa appears.

Choa smiles, bows, and then begins a chirpy narration.

“Hello everybody and welcome to the third season of FNC/MBK Jelly Wrestling!  Everybody please be sitting comfortably!  The show will start shortly!”

Some shuffling can be heard as everyone standing quickly finds a seat.  Choa continues:

“We at AOA are very happy to be rematching with T-ara for our third season!  Members of AOA will face off against T-ara members in one-on-one battles, and then later two-on-two and free-for-all jelly battles for your entertainment!  Just a few words before we begin for those of you who are new to FNC/MBK Jelly Wrestling.  Please no smoking in the FNC/MBK gymnasium as some jelly compounds are flammable.  Be sure to turn off your mobile phones and all electronic devices once the event starts.  No photographs under any circumstance, security will confiscate cameras, however you can purchase official signed photographs after the event.  Please refrain from standing so everyone can see the match-up, vision will also be projected against the wall for those at the back.  Also a kind word to our sponsors, team AOA are sponsored by A Pieu cosmetics and team T-ara are sponsored by Nene Chicken.  Please enjoy these sponsored messages and support them!  Fighting!  Jimin, please pour the jelly!”

Advertisements for A Pieu cosmetics and Nene Chicken are projected onto the rear wall as AOA’s Jimin appears, wheeling a large drum full of jelly.  She positions the jelly drum to the side of the inflatable pool and turns a valve at the bottom, releasing red and purple jelly streams into the pool.  Choa continues:

“Just a note that FNC/MBK care for the sustainability of your environment and our jelly is 100% recyclable bio-organic material.  Also please note the unfortunate souls at the front of the stage.  These hardened criminals were picked up rioting and conspiring to commit various obscene and unspeakable crimes in front of our offices because they don’t approve of our sexy images, and as a responsible corporation FNC/MBK will hand them over to the authorities for severe punishment after the event.  However as FNC/MBK is a benevolent corporation who loves those who love us completely, we will forgive them and give them a free pardon if they are willing to fap until orgasm during the jelly battle.  Jimin, please allow each member one free hand so they may commence fapping at their leisure.”

Jim walks up to one of the tied-up protestors and asks them something that you can’t hear.  She then goes around to the back of the person’s chair, undoes their handcuffs, and then re-handcuffs one of their hands to the chair leg, leaving the other hand free.  She moves across doing this, gradually moving closer and closer to you.  You realise that once she sees you she’s going to realise straight away that your handcuffs are already unlocked and that your legs are untied, and she’ll just tie you back up, there’ll be no escape after that, and you’re not fapping to AOA – you must keep your online credibility intact!  You wanted to slip out quietly before but it’s too late for that, so you plan to make a sudden break for it when she reaches you.

Choa continues:  “Note that while FNC/MBK is not a registered gambling association, you are able to place bets electronically online for this event with our business partners.  We will give you a few minutes now to do this before we begin if you wish and have not yet done so, as electronic devices will need to be off once the battles commence.  To view odds and place your bets, just go to your smartphone and…”

Choa’s narration is interrupted by Jimin staring at you in the face.

“Left or right hand?” asks Jimin, in a whisper.

You are confused.  “Sorry?”

“Do you fap with your left or right hand?  I need to know which one to unlock.”

“Oh, either is good.  I’m ambifapstrous.”

You raise both your hands up to her face.  Jimin recoils in shock as it’s immediately obvious that your hands are untied.  “What the fuck?” she screams.  You push her head back, making her fall over, quickly pull up your pants and make a run for the rear exit.  Everyone is so surprised that nobody follows or stops you as you sprint out the rear door, and down a long corridor.

You look behind you.  Nobody is after you yet but surely it’s only a matter of time before Jimin is on your tail.  However you don’t even know where you are, you need to find an exit.  You try a random door and walk in.  It’s a room full of telephone operators.  They seem mainly distracted, you can hear them chatter about a “T-ara anti situation” and a “code red” but it doesn’t sound like it’s anything to do with you.  You take the gag out of your mouth as discreetly as possible and walk through the room calmly as if you’re meant to be there, and quietly go out through a door on the other side.  You find yourself in another, identical corridor.  You run through and try another random room.  There’s nothing in this room except bare bricks walls, a chair… and Areum.

You thought Areum’s time with MBK was over long ago.  “What are you doing here?” you ask.

“Get back, you freak!  What are YOU doing here?” says Areum, raising her hand, motioning you to stay back.

“I just want to get out of here.  How do I get out of here?”, you ask.

“Oh.  Are you having bad thoughts too?”, Areum asks.

You are confused.  “What?”

“This is the ‘bad thoughts’ room.  We get sent here if we think bad things.  The walls make the thoughts go away.  Thoughts are ephemeral and untrustworthy, yet the brick is clean and steadfast.  We go here to become like the brick, solid and unshakeable.”

You are even more confused.  “WHAT?”

“A brick can deflect heat, or it can keep you warm.  A brick can stop handgun bullets, or it can become more deadly than a bullet.  In a world of shifting shades and colours, the function of the brick is absolute.”

She’s making no sense to you at all.  You run out of the room the way you came in, and back down the corridor.  You can hear the panting of someone chasing you, maybe it’s Jimin, catching up.  You quickly run into the first door that you come across, and close it behind you – no time to be strategic about it.  Your heart sinks as you realise you’re in a dressing room.  Boram is here, looking somewhat bemused that you’ve just entered… but not shocked.  In fact, if anything she looks like she was expecting you.

“Oh hello”, she says, smiling at you.  “Hello!” she says again in a squeaky high voice, as she moves the plush toy in her hand, suggesting that it too has a voice.  “Aren’t you going to say hello back?” Boram asks you in a normal voice.

“Hello.  Sorry!  Ummm…” you don’t know what to say.  This is not where you wanted to be.

“Also say hello to my little friend.  You don’t want to insult him.  He gets angry, especially when someone comes into our dressing room unannounced while we’re preparing for jelly wrestling!”  Boram waves the plush at you.

“Oh um… hi.  Sorry to barge in!”.  Fuck, this is awkward.  Why is she being so weird?  “I’ll just leave…”

There’s a knock at the door you just entered.  “Hey, open up!”  It’s Jimin.  You can’t leave now, this door is the only exit.

“I think you should hide behind the couch”, says Boram in a high voice, as if from the plush toy.

“Okay… thank you, thank you…” you say as you bow and scuttle behind the couch and lay down.

“Come in!” says Boram to Jimin behind the door.

You can hear the door open, but you can’t see anything except Boram and Jimin’s feet under the gap between the lounge and the floor.  “Hey Boram, what’s up?”, says Jimin as they greet.

“Not much Jimin, what’s up with you?”

“Some ugly nerd boy escaped the jelly wrestling fap chair.”

“Gosh, that’s inconvenient.  Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, the show must go on, you know.  But we want to find him, obviously.  We can’t have word getting out.  Have you seen him?”

“I don’t know… what does he look like?”

“Kinda greasy and ugly.  Trust me, you’ll know him if you met him.”

“I don’t know Jimin, there’s more than one greasy ugly guy around here!”

The girls share a laugh.  “Well, let me know if you do.  And keep your phone close, okay?  Who knows what he’s capable of.  He’s one of those creepy social justice people, he’s probably a rapist in denial or something.”

“Don’t worry, Boram knows how to take care of herself.”

“Okay, thanks!”

Jimin shuts the door.  Boram waits for a while.  After 20 seconds or so pass, Boram says “okay, you can come out.  Don’t worry, nobody will come in here without knocking”.

You emerge from behind the couch and stand up.  “Thank you so much.  You probably saved my life!”

Boram smiles.  “Hey, think nothing of it.  Say, you look thirsty.  Why don’t you get yourself a drink?  There’s some spring water in the fridge.”  She motions to the fridge.

“Thank you!”  You walk over and open the fridge.

“Don’t forget the ice!  It’s in the freezer!”, says Boram, this time in her high-pitched plush voice.

As you pour yourself a glass of water, Boram turns in the TV in the dressing room.  It’s a closed circuit TV, it’s broadcasting the jelly wrestling happening a few rooms away.  You look briefly at the screen.  AOA’s Choa and T-ara’s Jiyeon are both wearing white t-shirts and fighting it out in a one-on-one battle.  Boram flicks a button on her remote, it changes her TV to a different CCTV feed, this one showing the corridor outside her room.  You can see Jimin, going from door to door, asking people if they have seen you.  After a few seconds Boram flicks it back to the jelly wrestling.

“Don’t worry, she won’t find you”, Boram says casually.

You open the freezer to put some ice in your drink.  There is an ice factory, and next to it is a large brown lump which takes a little while for you to recognise properly.  After a few second you figure out that it’s a human head.

Boram continues.  “You know who else she won’t find?  PinkPandaLuv.  She’s been looking for him for the last 20 minutes as well, but Boram’s much smarter than Jimin.  Boram knows all the tricks.  When we have our jelly fight later tonight, Jimin’s sure going to be rattled!  That’ll be funny as fuck, I bet she slips over a hundred times.”

You turn around, Boram is pointing a silenced handgun at you, there is definitely no escape – if you try and run she will cut you down before you reach the door.  You put your hands up.  As you put your hands up, you notice something that you weren’t conscious of until now – the note that you were slipped earlier today is still scrunched up and sitting between your fingers, unread.  You open it up.

“You can put your hands back down.  I know you’re unarmed, I’ve seen enough of you on the CCTV to know that.  Sit down and watch jelly wrestling with me”, Boram waves the gun, motioning for you to sit on the other side of the couch.  You sit down slowly and carefully.  On the CCTV Choa is straddling Jiyeon and mashing her face with handfuls of jelly.  Boram points to the screen.  “People don’t appreciate the aesthetics of a good jelly wrestling match.  Sure, it’s all scripted – why wouldn’t it be?  But if we have Choa on the bottom and Jiyeon on top then most of the audience don’t get to see Choa’s ass, and if Jiyeon is on top then her tits get less jelly on them and that isn’t good either.  Everything at MBK is planned, it’s planned out to the fucking last shot, the last angle, the last ring on a pinky finger, the last colour on a sock or a leg bracelet.  We get right inside your head, so we can deliver you the most finely honed, perfectly executed fap material, and we take great pleasure and pride in doing this, and spreading happiness to millions of people around the world.  Nothing is ever by accident, ever.  And then we’ve got people like PinkPandaLuv, and like yourself, and your friends there in the front row, who just don’t appreciate our hard work, or AOA’s hard work, and think this is just all random sluttiness.  You know, I personally find that insulting, that people would crusade against what we’re trying to do.”

“But doesn’t objectification bother you?”, you ask.

Boram waves the gun at you.  “See this gun?  It fires bullets.  A bullet is an object.  If I fire a bullet at you, like this…” – Boram pulls the trigger and shoots you in the kneecap – “…then it hurts, right?  Are you not in immense pain right now?”  You wince and nod as the pain sends you to the floor, clutching your knee which is trickling large amounts of blood onto the carpet.

“That’s because the bullet, which is an object, hits you, which is another object.  If you weren’t an object, you would have nothing to fear from the bullet, because it would just pass straight through your non-object self.  Therefore as you are obviously affected by the bullet, I have proven that you are an object.  Objectification is not only the truth of humanity, but the truth of k-pop.  MBK is a good place, which uses good objects.  We’re working hard, using our objectification prowess to bring humanity that one step closer to heaven.  We all would want to go to heaven or something like it one day, wouldn’t we?”

You look up at Boram.  You’re in unbelievable pain and have long since stopped focusing on her argument.  She’s kind of cute in a weird way, actually.  You’re suddenly conscious of a flashing green light… the electrode under your jaw is still attached, in the panic you forgot to remove it.

Boram looks at the light and smiles, pointing the gun at your face this time.  “I think we are starting to understand each other.  Do you think our friendship can last?”

You haven’t got the nerve to ask her if this is a trick question.

Hey everyone, it’s your good friend Kpopalypse, back again to share lovely positive vibes with all of you fantastic readers!  This post is especially dedicated to appreciating the lovely charms of Jessica!

Here’s a picture of Jessica.  Jessica used to be in Girls’ Generation (SNSD), but now is not.  That’s a pity for k-pop fans, but oh well.  Isn’t she so pretty though?

Wow, right?  Here’s another picture, from Shinee’s “Sherlock” video where she has a great cameo and is amazingly styled.  It’s worth watching that video just for her appearance.

Gorgeous!  I think you should all go to that video right now and leave positive comments about Jessica.  Do it.

This photo is quite recent.  Jessica just gets prettier every day!  Not getting prettier as in “getting prettier”, but getting prettier as in getting prettier, you know?

Notice the sunglasses that Jessica is holding.  These are from her fashion label Blanc & Eclare, that Jessica started after leaving Girls’ Generation.  She’s obviously very smart and has a good business mind as her fashion brand is very successful.

You would probably look great wearing these sunglasses.  Maybe you wouldn’t look quite as pretty as Jessica in them, but they may still enhance your appearance significantly.  If you were to buy a pair of these sunglasses, it could be a good situation for you.  Why not check out the Blanc & Eclare website?

Here’s a video from her Blanc & Eclare fan signing.  Look at all those people giving her flowers!  Everybody really loves Jessica!

Look at this picture.  This is a picture of Jessica personally signing hundreds of polaroids that she gave out individually to fans at her birthday party!  Wow, Jessica isn’t just really pretty and intelligent and successful, she’s also a really nice person!

It’s possible that Jessica could in fact be the most perfect ex-k-pop star ever!  Let’s hear it for Jessica!

Feel free to share you adulation for Jessica in the comments below!  Only positive comments please, no negative nasty stuff, we don’t want any of that.  Thank you.

NOTICE TO SM ENTERTAINMENT

I am willing to negotiate the removal of this post for a nominal fee.  I’ve heard that your company is quite willing to come to the table on these matters.  Please feel free to contact Kpopalypse to discuss removal rates.

Yes that’s right it’s Kpopalypse survey time once again!

Click the picture below to take the survey… and enjoy!

A while back I did a post about the differences between k-pop and western pop.  For those of you too lazy to read it, the conclusion is that there really aren’t any.  Many of you reading this post found that post to be educational but quite a few of you also wondered why the fuck anyone would even listen to k-pop if it’s identical to western pop.  To answer this question, let’s welcome back the return of the…

Never one to leave his readers high and dry, Kpopalypse is now here to explain the benefits of k-pop for international music fans!  Read on for the trufax!

We’ve all been there before – you tell your friends that you like k-pop, and they instantly recoil in disgust.  “Why do you like that shit, you fucking gaybo”, “why don’t you listen to normal music”, “are you obsessed with Korea or something?” etc.  How to shut up these fuckwits?  Well, it might help to consider the following three benefits of k-pop from an international fans’ perspective to use in your pro k-pop arguments:

Benefit #1 – you (probably) can’t understand most of the lyrics in k-pop

It might seem like an obvious point, but there’s an implication here that most people don’t think about.  If you ask the average non k-pop fan why they don’t listen to music from Korea, they’ll inevitably bring up the issue of “I can’t get into it because I can’t understand the words”.  Fools.  Not understanding the words is a massive benefit for the enjoyment of any popular music.  Trust me, you’d be better off not knowing about the insipid garbage that any popular music singers from any country sing about.  Imagine how much more you would enjoy Tyga’s “Rack City” if you couldn’t understand the words… well okay, maybe that’s a bad example, nobody intelligent would enjoy that song even if it had the best lyrics in the world.  Perhaps let’s look at this trash instead:

Above are the lyrics for the climactic part of Led Zeppelin’s epic (as in epically overplayed) eight-minute classic rock radio dirge “Stairway To Heaven” that all classic rock fans love (and I’ll admit that I liked it too, the first 572 times I heard it when I was 12 years old – after that it got a bit boring).  This is a screencap of an official Led Zeppelin poster which shows that these fucking terrible lyrics are considered so profound by one-eyed Led Zeppelin fans that they are deemed worthy enough by the company to make it onto the band’s official promotional material (and who says only k-pop fans are irrational).  Of course anyone objective will look at those words and instantly think “what the fuck is this gibberish, what is this song even about?”.  They’re not alone, even the lyricist himself freely admitted “depending on what day it is, I still interpret the song a different way” – now that’s fine for a listener, but coming from the guy who wrote it, it probably really means: “I had no fucking idea what I was writing about at the time as I was probably high as shit so I just wrote the first thing that came into my head, please don’t make me tell you what it means because then I’ll be open to criticism for foisting my stream-of-consciousness drug-induced drool onto the public.”  And “Stairway” is supposedly considered to be a high water mark of classic rock, a work of lyrical genius, one of the best pieces of lyricism that western music has to offer… so you can only just imagine how shitty most of the other fucking crap is.

Most popular music falls into a few basic lyrical categories:

• I love you, please fuck me
• I am sexually frustrated, please fuck me
• Please fuck me because I have all this money and fame
• I care about the world’s problems because I’m such a nice person, please fuck me
• I am so hardcore and edgy, please fuck me
• I did love you but now I don’t, somebody please fuck me but not YOU because you’re an asshole

You’re generally not missing much.  Trust me, your enjoyment of all popular music everywhere will improve drastically when you can’t understand the words.

“But I like signing along to the chorus!” people will say.  Well, that’s why the choruses for k-pop are usually in English.  English is just a better language for pop choruses than Korean for the same reason that Italian is a better language for opera than German – the inflections of the language fit better with that style of music.  With k-pop, you get to have English choruses you can sing along to and you get shielded from the worst of the lyrical crimes in the rest of the song because it’s all in Korean.  You get to have your cake and eat it too.  Pop music with most of the lyrics unintelligble has to be just about the most perfect thing going in the universe.  Just don’t learn how to understand Korean fluently and you’ll be fine.

Right now you might be thinking this:

…and this brings us to our second point:

Benefit #2 – k-pop is accessible, because it isn’t really k-pop

When I talk about k-pop’s accessibility, I’m not just talking about how Japan mostly won’t put up songs on YouTube and charges outrageously for content while Korea makes the effort to flood every corner of everywhere with their pop music even if it means they make no money out of it (yes Japan’s cock-licking attitude is definitely helping make Japan a pop-cultural backwater but it’s not the main issue).  I’m talking about sounding accessible, and how Korea’s pop industry makes an effort to create something that someone from another country might actually like musically.

When k-pop in its current form started, k-pop producers trekked overseas to learn production tricks from America and Europe.  The early results sucked dick, but eventually the Korean producers got the hang of how to write a western-style hit and k-pop as a copyist form was cemented.   Then a funny thing gradually happened – the bigger k-pop labels started using more overseas producers, who would occasionally farm out their most avant-garde and forward-thinking pop creations to k-pop agencies instead of the western pop groups that they would normally use.  K-pop never gained any real traction outside of Asia as a pop commodity beyond cult value as far as music consumers are concerned, but where it did gain a foothold is as a place for freelance pop songwriters from around the world to shop product and try mixing new ideas and sounds.  This hasn’t happened to the same degree in any other country in the world, where the ultra-commercial pop markets are much more insular (Japan being a classic example, but there are many others).  You also won’t find much that sounds like f(x)’s “Red Light” or Red Velvet’s “Ice Cream Cake” outside Korea, but that’s got nothing to do with Korea as a country, just where songwriters are farming a lot of songs to.  If you personally find the better k-pop songs to be preferable to pop from elsewhere on a purely musical level, this is probably the reason why – Korean pop interests international audiences musically precisely because once you take away the words it isn’t very Korean at all.

So how did international songwriters get drawn to k-pop like moths to a flame?

Benefit #3 – the k-pop industry is highly active, which means fun times

Here’s a chart I made a while back that shows the number of k-pop idol group debuts per year for the last few years according to kpoplists.com (excluding 2014 because they don’t have data for 2014 debuts at the time of writing):

The k-pop industry has been on the upsurge in terms of activity for the last few years, in the same way that the doo-wop scene surged in the 1950s, the Merseybeat scene in the early 60s, progressive rock, disco and punk in the 70s, rap and metal in the 80s, grunge and techno in the 90s etc.  The quality of k-pop songs on average isn’t really any better than songs from the US or Europe, but since there are simply more songs by more groups coming out more of the time, mathematically there’s just going to be more songs that are great (as well as more songs that are shit – but that’s okay, nobody’s forcing you to listen to the shit ones).  More songs means more better songs, and such a hive of activity doesn’t go unnoticed by songwriters shopping their potential hits.

Whenever a music scene explodes in activity, only a tiny fraction make it to the very top.  (Who can name five Merseybeat groups off the top of their head who had great success besides The Beatles?)  There aren’t many places at the top because the music market isn’t big enough to sustain a large number of super-hit artists.  With so many participants, competition between groups becomes very intense, and this increase in competitiveness has quite a few flow-on effects:

• Companies start looking for conceptual points to set their groups apart from the others.  See: Red Velvet’s dual “Red” and “Velvet” concept, f(x) positioned as a left-field pop group, T-ara’s disco/EDM queen sound, B.A.P’s focus on rock riffs in their better songs, Block B and BTS bridging the gap between k-pop and hip-hop to varying degrees, YG’s ultra-modern yoloswag productions, AOA’s band concept, 2AM, Zan Zan and SoReal branding as “ballad groups”, Year 7 Class 1 borrowing from j-pop, Orange Caramel reinventing Stock Aitken and Waterman, Crayon Pop’s cartoony nerd culture concepts etc etc.  Anything that can set a group apart conceptually in a crowded genre gives them a reason for someone to like them specifically.  The result – a wide variety of different groups all aimed conceptually slightly differently, for your pleasure.  A far cry from most other countries who have so far only figured out one way to present an idol girl group and one way to present an idol boy group.
• More fap material.  Sex sells, and more sex sells for more.  Lots and lots of sex might generate a negative reaction but it will still sell lots and lots (ask your favourite JAV starlet).  The power of biology is stronger than the power of fake-ass moralising by fuckheads on a superiority trip and this is a truism that the music industry has observed ever since Bessie Smith sung about wanting some sugar in her bowl.  The relatively high quantity of k-pop debuts therefore leads to a high quantity of fap (for both genders) as labels compete fiercely to be remembered for delivering the maximum hotness directly to your genitals.
• High production out the ass.  In the quest to be remembered and to uniquely brand their groups with something that will foster your emotional attachment to a bunch of people that you don’t even know and shouldn’t rationally give the slightest of shits about, k-pop agencies are not adverse to spending a dickload of money.  The average k-pop music video costs over twice the cost of the average music video in any other country and even the shittier ones look fucking amazing.  Physical packaging from about 2011 onward has generally been as ostentatious as possible for all agencies, even the total nugus.  K-pop companies won’t even let their groups put on a full concert unless they can do it with enough video screens, lights and OH&S-flaunting fireworks to kill a small country worth of insects.  The high-budget k-pop experience makes western efforts look cheap in comparison… because they are cheap in comparison.  No wonder so many k-pop fans are reluctant to go back to western pop – it’s like being kicked out of first class in the plane and being sent back to the economy section.
• That special connection.  How can a k-pop agency lock down their audience hard and fast to make sure fans don’t desert their idol group in favour of the competition?  By making you fall in love with their performers, that’s how.  The US and UK have mastered this ever since the days of Elvis and The Beatles, but k-pop takes it to the next level with all sorts of bullshit designed to make you suspend the rational part of your brain and start dreaming up marriage plans with your fave, stringing you along with the power of lovelorn angst to buy more and more shit you don’t need.  If you’re a reasonably sensible person of course you’ll see through this, which suddenly makes it all very entertaining as you laugh while your idols endorse random crap and jump through a thousand different hoops every day, providing you with extra media content to enjoy.
• Mega-insane fan communities full of shambling, drooling nutbags.  Because there is so much activity all the time, there is a massive microcosm of forums, news sites and blogs for you to explore.  Most of it is comparable to the mad scratchings that insane asylum detainees draw on the walls of their cells, which only makes it more fun!  If you get really into it, you may even start a snarky rude blogsite like this one just to take the piss out of it all!

Well, there you have it – three things that you probably knew already, but now Kpopalypse has pointed them out for you in a snarky blog post which you can use to annoy others!  My work defending k-pop from the legions of haters is complete… for now!

This post contains the results of the Kpopalypse 2015 survey of important trufax!

Read on for all the exciting numbers, charts, opinions and statistics that you crave!

Thanks to everybody who did the Kpopalypse 2015 survey of important trufax!  The survey generated nearly 900 responses, which is huge and amazing, plus a great sample size from which to find out stuff about things.  All the questions and answers to the survey are as follows:

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

Most people were good.  Some of you weren’t so good but hopefully the survey was a relative high point in your not-so-good existence.  A lot of you were studying, writing essays or about to take exams and complained that my survey was getting in the way of that.  Believe it or not, I’m not a student therefore I’m fairly oblivious to your study schedule (and I might teach music but I don’t give my students lame exams and tests because I don’t suck acres of throbbing dick like your teachers at school and university).  As usual quite a few people wondered if I really cared – of course I care!  I’m great, by the way, for those who asked.

How do you feel about doing another Kpopalypse survey?

Most people were more or less okay about doing the survey, which figures because the people who weren’t okay with it probably wouldn’t have filled it out.  This question also keeps track of how many haters I have, which is a useful statistic because I like to be able to quantify the amount of annoyance that I’m causing others at any given moment.

This is a picture of Eunjung.

This was the first Kpopalypse survey built with Google Forms which means I could include images for the first time.  People often complained in previous surveys how the format was ugly and there was no fap material, so I finally listened to your whining and did something about it.  Yes, I also realise that I could have used “publish analytics” on Google Forms to auto-generate a summary for you to look at, but that would be boring, unfunny and not very characteristic of Kpopalypse’s high determination levels.

The above picture of Eunjung was included as an intro to the next Google Forms-related question.

Because I am using Google Forms, I can now put images in my surveys.  How do you feel about this development?

Prettier surveys seems to be what most people want.  Rest assured that I am quite happy with Google Forms and will continue to use it as a survey platform, however I cannot guarantee the absence of GIFs of Suhyun from AKMU in future surveys.

Kpopalypse fanfictions tend to follow a strict formula: someone gets involved in the world of k-pop somehow, then inevitably bad shit happens to them.  Given this information, what do you think is the underlying message of all Kpopalypse fanfiction?

Some people have noticed that my fanfictions are all quite similar and predictable – and deliberately so!  Opinions on why this is the case were fairly evenly divided but skewed slightly in the “I like to watch dopey k-pop fans fall down stairs” direction.

This is a video of Red Velvet.

Thoughts on the above video?

This question was asked because I get asked my “thoughts?” on k-pop videos constantly so I thought it would be fun to turn the tables for a change.  Also I was interested to find out how helpful my Red Velvet Identification Test post might have been.  As it turns out, not very.  Oh well.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to fap to k-pop videos?

This may seem like a bunch of no-fappers (or liars), but if we take 1 as “definitely will not fap” and any other number as “may fap if certain unspecified conditions are met”, we can see that about 60% of readers have fapped to k-pop videos or are likely to fap to k-pop videos in the future.

Input your guess for the date of the next comeback by CSJH The Grace.  Closest guess wins a mystery prize when the song comes out.  If you don’t believe that their comeback will ever come out, you can skip this question.

Once I excluded all the people who sensibly ignored this question completely, plus all the trollkins who put dates in the distant past before the musical crimes of CSJH commenced, or some far-flung future time when CSJH will be rightfully forgotten, I had about three valid responses left.  Good luck in the draw, folks!  I know I didn’t ask for any names and addresses, but don’t worry – Australia’s new metadata retention laws will help me find out where you live so I can send you your prize.

Where do you enjoy reading Kpopalypse posts the most?

Note that the question is about where you enjoy reading them the most, not which site you click on the most.  Sorry about the small yucky text in the answers here but since so many of you actually have been willingly submitting your eyes to the unreadable dross that is my own web design, I figure a bit of small text here in this post is something that you can handle.

The following video is a fancam of Soyoon from Pocket Girls.

Watch the above fancam specifically from 1:15.  Which model do you prefer?

Competition was close but eventually the blue SUV pulled ahead, proving nothing in particular.  Gosh, no idea why this question is even here, I don’t even care about cars.

Select your favourite episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert (“Extreme Edition” omitted for fairness purposes):

The combination of Unpretty Rapstar’s Kisum, Kpopalypse favourite list nugus 912 Crew and idol fitness trainers Rok Kiss was a three-way nugu attack that proved unbeatable, easily snatching up nearly 40% of the vote on their own.  Of course, this question was really just a way to force people to choose between nugus, and quite a few of you bitched in your answer to the next question about being made to select any option at all, to which I say – in Kpopalypse surveys, Kpopalypse makes the rules, not you.

COMPLAINT CORNER!  Use this text box to whine about something relating to Kpopalypse blog that displeases you.  Hopefully if you get it out of your system here you won’t need to fill up my ask.fm, Twitter feed or blog comments with similar whining and bore everybody to tears.  If on the other hand you’re not in a whiny mood you can skip this question, or use this space for something creative and/or actually interesting.

Lots of people had a lot to say.  Here are some comments you had, and my replies.

Are you secretly a banana trying to take over the world? – I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.

I think you feel like you have to restrain yourself from doing technical posts because people won’t understand them; I have little to no musical knowledge, but I’ve found every single technical post you’ve done so far (yes, stretching back into 2012 or so) interesting and edifying. – Thanks!  It’s really hard to find the right balance between “enough technical shit to make things educational” and “wow this is boring as fucking fuck, nobody cares” which is why technical posts don’t happen as often as I’d like them to happen.

Your fanfic was shit! – Sucked in for reading it and wasting your life.

Write more fanfiction, Kpopalypse. I’ll love you forever. – Deal.

You don’t post often enough – I know.  I’m very busy, all the time.  My posts also take a LONG time to do.

I read a few fanfics you wrote and it appears that you are always angry when you write them. Why are you so angry dude? – This is a really weird perception that I hear often and I don’t know why people think it or where it comes from.  Kpopalypse is never angry about anything, and is usually laughing his ass off as his own shitty jokes while writing this crap.  Maybe it’s something about my sense of humour that is lost in translation and comes out as anger to people who are culturally not on the same page?

Should you really be complaining about Suhyun’s looks if you don’t show your own face? – I have shown my face on all of my livestreams, and anyone who goes to my Facebook page can see it too.  Also suggesting that I “complain” about Suhyun’s looks is a pretty massive misreading of why I use her image…

I think you stopped using the same jokes you used all the time in 2014, which got pretty old.  Good for you! – Lies.  I still use the same jokes all the time.

You are completely incompetent at streaming however you’re quite welcome to ask for help. I’m in Adelaide and an expert in video encoding, streaming and computer networky stuff. You’ve finally been able to put out a survey using a site that’s not total crap, I think it’s about time you managed a decent stream too. – Fuck yeah.  Get in touch.

You never do what others want so if someone complains here you’ll just do it more often you sneaky cao ni ma. – This person is smart.

You are a tremendous dick, I love you. – Thanks!

Needs more Krystal.

Please be more interesting. Thanks. – no u

Don’t flatter yourself, I never go on your blog. I just REALLY like taking surveys. – That’s okay!  Glad you were entertained.

Please don’t pictures of ugly dudes in the Nugu Alerts like you did with the Extreme Edition. Please just keep posting pics of hot girls in official uniforms, not sexy Halloween uniforms. Sexy Halloween uniforms are excellent, but they don’t produce the same fantasy fuel which proper uniforms do. Thanks in advance. – Observant readers will notice that the “Extreme Edition” of Nugu Alert had a male as the header (usually it’s a female) and he was in a prison uniform (as opposed to a law enforcement-ish uniform).  A subtle clue that it was an “opposite of nugu” April Fools’ joke before the reader opened the page!  Kpopalypse blog is full of wanky little clues and symbolic gestures like that about all kinds of things for those who care to pay attention.  Future Nugu Alert episodes will obviously return to normal procedure.  Probably.

Sometimes you answer too many ask.fm questions at once and my twitter feed just fills up with your responses – everybody stop asking me so much shit and give this person a break.  Thanks.

About the question when the next comeback of CSJH the Grace is, I answered with my birthday because I like presents. – Clever!

Do people actually complain that much? – Yes!

Thank you oppa, for teaching about carefully dating. Now I’m in a happy relationship with the one I had had my eyes on for a while. You were right, I waited, focused on meeting him in a friendly and relaxed manner and in the end he asked if we could be together. Always listen to Kpopalypse, kids! – Glad that it worked out!  Kpopalypse dating advice, at your service.

Cut the image macros mate.  Please.

I used to think Hwayoung was hot. I’m sorry. – I forgive you.  Hey, credit where it’s due – her nails look great!

We deserve more Eunjung. And Raina. And Seo Jisoo’s buttplugs. Does that count as a complain or…? – Not really, but I’ll take it!

Not much to complain about. You have some weird/irrelevant/junk posts when I’d much rather see your serious posts, but you’re just a blogger, I understand. –  I think “serious” vs “weird/irrelevant/junk” is a false dichotomy when it comes to my blogging.  My serious posts ARE in some ways weird irrelevant junk.  Likewise, my weird irrelevant junk posts DO have serious subtexts.

Minimize the slurs and we good. – Kpopalypse does not drink and never slurs his words.

You’re a bit try hard. Actually, most kpop blogs are now that I think about it. I’m sure if I had a kpop blog, it would be better. – I try hard because I have high determination levels.  Better to try hard than to not try at all.  Start your own blog, because you’re probably right and I could use a cool blog to read.

It really annoys me when you use fag/faggot, it is never funny and it makes you seem like a 13 year-old boy who’s insecure about his own sexuality. – My gay friends use the word faggot all the time, but I never used it much myself until Netizenbuzz said it was okay to use.  Since Netizenbuzz appears to be the authority among international k-pop fans about what is acceptable behaviour for idols and people in general at any given moment, I bow to their superior wisdom on the matter.  Take it up with that site if you’ve got a problem. 

How the fuck can you ask someone to complain at you intentionally? There’s no way anyone’s gonna get a good hateflow going when you want to be bitched at, there’s no fun in that. Fuck off m8y

Kim Kwang Soo, Suzy, Sulli, Dani and Jessica have all been recipients of a POSITIVE POST from Kpopalypse.  Who should be next?

Netizenbuzz took the lead in this poll, however the fact remains that I’ve already pondered on the many positive qualities of Netizenbuzz at length.  As it’s such heavily-explored territory I consider the results here for practical purposes to be a three-way tie between Youngji, Jisoo and Martina.  There wasn’t much consensus for those who selected “other”, but Boram, Raina, Sorn, Barack Obama, Bom and Rolf Harris all made an appearance!

This is a GIF of Suhyun from Akdong Musician (AKMU).

Do you regularly visit the “Suhyun button” on Kpopalypse blog?

For those who don’t know (which appears to be most of you), the “Suhyun button” (formerly the “Eunkyo button”) is a clickable icon on the sidebar of my site that takes you… somewhere.  The destination changes periodically at completely random times, on average once per week.

If the answer to the previous question was “yes”, please share your most positive and interesting Suhyun button experience.  Otherwise, leave this space blank, or use this space for something else if you like.  If you wanted, you could even make a witty observation about how you were right about that other question before about Kpopalypse and Google Forms.

Quite a few people lamented the changing of the guard from F-ve Dolls’ Eunkyo to AKMU’s Suhyun at around October 2014, but I did this because Eunkyo is no longer active in k-pop so it didn’t feel right to continue to include her.  The lovelorn can relive the glory days of the Eunkyo button at this link, and around October 2015 Suhyun will also move on and be replaced by another k-pop individual (and will at that point also receive her dedicated compilation post of Suhyun button destinations).   Most of the rest of you made comments about how Suhyun is actually quite attractive.

In a test with four multiple choice options, it is said that the third choice is statistically the most correct option.  Do you prefer to select the third choice in a four-choice question?

It’s not a Kpopalypse survey without some irritating obscure/trick questions.  Hopefully this question met required standards.

Do you resent multiple-choice questions that do not give you satisfactory choices?

Fortunately, nobody resented this type of question in the survey, because if they did, gosh that would be a shame.  It’s great to see that k-pop fans can finally all agree on something!

I have a couple Kpopalypse Interviews in half-finished states because the people involved have simply stopped answering all of my emails for no clearly discernable reason.  Should I publish the unfinished interviews for your amusement?

I like doing interviews, but it seems that many of my interviewees don’t like consistently answering my emails.  They tend to start off super-keen and then go silent on me after a few days.  With the non-enthusiastic reaction that I’m getting, anyone would think that free publicity on a bunch of internationally-viewed blogsites for a Korean musician is like some kind of horrible cancer.  It’s at the point where I’m pretty much ready to say “fuck this shit, let’s just put out the dribs and drabs that I’ve got so at least I didn’t completely waste my fucking time”, but on the other hand I wouldn’t want to put off the next Sarah Wolfgang (i.e someone with a non-rose-coloured view and something actually insightful to reveal) from talking to me.  But then would a person like Sarah who actually had something to say be put off by such a thing anyway?  I’m still undecided on this point – but it seems that you guys aren’t!  You’d like to see the unfinished interviews so I’ll give the people I’m currently interviewing (or trying to interview) a few more months to answer my fucking questions and then I’ll revisit this issue and see how I feel about it.

This is a picture of Sulli from f(x).

Will Sulli be present in f(x) for their 2015 comeback?

Opinion on Sulli certainly wasn’t unanimous, but the highest proportion of people still had faith that somewhere deep down Sulli actually gives a shit about being in f(x).

Since most k-pop fans who comment on articles on more popular sites than Kpopalypse seem to be self-appointed music industry experts who feel that they know better than k-pop CEOs and managers with decades of industry experience and insider knowledge about what any group should do or not do at any given moment, use the following space to make some bold predictions about k-pop in 2015.  Or don’t.

Many people decided to really pour their hearts out and answered this question with multiple predictions that I only skim-read.  Thanks for all your very lengthy and passionate replies!  Maybe I’ll publish them soon and then read them at some point.

What fanfiction would you like to see a sequel of the most?  Note: this question doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get one (apart from Project Luhan part 3, which is planned and will arrive in due course).

Most people really didn’t give much of a shit as long as I kept writing, and quite a chunk of people didn’t really like the idea of sequels, which seemed odd to me as I get begged to do them constantly!  You anti-sequel people should speak up more!  Out of those who cared enough to actually nominate a fanfiction to be sequelised, T-ara vs AOA: The Final Fap was the fanfiction that readers most wanted to see a sequel for.  Will a sequel to this fanfiction appear?  We shall see.  Fanfictions that scored below the “I’d rather not see a sequel” threshold of 10.9% of the votes are not likely to see a sequel – apart from Project Luhan, of course.

You’re still thinking about the boobs on that girl from Pocket Girls, aren’t you.  What’s the most important question that you have about Pocket Girls?

Kpopalypse never shies away from highlighting the important questions, and the question that concerned most readers was the “E” and “PS” factor of Soyoon’s boobs.  One reader pointed out elsewhere in the survey that the girl with the short red hair and larger boobs is called SeA, and for this information Kpopalypse thanks you sincerely.

What annoys you about Kpopalypse blog the most?

Most people were happy, this is nice.  Out of those who were upset about something, the biggest factor was too many words in the posts.  Gosh, I’m so sorry for making you all suffer, I’ll have to do something about that at some point.  I’ll make sure that I take that feedback on board to give you less words in future posts.  By the way, here are all the predictions that all the survey respondents had for the future of k-pop:

I hope you enjoyed reading through all of these predictions.

Kpopalypse does a big survey like this every six months.  Is this:

The survey frequency isn’t going to change but I just thought I’d get your opinion of it.  Most people seem to have the right attitude!

Will Jisoo return to Lovelyz?

Readers were hotly divided on the topic of Jisoo, with no clear consensus of opinion.  People couldn’t even agree on how much of a cum in their life she was.  Dark times for k-pop.

Which of these character traits is the most important as a life skill?

Calm acceptance and high determination levels were the big winners here, as Kpopalypse readers flexed their life skills knowledge!  There’s no point expecting things fondly apparently – too many disappointing high-profile k-pop comebacks lately has probably made the average k-pop fan bitter and cynical.

How do you like your coffee?

Most readers wanted their coffee on ice, perhaps in anticipation of needing to chill their anticipation of CL’s American debut.

This is a picture of Raina from After School/Orange Caramel.  It is here to say thank you for doing this survey.

I just also thought this was a nice picture of Raina, who doesn’t usually photograph well despite being my #1 k-pop bias.

Please rate your enjoyment of this survey below, on a scale between 1 and 10, with 10 meaning “meets required standards” (MRS) and 1 meaning “not 1 meaning 10, but 1 meaning 1, you know?”

Most people seemed to enjoy the process, which was nice.  Quite a few of you edgy cool kids from “I hate everyone equally”-land gave me a 1 which makes me wonder why you did the survey at all… hopefully you got a chance to get up from the computer and stretch your legs a little and perhaps get some sunshine later on that day.

Thank you for participating in this survey!  If there’s anything you’d like to say to Kpopalypse, you can do so in this text box.  You can skip it if you wish.

The final question – lots of you had stuff to say.  Some selected comments and replies to finish this post off:

Can you do my homework for me? Please? I’ll help you take over the world. – Get in touch for homework rates.

Thank you for putting as much time and effort into this survey as SNSD’s producer put into “Catch Me If You Can” – Oh my, that’s a low blow.  My trolls are getting better (if not prettier).

Do more top 30’s so i can read you commenting on more songs. – Expect them fondly.

Hey Kpopalypse. I’m a Cao ni ma. I’ve been reading your blog since I’ve discovered it last year. Nope, I’m not really a kpop fan. But I do listen to some Kpop songs. And I likey likey your blog.- Quite a few of my readers aren’t really k-pop fans which is interesting.  Thanks for tolerating my blogging anyway!

Please don’t stop doing what you’re doing. I know you’re a sarcastic mother fucker but honestly I love reading kpopalypse, it brightens my day and puts a smile on my face where nothing much else makes me smile these days. aussies represent Cheers!

Stop writing fanfictions. They suck. – Here’s a fanfiction: Boram beat you over the head with a dildo.  The end.

Thank you, oppa. I have to admit, I was letting other fans’ assessments of what songs/groups are worthy affect me. Like I felt almost silly if I liked a group whose vocals weren’t as blessed as some others. Or this single didn’t sell a lot of copies, it must objectively suck. I got caught up in the silly games netizens play, in which they invest way too much of their lives as soldiers in their bias’s internet army.  Reading your blog was like getting a huge reality check: K-pop is just music, and music is a personal experience. Guess what, I’d rather listen to Orange Caramel’s fun and danceable songs than sit through some (as you would say) shithouse ballad album put out by some exalted “vocalist.” Honestly, I really tried! My hands kept on replaying Magic Girl, and I was powerless to stop them. I learned to disregard the opinions of others on what I personally find to be a good song. Their opinions are just as valid as mine, because music is 100% subjective personal taste. I am fine with personally liking fandom-hated songs, such as Mr. Mr. and Wa$$up’s Fire. I feel like I can enjoy music of any genre again without worrying about insignificant details. I just ask myself, is this listenable to MY ears? That’s it.  I know I wrote a lot, but I felt that I had to say thanks for the medicinal dose of reality and trufax that you bring to lost and confused k-pop fans such as myself. Keep it up!  Plus you introduced me to “Ring Ma Bell” by Two X and that song kicks ass. – This type of effect is part of why I do what I do.  Thanks for reading!

Come work for me, love you lots from JYP x0x0x0x0x0x – no way, I saw you staring at that girl’s ass, you creep me out.

this one wasn’t very good. you tried too hard and i just now realized ur material is getting old like eyk. switch it up honey. i know you can do it. – note to self: must recycle same jokes more.

Tony Abbott sits when he pees – trufax

You’ve been doing a good work with your posts, you annoying bastard! – Thanks… I think!

That question about coffee offended me because I gave up coffee and you just gave me cravings – lots of people complained about this.  Sorry folks.  For the record I hate coffee.

Talk about T-ara more – okay

Thanks to your writing, I successfully convinced one of my friends that K-Pop companies are not a good place to be and she officially quit auditioning and is now applying to grad schools. –  I am happy.  I probably saved someone’s life here.

Please wait for my postcard!! I’m one of those mystery readers from the third world country listed in your entry about your blog stats. You’re my favorite blogger xoxo –  will do!  Hopefully it arrives, I know some countries have funny unreliable postal systems but Australia usually is pretty good so we’ll see.  Anyone else wants to send postcards, DO IT – Kpopalypse 3D Radio PO BOX 937 Stepney SA 5069 Australia.

If your chubby chaser oriented, how do you stan Raina? – Someone who prefers chocolate ice cream still craves strawberry at times.

I love you, please keep bringing snarky condescending rudeness to kpop. It’s so fucking boring if people take it too seriously. – Will do!

I enjoy reading most of your posts because they are interesting and informative in regards to kpop and music industry.  Plus, they have a healthy dose of sarcasm.  I find too many kpop sites where fans have sticks up their asses about things and don’t know how to chill out.  What’s also admirable is that you don’t just make click bait posts, but you actually put in time and effort into researching and creativity for a post.  For instance, your guide to boobs in kpop could have just been stupid pictures, but you went all out and did this rating scale with examples and all.  Honestly as a woman, I could fucking care less about various breast sizes in kpop, but you did a good job with it and I actually found myself amused and interested in it. – Thanks!  I’m glad some folks actually know the difference between a click-bait post and a proper post.

“What annoys you about Kpopalypse blog the most?” IMAGE MACROS.  I just know your next post is going to be nothing but image macros you cunt.

You said that you wanted it, so here it is – Kpopalypse’s positive post about the well-known Korean netizen comment translation site, Netizenbuzz!  Yay!

Since Netizenbuzz has finally come to the party with the article that they owed T-ara in 2012, I’m going to reciprocate with a positive article of my own about all the reasons that you SHOULD be grateful for Netizenbuzz!

Observant readers will have noticed that while I’ve been quite vocal about some of the issues I have with the content on Netizenbuzz, I’ve never once suggested that people stop visiting the site (unlike Allkpop, who I’ve mostly boycotted since Aileegate).  Not only do I continue to recommend the site even when I’m critiquing it, I also consistently continue to link to Netizenbuzz articles.  Why is that?  Is it because I’m a colossal hypocrite?  No, it’s actually because I firmly believe that Netizenbuzz is largely a good site which deserves praise.  So since this is a POSITIVE post, let’s look at all the POSITIVE reasons why I like Netizenbuzz!

SOME REASONS WHY KPOPALYPASE THINKS THAT NETIZENBUZZ IS A GENERALLY GOOD SITE THAT YOU SHOULD VISIT OFTEN OCCASIONALLY

1. You can learn all about how awful Koreans are

Here’s some of the things that I learned about Korea and Korean netizens since I started reading Netizenbuzz (hereafter referred to as NB to save me typing):

• Korean netizens love bullying celebrities
• Koreans love bullying in school too
• Koreans also can’t get enough of bullying in the army
• The Korean entertainment industry is full of unfairness, plus a front for prostitution in many cases
• Koreans are very concerned about their image, so if bad things happen they will cover it up
• Koreans believe it’s important to not have individual thoughts but to think the same way as everybody else
• Koreans love trend-following so much that they will choose trendy hate even when they know the facts are against them
• If you’re Korean and have a history of doing drugs that’s bad but if you’re from overseas Korean netizens don’t care
• Discrimination on the basis of professional occupation is considered fantastic and strongly encouraged
• Racism and mob mentality are also fine, and nationalism is great
• Idol girls are especially hated by netizens – they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t
• Being discerning about fake evidence is fine if the target is male, but if it’s a female the truth doesn’t matter
• Doing charity work is enough for male idols to be forgiven for scandal but not female idols
• Going on a long reflection period is also fine if you’re male, but it won’t work if you’re female
• If you’re a female idol you’d better not act sexy, and don’t try to be cute or different either
• Also netizens don’t want female idols to be in the media too much either (not while they’re alive, anyway)
• In fact, you idols should probably just vanish according to netizens who will always hate you, no matter what

I think that all this education is a good thing because netizens are given way too much relevance, and learning about how fucked in the head they are is step one toward ignoring them.  I’m not just saying this now because NB posted a T-ara article with actual true stuff in it for once, I’ve always felt that way.  For anyone in doubt, take a look at where I thanked NB personally for her exemplary services in unearthing the disgusting trash of Korean netizen thought back at the end of 2012:

It seems that I’m not the only one who has noticed her efforts – finally the word that Korean netizens are looking like shit in the eyes of the world thanks to NB has spread back to Korea, where the translations have been re-traslated back into Korean and the netizens themselves are of course horrified to see their own ugly reflections.  Naturally they reacted like bullies usually do, and NB herself details the various standover bullying tactics of Koreans to try and shut down the site’s translations and/or pressure her to shut up – but don’t listen, NB!  Kpopalypse supports you!

2.  T-ara’s music is still good, and Netizenbuzz may have helped with that

Here’s a list of some of the bigger groups that debuted around the same time as T-ara or had their bigger hits at times when T-ara was also having big hits, and what’s happening with them lately.

• Girls’ Generation – can’t release anything worth a damn since “Paparazzi” in 2012
• 2NE1 – has been releasing mostly utter shit since “Scream” in 2012
• BigBang – are their two new songs “Bae Bae” and “Loser” as iconic as their 2012 feature tracks “Fantastic Baby” and “Monster“?  Or to put it another way, do Korean rape victims often get any justice from the legal system?
• Super Junior – has been on the downward slide since “Sorry Sorry” and has really hit the skids since 2012, after “Mr. Simple” came out.
• Wonder Girls – haven’t released anything whatsoever since “Like Money” with Akon in 2012
• 4Minute – apart from “Crazy” have been releasing utter dogshite ever since 2012’s excellent “Volume Up“

Notice a pattern forming?  Yes that’s right, most of these groups simply stopped trying around the second half of 2012.  These k-pop acts had already secured large core audiences by that point, meaning that people who were rabid fans of these groups would care about them anyway even if they released total crap (which they mostly did).  Now what else happened in the second half of 2012  – T-ara’s bullying scandal, the incident that rocketed NB to fame because she was willing to go where other sites wouldn’t and translate and give context to what was actually going on.  As a result of the scandal, which was amplified across the world by NB’s many hate-articles, T-ara actually lost a percentage of their core audience… meaning that their agency kept giving them decent songs, to try to regain lost fans.  As a result, the post-scandal T-ara catalogue (as a group, ahem) is so far almost all solid gold: the bigger feature tracks “Sexy Love“, “Number Nine“, “Sugar Free” and “Do You Know Me” were all excellent songs for the domestic market, and even songs for overseas markets such as “Bunny Style” and “Little Apple” were above average, because they had to be.  Okay, so T-ara fucked up with the confused-sounding “Jeon Won Diary” but even that song was enjoyable on a non-musical level just because of the hilarious sledging of netizens in the lyrics… and arguably none of it would have been this good without NB contributing in her own special way to strengthen the impact of the scandal internationally and give something for T-ara’s agency and songwriters to rally against.  What didn’t kill T-ara made them stronger.  Maybe NB had nothing to do with it.  Or maybe… just maybe, they couldn’t have done it without her.

3.  The highlighting of international netizen stupidity as a community service is appreciated

Are you doing a psychology degree and need a case study in human behaviour, or perhaps you’re just an amateur scholar of the human condition?  Maybe you just enjoy watching people wrest with their inner demons.  In any case, come on down to the NB comments section where the fun never stops and the logic rarely starts!  Witness as:

• Everybody knows the right business moves to make better than CEOs with decades of experience
• Cultural knowledge is always at a premium
• Everyone is always ready to tackle the big important issues
• Embedded pictures are always relevant to the discussion
• Nobody ever jumps to conclusions before they have all the facts
• Reactions to rumours are reasonable and level headed
• Speculation is kept to a minimum
• Frivolous rankings are never given too much importance
• Subtle legal aspects of the music business are fully understood
• Nobody is ever judgemental about personal situations
• People realise that opinions on aesthetic matters are subjective

NB is the place where international netizens go to prove that they really are equal in stupidity to their Korean counterparts… and we should be grateful for it.  Someone has to store and maintain all that mental clutter, and NB is doing it, for you, for free!  If you ever need example of stupid online behaviours, NB’s comments section has got your needs covered!  Just don’t get too heavily involved in any of the discussions yourself or you may get sucked up into the mental vortex known as “netizen-rot”.

4.  Johnny Noh doesn’t like Netizenbuzz, therefore how bad can the site be, really

Johnny Noh the head wanker from shitty non-news trash site Allkpop that I hope none of you ever visit doesn’t like NB presumably because she’s an ex-Allkpop employee who runs a site which is pretty successful and far more respected than his crappy site and that bothers him, wow what a douche.  Anyone who Johnny Noh doesn’t like enough for him to actually complain about them in public online must be alright and is potentially a friend of mine.  Maybe me, NB and Ailee can all get together and go out for a milkshake one day.

There you go folks, four fantastic reasons to be grateful and happy about Netizenbuzz!  NB has given a lot to the international k-pop fan community and she also seems to be going through a tough time right now with nasty Korean netizens bullying her so don’t forget to visit her site sometime soonish and show her some love!  Tell her that Kpopalypse sent you, don’t forget to say thank you for the T-ara article, and take a stand against the hurtful cyberbullying she’s experiencing!  After all, she’d do the same for you… especially if you were a member of an idol group who was being unfairly victimised.  Okay, so it might take her two and a half years but she’ll get around to it eventually.

Yes it’s back!  Welcome to the return of:

Read on for another hearty serving of nugus placed under the Kpopalypse microscope, for your education and amusement!

Something I’ve known ever since I started doing the Nugu Alert series is that it’s the most unpopular of all the different types of blog posts that I do.  The most recent survey reflected this with many people being annoyed at having to choose their favourite Nugu Alert series and not having an “other/none” option, plus several readers helpfully clarified that they just didn’t give a shit about these posts at all.  Of course, the fact that so many readers don’t care about these performers is the whole point, therefore this feedback means that I’m on the right path.  As a thank-you to Nugu Alert readers, the following videos are all reader submissions!

The usual Nugu Alert rules apply, these are:

This episode of Nugu Alert is themed around outstanding budget cinematography.  The following videos all contain notable examples of music video directors going the extra mile on a shoestring budget to bring you something visually memorable.  Be sure to support them!

Cupid – I Feel Good

Since the objective of this series is to highlight videos you haven’t seen before, I don’t usually bother with featuring videos that have already been featured elsewhere on other blogsites.  Cupid’s “I Feel Good” has already made sufficient impact to acquire its own article on Asian Junkie so because of that I wasn’t going to write about it at all, yet I got so many requests to cover this song anyway that I thought I’d slot it in here just to keep Nugu Alert fans happy.  Due to the existing Asian Junkie coverage the video collects few nugu points, yet still gets over the line for inclusion here due to a few key points:

1.  Pseudo maid uniforms are always a positive point which enhances sex appeal of k-pop girls and is therefore relevant to Kpopalypse fap.

2.  No attempt was made to hide the fact that this MV was partly shot in a strip club, stripper poles unused yet conspicuously intact.  Removing stripper poles from a strip club dancefloor is an easy job, you just undo a few bolts at each end, using a ladder and an electric drill with the right fittings it takes about three minutes (don’t ask me how I know this).  The fact that they didn’t even bother to perform such a simple task for the sake of the girls’ image shows that they don’t care who knows that these girls are a bunch of stripping whores.  This is a positive thing – Kpopalypse approves of stripping whores, as both a noun and a verb.

3.  Look, their faces are blacked out!  According to the legions of dummies on the Internet these days, all incidences of faces being blacked out are always racism regardless of context, therefore so must this be.  Meets required standards of oppression of women and minorities.

4.  The CGI backdrop of the group logo isn’t in Comic Sans font, but it’s close enough to Comic Sans to make people think that it it’s Comic Sans and piss people off anyway.

On top of all that, the song is actually alright.  I hasten to add not Song Of The Year material, but I’d rather listen to this chirpy electronic pop than the 693rd iteration of the same half a dozen western pop songs that k-pop keeps templating, or whatever shit ballad is being mercilessly shoved down our throats as the greatest thing to come out of Korea this week.

YouTube views at time of writing: 12372

Notable attribute: CGI lens flare added at 0:22 because the cinematographer couldn’t figure out how to get the lenses to actually flare

Nugu Alert rating: low

In & Choo – Suite Room

Here’s a question: how do you come up with a video like EXO’s “Growl” on a budget?  “Growl” was shot in one seamless long take of perfectly choreographed precision… or maybe it’s wasn’t, with the directors stitching separate scenes together using the “spinning” sections where the camera focuses on nobody to swap between takes… but the point is that the end result looks seamless, as one would probably expect from a high-budget SM production.  However when the budget is more like $30000 than $300000, you’ve got to cheat a lot more.  Long takes have a lot of rehearsal time involved in making everything flow smoothly, and if there’s one obvious fuckup everybody has to start again, which takes more time with a longer take, which means more money.  Sure, k-pop performers rehearse their ass off all the time and hardly get paid anyway, so the expense and extra time required for getting them up to speed is minimal – I’m talking more about the rehearsing that the film crew does for actually shooting, all the behind the scenes people also have to rehearse their movements, and unlike k-pop performers who you can always wave the carrot of “you’ll get rich one day” in front of, technical behind the scenes people with qualifications and mastery of equipment actually insist on being paid there and then, or at least within the next week or two.  It’s all too much of a fucking time and money sink for a nugu.

Enter In & Choo’s “Suite Room” which tries to give you the same seamless feel of EXO’s “Growl” but without the accompanying budget.  Scenes are transitioned with panes of darkness (0:20), aimless shots to the roof (0.39), fast movement (0.29) and hands over the camera (1.08), the expensive steadicam of “Growl” is swapped out for a cheaper (and wobblier) handicam, and the expensively-rigged carpark is substituted for the agency’s mini-gymnasium and some spotlights.  It all doesn’t work too badly apart from the colour-matching fuck-ups which ruin a couple transitions, pity their song is only marginally better than “Growl”.

YouTube views at time of writing: 9631

Notable attribute: a girl has clothing with the word “swag” on it, signalling the imminent downfall of humanity

Nugu Alert rating: high

Xin Seha – Matdaheum

You want a cool looking artsy k-pop MV for your smooth, sensual sounding 80s-style electro song, but you don’t have the kind of cash that’s sitting in SM or YG’s vault earmarked as “must spend on square bits of paneling with diodes and mirrored surfaces”, so what do you do?  The easiest solution is often location scouting, because there’s lots of outdoor locations out there that can be used for free and look great with a little imagination.  The problem is finding them – I’ve been on modeling shoots where I’ve accompanied photographers looking for that perfect location to shoot a model and half the time a photographer will drive halfway across town to “that perfect spot” only to find out that they can’t use it because the light’s all wrong, or they can only get permission to use the location from certain sub-optimal areas, or someone’s parked a truck right next to it, or any other of dozens of potential things that can fuck up the scene.  It’s such a pain in the ass to roll the dice with outdoor locations and you can waste days on it if things go bad.  Indoor locations have their own problems too, there’s less chance of environmental factors ruining everything but there’s also less chance of you being able to access them, because people are a lot more precious about letting some camera team use their indoor spaces, and also it’s harder to find good spaces just by virtue of them being indoors and thus hidden from plain sight (which is why the same ones tend to get used all the time).

Whoever did the scouting – both indoor and outdoor – for Xin Seha’s video shoot however consistently hits budget MV location gold.  Check out these rad locations:

1.  Here’s Xin Seha looking badass in front of a stairwell with graffiti.  Fuck yeah, you can’t fuck with this dude.  He’d kick you down the stairs but you’re already at the bottom, chump.

2.  Here’s Xin Seha looking badass in front of some sewer pipes.  These sewer pipes are so pipe-like that they could have come straight out of a computer game with sewer pipes in it (which is all of them).  However these pipes are real, just like Xin Seha’s withering stare.

3.  Here’s Xin Seha looking badass in front of a metal fence, with some buildings behind it.  Xin Seha doesn’t even care if the incidental people in the background turn around and look at him posing like he’s about to take a crap, because he’ll fuck them up if they say any shit.  Also note Kpopalypse-endorsed bucket hat.

4.  Here’s Xin Seha looking badass in front of some sewer pipes again – but with a twist, this time he’s on the pipes!  This pose is implying that he’s waiting for some hapless prey to wander down below that he’s about to leap down on and knock out and grab their spare ammunition and Praxis kits.  Badass.

5. Here’s Xin Seha looking badass on a roof with some tube things with lights coming out of them.  How did he get up to the roof level?  Probably through the sewer pipes, because he’s such a badass who isn’t afraid of sewer pipes, or a roof, or tube things with lights.  There’s also some fog here so you can see the lights better.

6. Here’s Xin Seha looking badass with a wooden frame.  You wanted to convert your rear verandah into an extra bedroom but you didn’t count on Xin Seha turning up and rapping at you in his smooth voice while staring at you with his piercing gaze.  What are you gonna do now, punk?

7.  Here’s Xin Seha looking badass in front of a metal fence, wait… no, this time he’s behind the metal fence, and there’s a door there!  It’s like he’s in prison, or something!  Our location scout has mixed it up a little, keeping things fresh, yet thematically consistent.  Look at him stare menancingly through the fencing.  Just be glad that fence is there to protect you.

And on and on it goes.  These are only from the first minute of the video, it only gets better from here.  I dare not spoiler any more of them here, just watch the video for yourself and prepare to be blown away.

YouTube views at time of writing: 11036

Notable attribute: Ladies Code’s manager spotted doing an illegal U-turn at 2:55

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

FINAL SCORES

This concludes another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Feel free to enjoy/be annoyed by/disregard these nugus as you so choose, and Kpopalypse will return with more nugus in a future episode!

Hi everyone, it’s that time again – time for one of those technical posts that you all love.  Recently people have been asking me variations of the following question:

Yes I am!  If you’ve ever wondered what constitutes a decent production, Kpopalypse is here to help!  Read on for all the trufax about good production vs bad production!

Let’s start off by defining a few concepts – what is sound production anyway?  In the most general sense, sound production is the conceptual process of getting the “sound idea” from the brain of the composer onto some kind of recorded format.  The musical process is “performance” and the physical process is “audio engineering” – but production is the realm of conceptually translating sound ideas.  Of course a producer may be an audio engineer as well – in k-pop this is common.  They may also in some cases be the songwriter and/or the performer, as k-pop tends to use the words “producer” and “songwriter” interchangeably, but I’m talking about a producer in the strict sense for the purposes of this post.  If this paragraph makes no fucking sense at all I wrote another explanation here which may help.  My posts on vocal and instrumental production may also help if you’re confused by any technical terms here.

So how do we know if the sound production of the producer is good or bad?  The answer is through how successfully the idea from the composer is conveyed from the original concept onto the recording.  For example, if the original sound idea is someone taking a shit for five minutes, then if the producer was able to bring the right ideas to the table to turn that concept into the smelliest, most visceral piece of recorded shit possible, then this is good production.  If on the other hand the shit didn’t seem that shitty, then the producer didn’t do as good a job.  This is of course assuming that the original goal is the sound of shit.

Of course, k-pop doesn’t aim for shit, what they’re aiming for instead is what any pop producer aims for – a final product which has the following characteristics:

• All the important defining elements of the song elements can be clearly heard at all times, especially any vocal as in pop music the vocal carries the all-important melody plus the sound of the singer’s voice that fangirls will jizz over
• The beat, where it exists, will also be clearly audible, because making people want to dance is important – dancing makes people happy and happy people earn more money to spend on products endorsed by k-pop idols
• Will kick ass on a big speaker system AND will also still sound reasonably clear on a tiny phone or radio speaker
• Will sound just as loud and clear as someone else’s song if they are played back-to-back on the radio

Finding examples of k-pop songs which meet these requirements is dead easy, and that’s the problem with doing this kind of post about k-pop – I need to give you some examples of the bad stuff, and k-pop production quality is almost universally excellent.  Just about any k-pop video that you can pull up randomly for your favourite groups these days is going to sound great from a pure production perspective.  Sure, you might not like the sounds in the final song, or the song itself, but that’s a different issue to whether the producer did a good job.  It’s not just the big three that nail it either, even nugu groups these days usually have great production and you really have to look very hard, or go back through k-pop history fairly deep to really find anything that sucks so you can contrast it to the good stuff to give a picture of good vs bad production… but Kpopalypse will do his best!

H.O.T’s “Outside Castle” is typical of the absolute rubbish that SM pumped out and fangirls sheepishly lapped up about 15 years ago and demonstrates one of the most challenging aspects of producing a pop song correctly (if you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, that is) – volume normalisation.   Anyone bred on a diet of today’s k-pop will instantly notice that when the first singer’s voice goes into the lower register at 2:02 he becomes briefly really hard to hear, and when the rapping starts, that’s also really hard to hear at certain points.  Yes, they’re rapping in a whisper, but that’s no excuse, because there’s tools in an audio engineer’s arsenal that can bring out the sound of a whisper so you can actually still hear the words properly.  Think about how clear JYP’s signature “JYP” whisper always sounds, that’s because the whisper’s volume levels have been compressed, something which H.O.T’s vocals have not been (or at least not enough).  H.O.T also haven’t been pitch-corrected – at 1:55 the singer is actually hitting the note flat – this would never be allowed on a k-pop recording in 2015, it would be “fixed in the mix”.  On top of this, the mix overall just sounds dull… I’m not talking about it being a dull song, but there’s a real lack of brightness across everything and I’m not just talking about the crappy video transfer, the actual original audio is this way too.  Play this song and something from even a nugu modern boy group these days back-to-back at the same volume and notice the difference in clarity.  Modern pop mixes are heavily equalised, post-processed and mastered meaning that frequencies which allow the songs to cut through on radio broadcast or perform better on smaller speakers are enhanced.  There’s definitely not much of this happening on H.O.T’s recording, and while the final result was probably an acceptable production standard for k-pop in 2000 when the standards for a finished pop recording were lower, an in-house SM producer would be sacked for creating something with this level of audio quality today.

M.O.A’s “Run For Your Dream” is on the other hand a song that I really like, but the production of it is still pretty poor, and it’s a testament to how good this song is that a botched production job can’t fuck it up.  So what’s wrong with the production?  If you listen closely to the acoustic guitars, the strumming is actually not quite in time with everything else, it’s especially noticeable in the second half of the song where the beat speeds up.  Also once again the vocals aren’t normalised correctly, the best example in this song being that the word “run” is always a little bit lost in the mix every time the chorus is sung, and losing the first note of the hook in a chorus line is a big deal.  The raps are pretty lumpy in volume levels too, to the point where when the chorus kicks in it actually sounds a bit quieter than the peaks of the rap verses – not what you want in a song like this.  These factors all combine to generate that uncanny valley feeling that “something is wrong here”, and of course self-appointed k-pop music industry experts with their incredibly asinine “vocal talent” obsession but no real knowledge go straight for the explanation “oh they can’t sing”:

This is wrong.  Actually the vocalists are perfectly on-key.  It’s the volume levels that are the problem, but people are not accustomed to hearing incorrect volume level compression in k-pop, so when they do hear a producer fuck this up, they immediately assume something is wrong with the singer, however it’s not the case here.  The vocalists were ready to debut – the producer wasn’t.

To get a feel for how better production can make a difference, try listening to the first few seconds of these recordings of S.E.S and Red Velvet performing “Be Natural”, back to back (make sure you crank the volume of the S.E.S version so they’re equal as Red Velvet’s version has a much better transfer to YouTube).  Both versions use exactly the same backing track so the differences are subtle, but in Red Velvet’s version vocal volume is more consistent and it’s a little easier to hear the details in the mix.  The S.E.S version isn’t that bad but the Red Velvet version is better in terms of how pop production quality is assessed.

Yes I’m aware that there’s a video which places one version of “Be Natural” in one speaker and the other version in the other, but using this isn’t practical for comparing production values, as it’s impossible to fairly judge production quality of a stereo recording from just listening to one speaker of it.  The manipulation of the stereo field to create room in the mix for each element comprises part of what creates a clearer sound on a complex multi-track pop music recording.  So what is “room in the mix”?  To answer this, it helps to imagine sound as a physical space.  I’ve used these diagrams before when talking about the deluded bullshit circus that is assessing MR Removed videos, but here they are again:

I’m too lazy to redraw everything, so time to shamelessly plagiarise my own article from two years ago.  In the above picture, the horizontal axis represents stereo, and the vertical axis represents pitch.  Divide it up and we get this.

And here’s a typical result of elements that you might hear in a pop mix:

This is an oversimplification of course, but it introduces the general concept of everything needing its own space (and now you know why I couldn’t use those mono recordings – remove the stereo aspect and we have three “boxes” to work with instead of nine).  If you have two things sitting in one general area, they will compete, and if one element is louder or present more often than something else, but occupies the same space, it will mask the other element.  This phenomenon is called “audio masking” and it’s why snipers sometimes time their shots to happen at the same time as other loud noises.

In the H.O.T song, the sung vocals come out quite clearly and cut through when they’re high, but the lower vocals and whispered raps compete heavily with the keyboard/orchestral noises that are happening at around the same time and frequency, so the vocals get “swallowed up” to some degree.  This could have been fixed by:

• Adding more high-end frequencies to the vocal so it can cut above the strings
• Removing the frequencies in the strings part that directly compete with the vocal
• Panning the strings out so they sit more in the L and R boxes while leaving the vocals central
• Compressing the vocal so the volume is more consistent and quieter words don’t get buried
• Hiring the aforementioned sniper to remove the problematic producer

The above deals with the issue of basic pop music production standards, and this is a very objective standard, because without certain audio treatments, songs will sound too quiet or too “muddy” or simply amateurish when played next to other songs.  In a highly competitive field it’s important to create something that can stand up favourably next to everything else around it with equal clarity and professionalism.

Of course, k-pop fans are notorious for not bothering with (or even knowing about) objective standards, so they don’t tend to use the word “production” in this objective sense.  For a k-pop fan, comments about “production” are usually more about “creative production choices” than “production craft”, so when a k-pop fan (including me, at times) says “I like a song because of the production” what they’re usually actually saying is “I like the way the backing track sounds”.  Here’s some examples.

I single this song out occasionally for oh-my-god-why-did-they-make-it-sound-like-that slings and arrows a bit but there’s nothing wrong with T-ara’s “Yayaya” just from a technical production point of view.  The issue that I have with it is that I don’t feel that E-Tribe’s wall-of-noise style on this track really suits pop music, generally speaking.  The fact that the song fulfills modern pop production requirements is an objective truth, but the fact that I think it sounds like rubbing a cheese grater across my ears is a subjective point of view.

I’m also not a big fan of the marching drum beats in the verses of Oh My Girl’s “Cupid”.  Marching drums can actually sound great in other k-pop songs but their implementation here doesn’t work for me at all.  However they’re not inserted badly or anything like that, production-wise this is fine, I just don’t think this type of instrumentation suits the material, therefore “I don’t like the production” rather than “this is produced badly”.

This type of yoloshit production style is everything that’s wrong with popular music right now.  Because of this, there’s a possibility that CL’s American debut will actually do reasonably well, I think that given the right marketing she’ll fit right in with ratchet-lite like V-Nasty, Riff Raff, Lil’ Debbie, etc no problem.  “The Baddest Female” isn’t badly made, either – YG’s production here is as usual excellent.  Sure, they forgot to actually write a song, but in the yoloshit genre I guess songwriting is considered like sour cream on your baked potato, an optional extra that not everyone wants.

I hope that’s enough examples for you to get the idea, because I really couldn’t be fucked listing any more shitty songs that suck but happen to also be produced okay, I could be here all day doing that as it would account for about 90% of all k-pop made since about 2008.  Anyway hopefully this post has been sufficiently confusing, annoying and contradictory to prevent and completely discourage any sort of productionfagging from obsessive-compulsive fangirl crazies who want to prove “my bias is best”, and hopefully also educational and interesting enough so the rest of you didn’t fall asleep reading!  Yay!

Kpopalypse is back, and this time he’s reviewing stuff!  Everybody hop on board for:

Which Blackjack can pick up the microphone and defend Park Bom the most effectively in a rap verse?  Read on for the Blackjack Defence Rap Challenge!

Some quick background for those not in the loop about this: about 9 months ago in 2014 Kemy from nugu group A.KOR dropped the following diss rap for a rap competition about 2NE1’s Park Bom and her drug-smuggling ways.

Are the allegations in the lyrics true or false?  I don’t care.  I disagree with Kemy’s anti-drugs stance and I actually think all drugs should be legal, but I also think Kemy pissing off crazy Blackjacks (2ne1’s kooky fandom, notorious for hard-boiled insanity) is hilarious and has provided me with much entertainment.  As far as I’m concerned those two factors cancel each other out and therefore I have no horse in this particular race.

However Kemy’s rap wasn’t strictly an anti-drugs rant or even an anti-Bom rant and to characterise it as only these things is to oversimplify it drastically.  The criticisms that she made were more directed at YG Entertainment’s alleged power to cover up scandals and bend the Korean legal system.  More importantly, since the rap was not an official A.KOR release but for a rap competition, Kemy wrote the rap herself, which is neither here nor there quality wise but it does mean that this places her in a very small pool of female idol rappers who do actually self-compose and that we can actually fairly assess the rap ability of.  To this end, she demonstrated superior wordplay skills and black humour that the likes of other self-composing idol rappers (including 2NE1’s CL and EXID’s LE) have always promised but never delivered, and I know this because everyone I know who speaks fluent Korean was impressed by the technical aspect of her rap (whether they agreed with the actual message or not).  Musically or ethically you may not like Kemy’s rap, but as far as rap skills go, it’s pretty impressive stuff for someone who would normally still be in high school.  I know the lyrics I wrote on desks during classes when I was a bored schoolkid weren’t anywhere near this proficient.

People may be wondering why I’m posting about this now, instead of when the issue was hot.  The reason for it is that Blackjacks tend to hold a grudge for a while, as the like/dislike ratio on A.KOR’s most recent video shows, so I wanted to give ample time for all the hate-raps to gradually come in.  However I think that in May 2015 it’s safe to say that any Blackjacks who had something to say about this issue in a rap verse have by now already done so.  Of course I don’t really care about which side of the diss battle is “correct”, but I wondered if any Blackjacks could come up with a quality rap track and match the level of microphone skill demonstrated by Kemy.  Time to find out!

82itsmytime – Don’t Touch Bom!

This track starts off with some battlefield sounds because that’s what artists do when they’re being all hardcore and stuff.  Then the rap comes in with “hey, I’ve got nothing much to say”, and rarely was a truer word spoken in k-pop diss battles.  Starting an intro with an admission of “I don’t know what to say” is fine if you’re just being modest so people underestimate you and then you proceed to tear the microphone a new asshole, but this guy actually runs out of ideas so fast that he quotes Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys” at about the 40 second mark so maybe he shouldn’t have drawn attention to his lack of lyrical inspiration any more than necessary.  Other rap crimes here include impersonating Nicki Minaj’s weird Saturday morning cartoon bullshit novelty voice when he says “you feel so tiny”, plus rhyming “bus” with “ass”, a particularly awkward rhyme but I guess he was that desperate to make a joke about an underage girl being hit by a bus that he was willing to sacrifice the rhyme flow for it… which shows you what kind of people some Blackjacks can be, I guess.  Not that there’s much flow here to sacrifice anyway, the style is fairly strict rhyming couplets throughout and they’re massively awkward, cringeworthy couplets at that (“your shit is a bore and you act like a whore”?).  At least the backing track isn’t too bad so I’ll give this one 2/10 for at least not using a yoloturd trap beat.

Jesungiya – Kemy Bitch

As soon as you hit play on this one, you’ll get plastered with a couple intimidatingly earnest text walls about how this guy has really moved on from the whole situation and that he feels bad about calling Kemy a bitch because he “understand(s) how important it is to pay attention to a word that is gender or racially charged”.  This is of course completely weaksauce bollocks – apologising for using a specific word while simultaneously “not apologising for (the) sentiments” that the word represents means that even if you didn’t use the word “bitch” you still meant the word “bitch”.  One of the messages also says he wants to “move on with music” so I was going to take a leaf out of that book and looked for something more recent that he has written to review instead, but I couldn’t find anything, just some EXID covers and stuff.  Oh well, guess I gotta review “Kemy Bitch”, and there’s not a lot to say about it – his wordplay is a bit better than 82itsmytime (still mostly basic couplet raps but at least not as awkward and cringeworthy) but his backing track is worse – pay attention class, diss tracks need a hard beat to reflect the anger of the rap, not some twinkly pussy slow ballad feelgood nonsense, and it all just sounds too mellow.  He’s using an “I’m on top of the world, floating above the clouds, I’m the king” feel instead of a “I’m gonna fuck your face up” type sound and that’s just a rap diss track faux pas.  2/10.

TMinsTV – 0-100 Freestyle (A.KOR Kemy Diss)

Even though we’re still in boring rhyming couplet land straight from 1988 this guy’s probably got the most lyrical skill out of anyone so far (not saying much but still…).  This track starts off promisingly with a decent atmospheric beat… then the rapper starts self-censoring his swear words.  Come on, what the fuck is this bullshit, it’s not a very enjoyable diss rap if you edit the rude parts out.  There’s no need for it, it’s just a YouTube demo for some batshit crazy Blackjacks, it’s not a fucking commercial radio drivetime slot, you don’t need to self-regulate like Tipper Gore is looking over your shoulder, she’s too busy masturbating to W.A.S.P’s “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” to care about what some weird k-pop fandom does.  Then things get even more wimpy as the tone changes abruptly at the halfway point from “me and my badass Blackjack crew want to cut your head off” to “you’re just a girl, I can’t wait to see you shine, one day you will baby”.  It’s like he’s playing both the “good cop” and the “bad cop” in one song to try and manipulate Kemy’s emotions and there’s something really creepy about it all in a Chris Hansen-esque kind of way.  Imagine how laughable Lil Kim’s diss rap against Nicki Minaj would sound if halfway through the beat changed to something soft and smooth and Kimmy started rapping “I hope you can shine one day girl”.  Just nope.  Stick to one message please.  In the video comments the creator says “at the end of the day I am all about progression, so I’m open to criticism” so maybe if you could try to sound more like a rapper and less like a creepy preacher who says “god sends sinners to burn in hell for eternity” and then “…but he loves us!” in the very next breath, that’d be a good start.  2/10 for at least having a decent beat for the first half of it.

Ria.K – Reply to Kemy’s Diss to Park Bom (teaser)

Oh wow, this girl sounds like she can actually rap, plus she knows how to insert rhyming words in places other than at the end of the bar – rejoice!  Pity she’s less good at working out how to stay connected to the Internet, she promised the full version of this rap “tonight or tomorrow” about 9 months ago and her channel hasn’t been updated since.  It’s possible of course that she may have slept on it and then in the light of the new day thought better about doing a full diss rap reply, which is a shame as I think we may have been robbed of something semi-decent here.  Mind you even in this teaser format it’s about the same length as some of the other offerings here anyway.  2/10 for low determination levels.

Crystal W. – Quit It

The Fischer-Price drum machine at the start sounded cute, I thought that was a good gimmick to intro a rap track so I waited for it to end and the real beat to kick in… and then eventually I realised that wasn’t going to happen and this girl really thought that busting her entire rap verse over Baby’s First Drumkit was a good idea.  Speaking of which, much mirth was had with the line “you messed with Bom, that’s like effin’ with a kid”.  Can you cunting fucking rap bitches actually realise that fucking swearing is a very fucking natural fucking part of fucking rap music and it’s better to fucking leave the cunt fuck shit rap fucking swears in the fucking songs… bitch?  Also Bom is like 68 years old or some shit so comparing dissing her to fucking with a kid is kind of ass-backwards as fucking fuck.  If anything dissing Kemy is the “fucking with a kid” part, quite literally if we take the meaning of “fucking” to be “fucking with the mind/career of”.  If you’re going to be a rapper it helps to actually have some command of the language, sure most rappers do that whole uneducated “from the street” pose but in reality most of the good ones passed English classes no problem because they had to or they simply wouldn’t be any good at rap.  Anyway I digress, this song gets 2/10 for at least giving it a go with the cheapest recording materials ever, which is at least kinda cool in a Crayon Punk kind of way.

Jennita Karurak – A Song For You Kemy A.KOR By Black Jack

Another cheap-ass production but a little bit better musically than the last one, this girl may or may not have good rap flow, I have no idea because she’s rapping in Thai.  Howevber what I do know is that at about 1:03 she breaks into something that sounds disturbingly similar to bhangra.  Many years ago I lived in an international student residence and many of the students there were Indian Malaysians, and they would play that fucking bhangra shit all the fucking time.  It got really annoying because apart from our tiny bedrooms, all the facilities were shared so you couldn’t just blast music without 20 other poor people having to suffer it.  These international students convinced me that bhangra is the worst music in the world.  I hear that T-ara is really taking off in Malaysia lately and that can only be a good thing because it will certainly lift the quality of the music there a little if bhangra is really what they all normally listen to over there.  I can’t assess this girl’s rap but I’ll give her 2/10 because at least the entire song isn’t bhangra, thank you girl for sparing us a total bhangra track and at least dropping an actual rap verse at the start of it.

KeNNy AKM – A.KOR Kemy Diss Park Bom Rap

Got to love these innovative song titles, hey?  This is another rhyming-couplets-over-a-ghetto-blaster-in-the-corner-of-the-room-sounds-good-enough-fuck-it job but hold up for a moment because this guy is flat-out creepy as fuck.  He can’t stop obsessing through the entire video about how young Kemy is, wildly underestimates her age (she’s not twelve but I bet he wishes she was) and even raps about how he got an erection over her in a rhyming couplet that would make Pedobear proud. Of course all this acute awareness of Kemy’s youth doesn’t prevent him from gleefully sticking the boot into her anyway, because it’s more important to defend Bom apparently, but in this case I think defending Bom is maybe just an excuse for his real agenda.  At one stage of the rap he actually rhymes “rookie” with “cookie”, and guess who else also does that:

That’s right, Kim Dani from “maybe joining T-ara N4 one day but basically just slumming it for now after appearing in that one awesome F-ve Dolls song, like, whatevs” and guess what age she is these days.  Perhaps it’s some kind of code that KeNNy AKM thinks Dani is a perfect 10 but not for the same reasons that I do, and thereby he joins the list of Kemy diss rappers who need to take a seat over there.  2/10 for providing a community service to concerned parents who want to know what warning signs to look out for when meeting their daughter’s strange older friends, might I suggest that one of them is if they own a studio with walls plastered in comic book art?

sukiluvzyuu – Congrats On Being Infamous (Just another Kemy from A.KOR diss rap)

The tacit acknowledgement in the song title that nobody gives a fuck is probably the best thing about this “for YG yeah we ride” diss rap lolocaust, but there’s two important differences to everything else here.  Firstly, the rapping isn’t rhyming couplets for a change, our female rapper is actually going to some sort of effort to mix things up a little and maybe she even took more than two minutes to piece this one together, wow!  Bravo for attempting to demonstrate some more modern rap style!  Unfortunately, this is completely negated by the beat also being more “modern” but in a bad way, it’s easily the worst one of the entire bunch here, kind of almost a yolotrap thing.  What a shame.  2/10 for you.

TheEvaristoCaitlin – Diss Kemy Rap Acapella: Blackjack Love

You see, this is the problem with fandom group-think, and I’m not just talking about Blackjacks here, but any fandom anywhere.  It starts off innocently enough, when you decide one day that you’re going to write “Blackjack” on your school ruler and put it in the signature of your k-pop forum profile.  People start asking you “so are you a Blackjack now?” and you reply “yeah, well I like 2NE1 so I suppose I am”.  Never mind that you’re not technically part of the fandom because that actually requires membership which means financial outlay, you’re still a “Blackjack” inside your own head and that’s what matters to you, identifying with the fandom gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself.  However, then something strange starts happening – there’s unspoken pressure now.  Suddenly, because you’re a “Blackjack”, you feel obliged to like everything that 2NE1 do regardless of how it makes you feel, plus you start to feel obliged to engage in “endorsed fan activities” even if they might make you feel a bit strange or might not really be what you want.  So when the whole fandom gets swept up in a “let’s burn some high school girl at the stake” thing, you find yourself dragged into it emotionally, so up your awkward, hesitant attempt at a diss rap goes on the Internet, for not much gain except a vague feeling of “wow I’m representing Blackjacks now kinda” and Kpopalypse taking the piss out of you in a cruel, snarky blog post some months later.  Was it worth it?  2/10 because I feel sorry for this person will no doubt grow out of being a faux-Blackjack one day and turn into a mature woman and look back at this moment and cringe.  Maybe, just maybe, this will be the Internet post that snaps them out of it.  Maybe a few years down the track, I’ll get a postcard sent to me at the radio station, it will read “I was that girl in that video and thanks to your blogging I realised that I had a Blackjack problem.  Being a Blackjack is no fun.  Blackjacks 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.”

Well, now you know what I think of all the above videos – but who cares?  What’s more important is what do YOU think?  I’ve made a poll so you can vote for either Kemy or any of the above responses and select the best diss rap.  Click on the picture of A.KOR below to do the poll!

I’ll update this post later once I’ve got enough responses and you readers have decided if any of the funky rhyme-saying Blackjacks get to snatch Kemy’s rap crown, but in the meantime, I only really give a shit about Minju anyway.

Minju is the second rapper in both of these videos, the hot mature-age blonde bundle of hotness who has a look that transforms wildly from nice Korean girl to saucily-smirking rock slut as soon as she dons her trademark circle lenses, padded bras and heavy makeup.  How many times am I going to link these mixtape rap videos in posts of mine?  As long as it takes to find out where I can get the fucking mixtape from.

Minju is a complete hottie who has flown under the radar of pretty much everybody thanks to the whole rabid Kemy obsession that’s blinded Blackjacks to anything about A.KOR that’s not Kemy-related, as demonstrated by this hilarious YouTube exchange where someone going by the name of “Park Bom” completely (and willfully) misses the point:

I actually checked the YouTube channel of “Park Bom” just in case she had the initiative to make her own Kemy diss rap.  Sadly not – if so, I think she would have cleaned up.  Then I could have made a cool joke to end this blog about how Park Bom is really the best defender of Park Bom.  Oh well, robbed I guess.  The following joke will have to do:

Hi folks. I’m busy hanging out by the pool with Eunjung and working on some very very looooong posts that won’t be completed for a while. To tide you over until I post something new, the Kpopalypse Official Park Bom Defence Challenge post has been updated with the results of the reader poll!  Go and check it out!  Also thanks for your postcards!  Kpopalypse loves you all!

It’s Kpopalypse worst-of list time once again!  Time to relax, sit down with your favourite beverage and find out what k-pop songs Kpopalypse thought sucked the most from the Golden Age of k-pop!

Warning: like all Kpopalypse lists, this one has 30 videos and may take a while to load.  Be patient.  Or get a better device to read this on.  Or disable your Flash player – trust me, you might as well, you’re not going to be missing much if you can’t play these horrible music videos.

The years from 2008 through to 2011 were really great for k-pop, there were so many good songs and the best ones in my opinion are documented in my Top 30 songs of the Golden Age list.  However every rose has its thorn, every cowboy has its sad, sad song, and every Kpopalypse favourites list has another list of all the fucking worthless shit that came out at the same time.  A “Golden Age” means that the good stuff was really good, but that doesn’t preclude the bad stuff from also being really bad!  So due to popular demand, Kpopalypse now returns with his collection of the shittiest songs from K-pop’s golden age of 2008-2011!  Read on as Kpopalypse rants about rubbish music and offends everyone with his horrible music taste for your entertainment and amusement!

Usual rules apply for these lists:

• Must be a feature track (has an MV and/or was promoted on music shows)
• Songs for sporting and seasonal events are exempt (because they all suck)
• Songs for OSTs are not eligible (they also all suck)
• These are my opinions, so if you disagree… handle it.

Let’s get it started!

30.  T-ara – Yayaya

There’s nothing like a good T-ara song to kick off yet another Kpopalypse list, and “Yayaya” is nothing like a good T-ara song.  It’s substandard on every level – the songwriters admitted that the words were a bunch of nonsense that made no goddamn sense unless you could read their minds, the group themselves couldn’t fucking stand the entire concept, but the real problem with “Yayaya” is obviously the music.  E-Tribe, still at that point riding high on their fame from Girls’ Generation’s “Gee“, weirdly gave T-ara a thudding wall-of-noise backing track to sing over that lands the group texturally somewhere between Kraftwerk and Combichrist, and while that combination actually sounds pretty good in theory, it just doesn’t work over the chant-happy joyous nonsense feel that the songwriters were aiming for.  Having said that, maybe a different backing track wouldn’t have helped much, the song has virtually no melody to speak of – which is fine if you’re Ministry but perhaps not ideal for a k-pop group.  At least “Yayaya” did the k-pop world a favour by daringly crossing cultural boundaries, bravely promotiong global racial harmony by letting the Native American people know that their history and culture means something special and unique to the world of Korean music agencies.  Oh and Eunjung and Qri both look super-cute in whatever the culturally appropriate term is for that shit they’re wearing (and really they’re the only ones in the group who pull off this look), so it wasn’t a complete waste.

29.  f(x) – La Cha Ta

SM Entertainment’s left-field idol-lite experiment group f(x) weren’t always awesome and one of the first songs they came out of the gate with was this horrible new jack swing trash, the kind of thoughtless tossed-off crap that SM would normally palm off to TVXQ or CSJH The Grace.  SM at this time were riding high off the massive fame of Super Junior, TVXQ and SNSD’s hits so a crappy debut by their new girl group was really no concern of theirs whatsoever, and it shows with easily the most generic and boring song f(x) ever got handed to them, a tune even more dull and colourless than the girls’ curious semi-grunge styling in the accompanying video.  If only f(x) fans spent their time back in the day whining about this rubbish song instead of other bullshit nobody cares about like why the group don’t have a fandom name (something there’s actually really good reasons for), we might’ve got the quality of “Red Light” and “Rum Pum Pum Pum” a whole lot sooner than we eventually did.

28.  Secret – Magic

All of Secret’s early songs before the excellent “Shy Boy” were universally rubbish and… oh wait, this song came out around exactly the same time as “Shy Boy”.  Well, whatever – this song sucks and whoever the fuck thought that “umma umma umma” line was a catchy chorus idea was probably off their face on some “masic” mushrooms.  Speaking of which, is it really that hard for a k-pop agency to research the correct pronunciation of a word that’s going to form the key component of a song’s chorus and be sung by the group potentially for years to come?  I mispronounce foreign words all the time, just like anybody does when they’re learning a new language, but if I was using one foreign word for the hook of a (hopefully) massive hit single that I was writing I think I would maybe make sure that whoever was singing it got some basic instruction in how to pronounce it.  Then again maybe the writer of “Masic” hates this song as much as I do and just didn’t give a fuck because he was too busy jamming to “Shy Boy” and fapping to Jieun in that pale green dress when she’s having a milkshake, so let’s not be too harsh here.

27.  Secret – Love Is Move

This song is fucking crap too.  A blues trend in k-pop?  Thank fuck that fucking bullshit didn’t take off.  After buying the “Shy Boy” single I went out and bought this album and boy did I feel cheated.  When I looked at the tracklist for Secret’s first full album “Moving In Secret” that contains “Love Is Move” I couldn’t really read the titles because they were silver on a gray, white and silver background so I had no idea what I was buying, but I thought “Shy Boy was GREAT, there’s no way that this album isn’t full of great doo-wop/k-pop hybrid songs”.  How wrong could I be?  As wrong as I was.  The entire album sucks dick and the first person to send me an AOA toothbrush with a return address gets my copy in the post.

26.  ZE:A – Mazeltov

ZE:A are one of those groups that never really ascended to the giddy heights of A-list stardom and with songs like this it’s pretty easy to see what might’ve been holding them back.  While I’m generally not someone who gives a fuck about if Group X is more successful than Group Y, I certainly am one to notice if shit song Z is better than a shit song by a group starting with Z, and this is certainly a song that makes me go Z… but why?  Maybe it’s the dull-as-dishwater k-pop 101 melodies and harmonies, perhaps it’s the 2069 layers of unnecessary hard Autotune dulling my senses into a coma (something we’ll see a lot on this list as hard Autotune was a huge trend during the Golden Age and appeared in songs both good and bad), or it could be the Rebeccablackian snatches of English lyrics, or maybe even the generic tribal lycra spacesuits and bland grey walls they’ve got going on in the video.  Perhaps it’s a combination of all these factors blending to create a near-perfect singularity of uninterestingness, like a Large Uninteresting Collider rubbing two really boring atomic particles together.  The only slightly interesting thing about this song is the weird name because “Mazeltov” sounds a bit like “molotov”, but as soon as I found out it just means congratulations or whatever, it was straight back to uninterestingland.

25.  Dara – Kiss

2NE1’s conceptual strength is as a group with multiple females who have multiple distinct personas.  There’s CL with her brash, bold, bad-meaning-good swagtrocious feminism-lite, Minzy the cute bob-cut dancer with the got-prettier grin and Bom the money-note-crucifying nipped-and-tucked Realdoll – all huge personalities that are memorable in their own way.  Then there’s Dara, who is just… some girl.  I think that Dara is only in 2NE1 so the group appeals more to girls with a “gosh I’m so average and non-special” complex because if someone as bland and nondescript as Dara can achieve her dreams, maybe so can they.  And boy does the song suit this persona, one of the only dull spots on 2NE1’s great “To Anyone” debut album.  Did any 2NE1 fan want this song to be released?  Does anyone reading this even remember how this song goes without clicking the video?  “Kiss” probably owes its existence purely as a necessity for live concerts so that when Dara is performing it the other three members can take a break for a few minutes while the stagehands reapply their makeup, check their microphone headsets and adjust any facial features that may have gotten bumped out of position from all those dance routines.

24.  Stellar ft. Eric – Rocket Girl

In this video the four girls from Stellar break into some kind of control room and shoot a bunch of robot women with laser guns.  One of the robot women puts her hands up but Stellar don’t care that she’s surrendered, in a very non-Geneva-Convention moment they just fucking blast on that robot bitch anyway.  At first I struggled with the meaning of this scene and why they would portray Stellar in such a cruel hate-filled manner but then I realised that the music stops at that point – that’s when it twigged that the robot girls were audio engineers in a futuristic studio control room, and Stellar were killing them so they could stop this awful track, which is totally understandable.  Upon succeeding in stopping the horrible music Stellar grab a pixelated heart which probably represents the beating hearts of fanboys fapping to “Marionette” in three years’ time, and insert it into some kind of time-travel machine so they can move forward to 2014 but instead they inadvertently awaken Eric from Shinhwa who was in his cryo-sleep chamber sleeping off the years until Stellar did a concept he could fap to.  As punishment for disturbing him three years ahead of schedule, Eric reanimates the robot music producers and the shit music resumes all the way until July 2013.  Oh well, I guess the moral of the Stellar story is that all good things cum to those who wait.

23.  Sistar19 – Ma Boy

A few isolated good songs notwithstanding, Sistar have overall managed an incredible sleight-of-hand over the years, injecting enough fraudulent girl-power-lite into their tedious R&B junk to keep their female fans onside while simultaneously also maintaining the required amount of beach-body sex appeal to keep themselves on centerfolds sticky-taped to the back of army barracks locker doors across South Korea.  In “Ma Boy” Sistar19 (a subunit which in practice is “Hyolyn ft. Bora” as Bora usually gets about two lines of mumbled rap per song) turn up the gyrations to eleven in the hope that nobody notices that they’re dancing to some horrid mothballed R&B track not even fit for Chinese restaurant background music.  The strategy must have worked because Sistar are supposedly really popular now (or something) but that doesn’t prove anything much except that Koreans either like shitty music or know how to turn the sound of their laptops down while they masturbate.

22.  E.via – Chu~♡ (Pick Up! U!)

These days E.via goes by the name of Tymee and is busy being a quality thugged-out Unpretty Rapstar contestant and occasional League Of Legends competition player, but there was a time when she was doing cutesy raps catering to those who wished that IU would write a rap song about jacking off uncle fans.  Needless to say she cleaned up nicely, or rather her record label cleaned up and left her with pocket change, but that wasn’t the worst crime committed by E.via’s old agency DLine Media, who actually let this gaudy, hideous clusterfuck of a song through quality control.  Just to rub more salt into her wounds, Dline Media’s MV director didn’t even bother to make E.via look any good, throwing a horrible retro posterize filter on top of everything that just screams “this is cheaper than hiring stylists”.  At least the agency only ever released this severely shortened version of the song as an MV, sparing everybody a good two extra minutes worth of grating synthesisers, tedious Saturday-morning-cartoon-speed rap and cheese-grater-to-the-face aegyo.

21.  2AM – Never Let You Go

When JYP split up his eleven-member trainee group One Day into two separate units before debut, he called one unit 2PM and the other 2AM.   The symbolic meaning of the names seem clear enough – at 2PM the average person is awake, out and about working, at school or having fun, doing their business, and enjoying life.  At 2AM that same person is usually either fast asleep or alternately puking their excess alcohol out behind a bush somewhere while trying to simultaneously hold back a diarrhoea-infused turd threatening to creep out of their anus.  Thus it can be observed that the original group correspondingly were divided into two subgroups with the concepts of “music some of which somebody might actually want to listen to one day” and “nobody is going to give a fuck about this trash, gee we’d better make sure we throw down some money on the MVs”, and that they did.  Many ladyfaps were probably had to these guys singing while crying as rain wets their hair and clothes in a music video tour de force which is as well-executed as it is mystifying.  Why is everything blurry around the edges?  Why were three backing dancers given a doorway to to do a dance in that barely even fits them, let alone the dance moves?  Why didn’t JYP bury all the filler ballad rubbish like this in the albums like everyone else does instead of releasing it as a feature track?  No wonder half the group fucked off at the earliest possible opportunity.  Those tears are real, 2AM’s members are probably crying about drawing the short straw and getting relegated to the shithouse ballad group.

20.  Secret – Madonna

There are songs in the western pop canon that should never be copied or “soundaliked” by k-pop, simply because they are classic tracks that nobody is ever going to improve much on, because it would be almost impossible to do much better with them.  I’d put ABBA’s “Dancing Queen“, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall Pt.2” and the large majority of Queen feature tracks in this category.  Generally it’s better to copy a song that wasn’t that great to start with instead, because then there’s some room for improvement.  However one doesn’t want to go too far in the other direction either, because there are some western pop songs out there that are so utterly awful that even the best, brightest musical minds in history couldn’t salvage their basic ideas into something acceptable.  Without a doubt one of these terminally awful songs is Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love“, and we know for sure that it’s not salvageable because k-pop has had umpteen cracks at it, and each and every one of them is utter shit.  Ailee has had more than one shot at it, and Secret also had several attempts, including “Madonna”, which inexplicably was an even more boring song that Madonna’s “Secret” despite the latter song being one of Madonna’s worst ever singles, a turgid ballad of nearly unfathomable dullness.  Secret would go on to have many more attempts at the “Crazy In Love” template, all similarly awful, but none quite as awful as…

19.  5Dolls – Like This Like That

“Like This Like That” (not to be confused with “I Likey Likey Dis, I Likey Likey Dat“) wasn’t the first clone of Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love” to hit the world of k-pop but it was arguably the worst, topping everybody else’s disgraceful multiple attempts at this style in terms of plunging straight toward the bottom of the barrel of shit.  Out of all the 692 different soundalikes that exist in k-pop it was also the most faithful to the original, which obviously explains why it sucked the most.  Not only is “Like This Like That” musically total garbage (of course), but the girls don’t even look any good in the video, not even in the scenes where they are wearing school uniform-inspired clothing.  It’s like the group have extracted the powerful force of worthlessness in Beyonce and allowed it to infect not just the music but everything else around it and associated with it.  Don’t watch it for too long, or this supernatural force may transmit itself directly to your brain, and before you know it you’ll be spreading unfounded bullying rumours about adorable Eunkyo.

18.  BigBang & 2ne1 – Lolipop

BigBang and 2NE1 were two groups who mostly did quite well for themselves during the Golden Age, both musically and commercially, therefore it would make sense in theory that having them together on a track should be a recipe for awesomeness.  Apparently not so in practice, as the energies of the two groups seem to have cancelled each other out and what we’re left with is basically just a pedestrian electro beat with bland “stuff” over it.  It’s like Brokencyde’s “Freaxxx” with the screaming, bad hair, horrible raps and hard Autotune replaced with screaming, bad hair, horrible raps and hard Autotune.  Now I know what you’re thinking – “there’s no screaming in this song, Kpopalypse, what are you on about?” but every time I play it I hear screaming from somewhere.  Maybe it’s my neighbours screaming at me to turn this fucking lame shit off.  Maybe it’s my girlfriend who has finally had enough of my shitty blog-research music and is screaming that she’s leaving me and flying to a country where k-pop is banned.  Maybe it’s the internal scream of my brain cells from the part of my brain that processes sound deciding one by one that they don’t want to live in this world anymore, commmitting seppuku and leaking out of my under-utilised eardrums.  Or maybe I’m just imagining screaming because that would actually be preferable to what I’m really hearing.

17.  T-ara ft. Electronic Boys – Beautiful Girl

Actually it’s only one member of T-ara who got on this recording (Hyomin) so this is really “Electronic Boys ft. Hyomin” but T-ara gets top billing here anyway because their brand power is so fucking massive and all-encompassing that anyone with the opportunity would be crazy not to use it to the fullest.  T-ara can be used to sell damn near anything to anyone from shitty disgusting pot noodles that nobody in their right mind would eat to artery-hardening fast food strictly for homeless people and junkies so it figures that it can also be used to sell this awful song.  Hyomin’s voice cops a thorough molesting here from trendy-at-the-time constant hard Autotune but that’s probably nothing compared to the molesting that Electronic Boys wanted to give her, all through the cheap-ass studio MV you can see the guys sneaking sideways looks at her boobs when she’s not watching and inadvertently rubbing up against her.  Clearly the two members of Electronic Boys were so happy just to get Hyomin into the studio so they could engage in some sneaky frotteurism and writing an actual song wasn’t even an activity on their radar.  Hell, they’re probably not even a real group.  I can see the conversation these two charlatans had while they were planning this now:

“Damn Hyomin is fine.  Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we were idols and we got to rub up against her and grope her?”

“Well… why don’t we call ourselves a group and ask for a collaboration?  Then we can record in our tiny studio that barely fits three people and molest her a lot while looking at her boobs.”

“Yeah that’s a great idea!  But what do we call ourselves?”

“I don’t know.  Well, er… we’re boys and we’re making electronic music, so… how about… um, Electronic Boys?”

“Fuck it,  that’ll do… let’s ring CCM!”

“But wait… don’t we need a song?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.  Pay the fee to the agency and she’ll come, then we can just write any old crap while she’s on the way here in the van.  How hard can it be?”

16.  SM The Ballad – Hot Times

SM The Ballad have sure been responsible from some hideous musical turkeys over the years.  I wonder if perhaps the true function of this project group is as a dumping ground for ballads that SM Entertainment is required to release under some kind of contractual arrangement with the freelance songwriters but that are so shit that SM doesn’t want to pollute the reputation of any one single group with them.  The poor unfortunate souls who are lumbered with the task of trudging their way through “Hot Times” and sharing the load of collective shame are Super Junior’s Kyuhyun, Shinee’s Jonghyun, TRAX’s Jay and a rookie singer called Jino who never debuted.  Clearly after Jino was forced to sing this lurching, warbling pedestrian vocal-wank nonsense he understandably decided that the idol life wasn’t for him.  Maybe the initial signing sessions between Jino and SM were full of promises of all the quality music he’d be making as a part of the team, riding the new wave of sudden k-pop quality – then this song was tabled at a trainee meeting before the ink was dry on the contract and Jino suddenly felt like he’d been sold a bridge.  I wonder what he’s doing now – not reminiscing fondly about singing this, I suspect.

15.  Dal Shabet – Pink Rocket

Dal Shabet were originally conceived as E-Tribe’s pet project group, a special group that E-Tribe would write all the feature tracks for.  If you ever wanted to know why Dal Shabet never got anywhere over the course of the first few years of their history, now you know.  “Pink Rocket” is a typical E-Tribe production, full of random noise that just doesn’t fit and sounding like a cross between Juno Reactor, the more dance-oriented side of Throbbing Gristle and the sound effects for Commodore 64 computer game Wizball.  Which once again should be good in theory but is just not the right fit for what’s going on over the top of it all.  It hasn’t helped that they’ve used a wet electronic fart noise for a snare drum and most of the track has a really intrusive bubbling-lava-pit sound cutting through it that will blow your speakers’ bass response out twice as much as the song’s actual beat.  Eventually E-Tribe stopped producing feature tracks and shitting in Dal Shabet’s bathwater and it’s not coincidence that this is also around the time that the group finally stopped sucking.

14.  Girl’s Day – Kyawooddung (Tilt Your Head)

When it comes to shit debuts from groups that went onto much better and brighter things, it’s hard to top “Tilt Your Head” by Girl’s Day, a song that always comes up when “shitty k-pop debuts” rears its head as a forum discussion topic.  The awful music is self-explanatory and not really a mystery of any sort, after all in k-pop a shit song can happen to anyone, but what’s really puzzling here is that the video is also ugly and the girls even look like crap.  It’s helpful that the text “Girl’s Day” is in the bottom-right corner of the entire video because I really do need that constant reminder when I’m watching this video that I am in fact watching Girl’s Day and not some nugu group that went absolutely nowhere due to their debut song flopping harder than Hitomi Tanaka’s boobs on a glass tabletop.  It’s telling that when Girl’s Day released their first full album they included almost all of their early years-old singles apart from this one.

13.  U-Kiss – Not Young

This song is very confusing, because it starts off with “U-Kiss, we’re new kids on this block, you heard?” and then in the very next breath “stop treating us like kids, because we’re not anymore, you know what I’m saying?”.  No U-Kiss, I don’t know what you’re saying, that seems contradictory and I think you need to explain it again… or better yet, don’t – but if you absolutely must, explain it to me in a better song than this one.  “Not Young” sounds like it’s trying to be some kind of reggae-lite thing, but it seems that nobody told the songwriter how reggae actually works and that an important requirement of the music style known as reggae is that the emphasis of the chords fall on the off-beat (2 and 4) instead of the on-beat (1 and 3).  With the chords in the wrong spot this tune has all the flow of Elvis Presley’s last toilet visit but with none of the warmth, and unfortunately all of the pain.

12.  SHINee – Replay

Believe it or not, there are some people alive in the world today who believe that this song is not just SHINee’s finest moment, but represents some sort of high water-mark for k-pop in general terms.  I guess they’re just so blinded by the way these guys look that some bad music is not an issue, or perhaps k-pop has a lot of fans who dig generic R&B slop songs with vocal warbles and guys going “who-a-oh-oh-oh-aohhh” in horrible descending pentatonic scales over limp, soft beats.  Given how the k-pop world reacts with horror and disbelief whenever I tell people that Whitney Houston is a completely trash artist who never did anything remotely worthwhile with her life except take drugs with Bobby Brown and thus boost the American black market economy by a few tenths of a percent, I guess the latter may be true.  Anyway it’s hard to believe that this song is from the same album as the excellent “Lucifer“… oh wait, no it’s not hard to believe at all because almost every k-pop album in existence ever has a crap filler R&B track or seven, but what’s harder to believe is that SM actually released “Replay” as a feature instead of leaving it on the album to rot like they usually do with this type of crap.

11.  Kino – Actually

This song doesn’t start off too badly and then it gets to that blonde guy singing in the shower and it’s just nope.  It’s a moment that rivals Samwell, Skatt Bros or Azis for sheer gay video presence, and while there’s nothing wrong with the actual gay part of the proceedings, there certainly is something wrong with the song from that point forward.  I’m not sure what it is.  Maybe it’s the hard Autotune clunking away as per usual, maybe it’s that weird hiccup that the synth rhythm does that kind of fucks up the groove every few bars, maybe it’s the song just being boring and unremarkable as shit generally, or maybe I’m secretly mega-homophobic and in denial and me putting “Actually” on this list is a way for me to push away my inner demons rather than confront them.  In any event I’m pretty sure Kino didn’t release anything else after this, I guess 2011 was just a few years too early for K-pop to have a dog-whistle gay-friendly MV concept.

10.  Teen Top – Supa Luv

Hard Autotune and vocal manipulation is one thing but Teen Top’s “Supa Luv” takes it to the next level.  In the chorus it sounds like the keyboard Laurie Anderson uses to make the repeating vocal noises in “O Superman” had a Guru Meditation error and started spazzing random noises everywhere.  They might as well have just sampled each member’s raw voice, gotten the vocalists to go home and just played the whole thing on a keyboard with the captured samples, and in fact I’m reasonably sure that that’s exactly what the producers of this song did.  I’ve got no problem with any of that but if you’re going to use samples instead of the real voices of the guys this should open up a world of possibility because you can write outside of their vocal ranges and do all sorts of cool stuff, or at least use the opportunity to use samples to make a good song and not yet another k-pop song from the Golden Age that sounds like a reject from a Brokencyde album.  Watching Teen Top recreate this hot-stepping electrofart awkwardness on TV shows is certainly a laugh though, recommended.

9.  Kim Tae Woo, JYP & Rain – Brothers and Me

It’s bad enough that these k-pop labels try to convince everyone about the special camaraderie between idols with their stupid marketing (SM Town, JYP Nation, YG Family, FNC Kingdom, CUBE Rape Dungeon etc), now they want to convince me that CEOs are all buddy-buddy with singers who used to be on their labels… like “brothers”!  Suuuuure.  This song and video is directly aimed at the kind of people who actually would believe that SM’s CEO goes out for weekly drunken karaoke singalong sessions with Kris and Luhan, and it’s insulting to watch because they obviously think that YOU the viewer are that person.  Prepare to not just be insulted but also mortified and second-hand-embarrassed as you watch awkward-as-shit cringeworthy staged shots of the three guys pretending that they’re really the bestest buddies in the whole wide world, no, really guys, look at us clown around in front of the camera, yep we do this all the time this is totally what we’re like.  The song perfectly fits the action because it’s a sentimental pukefest every bit as trashy and bile-inducing as anything any of these people have been involved with at their lowest points.  You know you’re musically in trouble when JYP whispering his own name at the start of a song is actually the sonic highlight.

8.  Piggy Dolls – Trend

In such a crazily beauty-obsessed society as South Korea, debuting a chubby-chaser girl group was a bold business move, even if it was one that the label swiftly renegged upon.  Sadly it was a move that failed, because Koreans are Koreans, but I would have stood right behind Piggy Dolls with all my support if they actually had any fucking decent songs.  Having chubby girls in the group sadly just meant more vocalfagging, probably because of the prevailing attitude behind the scenes of “well, they don’t look any good so we’d better make sure that people know they can sing” – and this was also combined with plenty of trendy-at-the-time hard Autotune, a weird opposites-don’t-attract combination.  As a result the song is total trash because it’s designed to cater heavily to that “look, they’re talented really” plus “look how trendy we sound” aspect simultaneously, instead of, you know, just being a decent song.  At least the girl with the red hair was hot so this song and video wasn’t a complete waste of everyone’s time – or at least not mine.

7.  New.F.O – Bounce

If there’s one thing that’s pretty obvious to me when reading Allkpop, it’s that Johnny Noh thinks you’re a fucking moron and that he can get away with anything he wants and you will just roll over and accept it like a bitch.  What’s freaky about that is that he’s probably right – people complain about his shitty site all the time but apart from me it seems all you spineless fucks still fucking visit it.  Even after he attempted to destroy Ailee’s career over some leaked titty photos and enraged a whole country the best anyone could manage was a 72-hour boycott, as if that’s going to achieve anything.  Anyway with New.F.O Johnny discovered that even the stupidity of k-pop fans has its limits, and while putting up with his bullshit website is one thing, the k-pop group that Allkpop’s parent company 6Theory debuted was clearly stretching the gullibility of their reader base way past breaking point.  Everything about the song is dumb, from the moronic chorus that makes T-ara’s “Yayaya” read like a James Joyce novel, to the typically turgid dubstep breakdown, to the what-were-they-thinking styling.  Even the name treats you like an idiot, “New.F.O” stands for “New Five Order” but sounds like “UFO” so we have a sci-fi UFO concept, harhar get it?  Dad-humour at it’s worst.  Fortunately nobody gave a shit about New.F.O’s terrible song and they were disbanded very shortly after this song came out, which is a victory for music but a shame for the girls’ careers.  Mind you, maybe they dodged a bullet because imagine being a girl in a girl group with Johnny Noh as your boss and having him suggest that you get breast implants every other day and make lame “edgy” jokes about kicking you in the face if you don’t “get prettier”.

6.  miss A – Breathe

When the idea of making up this list occurred to me, miss A’s “Breathe” was the very first song that sprung to mind for inclusion.  A tuneless, nightmarish tribal-themed disaster similar to but far worse than T-ara’s awful “Yayaya”, “Breathe” swaps out T-ara’s garish American Indian costumes for tight-fitting tops and short-shorts yet manages to make the girls look even more horrid anyway.  Then there’s the music which sounds like Ladysmith Black Mambazo snorted a bunch of helium, drunk a case of Jack Daniels between them, then staggered into their local electronic keyboard store and started fucking around with the drum machines until the store manager kicked them back out onto the street.  It’s as if JYP bought a new keyboard and just decided to fuck around with what it could do instead of actually writing a song with it, and it’s telling that this is one of the first JYP-written feature tracks to not feature his trademark whisper at the start – I guess he was as embarrassed about putting his name on it as the girls were to be singing in it.

5.  April Kiss – Hello Bus

This group is so nugu that the MV for “Hello Bus” is either lost in time or it just didn’t exist in the first place because it just wasn’t worth the expenditure for the label to make one.  Either way, I wasn’t able to find it and you’ll have to settle for this TV show appearance.  There’s not even any comments on the video because everyone who watched it just stared with their mouths agape in stunned silence as to how a song this shitty can even get on TV in the first place.  I’m not even sure what to say about it myself, but the Lil’ Wayne-esque random yelling on the backing track is probably the only notable feature about this entirely flat, generic and boring song, and when the most interesting thing about a song besides the inexplicable name is that it sounds like Lil’ Wayne is on it, you know you’ve got problems.

4.  A-Force – Wonder Woman

Regular readers of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert knew that this song was definitely going to make the cut here, and the only question left was where exactly in the list it would be.  As it happens, pretty damn close to the top and there’s good reason – “Wonder Woman” is devastatingly bad, from the horrible synthesised guitars, to the “aaaaah, I’m wonder woman” chorus that seems to be inspired by a particularly painful dental visit, and nearly everything else about it from the styling to the dancing to the video is incompetent and laughable as fuck.  Just try and get all the way through the video without either laughing or turning it off, good luck with that.  This trash is also notable for coming from the songwriting pen of Bravesound (which seems incredulous given that even at their worst they’re not usually quite this bad but it’s true), and also featuring ex-Dal Shabet member and Korean softcore porn star Viki – but don’t get your hopes up for this video to deliver the fap, she gets the same ugly overdone bedazzle-makeup and terrifying clothing here as the rest of them.  How this hasn’t gone viral yet I’m not sure, but why not “Force-roll” your friends and help it along?

3.  Coin Jackson – Feedback

Imagine that it’s late at night and in the company gym Lipservice are practicing the choreography for “Too Fancy“.  After several takes, the choreograper stops the music and leaves the room briefly to grab a drink from the coffee machine.  Once the door to the kitchen swings shut, Bipa moves up close to Cora.

“Hey I found out you were in that useless group Coin Jackson – it figures, because you’re so crap” Bipa whispers.

“No… that wasn’t me… that was some other girl called Kora… with a K.  It’s spelled different”, Cora protests.

Bipa is unconvinced.  “That song Feedback was so fucking shit, what are you still even doing in k-pop?  Better not pollute my group with anything like that trash, you cunt.”

Bipa motions Anna over, who walks up and hisses in Cora’s ear: “I bet the reason why they didn’t focus the camera properly for that video is because you’re so ugly that you’d crack the lens.”

“But… it wasn’t me!” whimpers Cora.

Bipa snorts.  “Bullshit – I’m onto you, bitch.  You’d better start doing everything we say from now on, or we’re gonna fuck you up.  In fact why don’t you go right now down to the corner store and pick up some bread?  My friends drinking outside are hungry and I need twelve hot loaves, here’s 50 won” – Bipa reaches into Cora’s trackpants and deposits a single coin.

“50 won isn’t enough for twelve loaves!”, Cora protests.

“Think I give a fuck?  Go, get the bread now.  If you’re not back in two minutes you’re fucking dead meat, slut.”  Bipa gives Cora a pat on the ass as Cora runs out of the room.

A few seconds later the choreographer returns, coffee in hand, and immediately noticed that there’s only two of them.  “Where’s Cora?” he asks.

Anna shrugs.  “I dunno, she just left.”

Bipa plays dumb and looks nonplussed.  “She ran off, said something about dance practice interfering with her lifestyle choices.  She probably went food shopping because she’s such a pig.  I bet she comes back with tons of bread to feed her fat face.  She’s so sketchy, I wouldn’t trust her if I were you.  Just as well we hired Anna, hey?”

2.  Sistar – Tic Toc

This song is so incredibly bad that I couldn’t even believe it was Sistar at first.  Are these girls in the ugly T-shirts doing completely crap dance moves to one of the worst songs on the planet really the super-hot girls from Sistar?  Much research later and I confirmed that it is definitely them, and boy must they be embarrased by this one, because this sucks so badly that Starship won’t even put the song up on the official Sistar YouTube channel.  Sure, it’s only for a commercial film, but that’s no excuse for this fucking garbage – Orange Caramel, T-ara and SNSD made some of their best music ever for CFs so if it’s good enough for those groups to put in effort, it’s good enough for Sistar.  How the fuck this group ever got to the A-list with shit like this I have no idea but then Koreans will actually buy Busker Busker every spring so there’s no predicting what crap they will go for next I guess.

So who’s number one for the shittiest shit that was ever shat during the Golden Age of K-pop?

1.  The Grace (Dana & Sunday) – One More Chance

There’s been so much negativity here so let’s end this worst-of list on a positive note.  In the dark days of k-pop, the days before 2008, there was no sun, no life, no warmth, no flowers bloomed, dark clouds obscured the sky and a group were active under SM Entertainment called CSJH The Grace.  The tyranny of their shit music infested the TV, radio and Internet of Asia, spreading the plague of shit music disease to the populace wherever it went.  True music fans cowered in fear and subjugation, dreaming of a better day, a day when they would no longer live under the oppression of this group’s horrible music.  Then, all of a sudden, a miracle happened – a new group formed by SM Entertainment called Girls’ Generation released a song known as “Into The New World“, and the song title was not coincidental.  The new group were commercially successful, gradually diverting SM’s girl group energies away from CSJH, but more importantly they had much better music, showing the people what was possible for the k-pop of the future.  A new hope had arisen.  The clouds parted and the sun shone through for the first time, birds sung, flowers bloomed once again, and the frightened people came out of their houses for the first time and basked in the warm sunshine.  Eventually the news filtered back to SM, who upon realising what had happened, that they had lost their iron grip on the people to buy utter shit, quickly rushed out a CSJH subunit called “Dana & Sunday” with an awful song to try and regain their lost power and give themselves “One More Chance” to control the masses.  However it was too late, the chance was in fact lost.  The standards had been raised – no longer would the people accept what once was, they now knew of a better way.

Thanks for reading this epic list!  There’ll be more of these from me at the end of 2015!  Until then, stay safe and don’t listen to any of this trash!