February 2012
16 posts
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Thoughts on David Bevan's "Seoul Trained" in SPIN
Please feel free to correct me if I’ve made any factual inaccuracies or errors.
Nice title page graphic. I would put that up on my wall if it was a centrefold.
As “K-pop 101” articles go this one is a good one, on par with MTV Iggy’s “K-Pop Uncovered” from 2009. It does a good job of both introducing the industry and discussing the Hallyu wave and overseas...
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aaliriyah: Anonymous asked: Can you explain to me... →
FIRST OFF: Fandom isn’t some grand club where we agree on everything. It would be cool if that were true, but it’s not. Especially in k-fandom I find that there’s a large disparity between people who don’t sexualize idols (characters would be a replacement term here if we were talking about most other fandoms) at all VS. people who sexualize idols with all their might.
I can’t reblog...
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KPOP and Black Music: Rap
todiedreaming:
The formula for a kpop group is nil without the rapper. The charisma of the rapper gives a group an extra push towards westernized music. Rap represents musical progression that parallels western music, which is the goal of the Hallyu Wave- to rank among or at least compete with the Western music market.
[The history of Rap is an extensive one that is embedded with black culture...
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Racialicious: Asians Are Stealing Our Boyfriends... →
How does a white woman claim to be the victim of yellow fever? I know, it’s so absurd it’s funny. But she manages it, by denying the impact of racism, and replacing it with a spiteful sense of competition. She doesn’t criticize her boyfriend’s race-conquest. She doesn’t flinch at his weekend tally of Asian indulgence. Instead, she basically protests that Asians took my boyfriend.
In...
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Black-Asian solidarity in the wake of today’s... →
titotibok:
jhameia:
titotibok:
After ESPN called Jeremy Lin a “chink” in an article headline and KPOP songwriter Jenny Hyun argued for genocide against black people, race scholar Dr. Sarah Jackson tweeted about things that blacks and Asians in the US share:
On the real though there is a lot of love and history between Black folks and Asian folks no matter what these individual a-holes...
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Deadspin: What We Talk About When We Talk About... →
Yellow Mamba. Fortune Rookie. The Linja.
Oh boy. Obviously, it’s completely impossible to talk about Jeremy Lin without talking about race. Mindful of the other Asian players who’ve played in the NBA, I think it’s still safe to say that Lin is the Asian player who, through a combination of circumstance, luck, timing, and some monster performances, has captured...
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The man-tears guitar ballad, three ways
Three songs that I’ve been listening to a lot lately all seem to come from the same family tree: MBLAQ’s “낙서” (Scribble), Beast’s “이럴 줄 알았어” (I Knew It), and Block B’s “싱크로율 100%” (Synchronization 100%). They’re all guitar-picking ballads that mix rapping with tender vocals, but each gets a stylistic twist, as if the same song...
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The State of the Male Magazine Writer →
beautravail:
I read that loathsome attempt at music criticism in Esquire, and then I got angry, and then I wrote this.
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January 2012
20 posts
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Directory of Feminist Kpop Bloggers →
This directory lists feminist/social justice-seeking k-pop bloggers who view k-pop and fandom with a critical eye.
We love our respective fandoms, and enjoy stanning our oppas/eonnis; however, we will point out problematic topics when we see them.
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“Like most women, I currently live in a society where violence, harassment and...”
– Tiger Beatdown
Recent controversial events in K-pop
Some crazy shit has been happening in K-pop recently. Since I don’t have much more to add besides what other people have already covered, and since I’m not sure how many people who follow this blog also follow other (better) K-pop/social justice blogs, I’ll aggregate it here:
After Dal*Shabet had a special dance stage with B1A4 that involved physical contact between Dal*Shabet...
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Thoughts about "yellow fever"
In which “yellow fever” means “East/Southeast Asian fetish” and/or refers to the thing some men (usually non-East/-Southeast Asian men) say they have when they have found themselves attracted to an East/Southeast Asian-looking woman (women considered “yellow”). They also say they have it when they’re trying to attract an East/Southeast Asian woman, and for...
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Am - Dm - F - E7
I’ve started playing guitar again and doodling around with some K-pop songs. There are a bunch of 2PM songs whose choruses can be sung (with some modulation) over the chord progression Am - Dm - F- E7 and still sound right, to my ears at least:
Again & Again
니가 밉다
Without U
I’ll Be Back I suspect “My Color” works as well, but I haven’t tried it out.
Video...
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My ask box link in the sidebar works again so you... →
Or just click above, I spose.
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Ask a Korean!: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know... →
Do Korean guys go for non-Korean [white, black, Latina, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Martian] girls?
If there is only one thing to remember about Korean men, it’s this: they are men before they are Korean. Do you have breasts and a vagina? Then at least some Korean men would go for you. It’s relatively uncommon, but hey, interracial dating is always relatively uncommon.
The Korean cannot...
December 2011
15 posts
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problematic/offensive kpop music videos
jazzyfact:
brogigayo:
Soooo I’ve compiled a handy list of kpop music videos that my followers and I have found offensive. If you can think of any other MVs to add to the list, please reblog and link! Also give a description of why the MV is offensive, so people will know what they’re getting into when they click the link.
How Gee-Big Bang (blackface)
Yayaya-T-Ara (‘savage’ native americans,...
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12 favourite K-pop singles of 2011: 6-1
Continued from part 1.
Other singles I liked this year that I didn’t have anything to say about, didn’t feel like writing about again, or that didn’t qualify:
2NE1, “Hate You” (not title song) 2PM, “I’m Your Man” (J-pop) B1A4, “OK” Clover, “La Vida Loca” GD&TOP, “집에 가지마” (Don’t Go Home) (banned)...
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Why are crying North Koreans more "funny" than,...
maura:
Gonna guess it’s not because of our knowledge of Kim Jong Il’s crazy dictatorial nature.
I’ve been avoiding looking at/commenting on anything to do with Kim Jong Il’s death because I’m afraid of seeing people LOLing at “crazy brainwashed North Koreans”.
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12 favourite K-pop singles of 2011: 12-7
favourite = I wanted to listen to it, I enjoyed having it stuck in my head, and I thought about it enough to have something to say about it.
Listed roughly in descending order from “good but kind of embarrassing” (12) to “mind-blowing” (1), though the placement is by no means definitive - I’m not a digital chart.
12. U-KISS, “0330”. For a song that is...
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Sound of the City: Live: 2NE1 Says Hello To... →
I often feel as if K-pop would be successful in North America for its direct engagement with pop forms here were it not for a kind of inborn, historically inextricable xenophobia. Even strong, passionate fanbases can remain ghettoized, recognized only once in a while by the media for the absurdity of their affections. But something about the branding, the specificity, the knowledge with which MTV...
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Woollim Girls: [NEWS] 111204 - Baby Soul's first... →
woollim-girls:
The singer ‘Baby Soul’ (19·Lee Soojung)’s first digital single ‘No Better Than Strangers’ got caught under KBS’ review.
KBS forbid Baby Soul’s single title track ‘No Better Than Strangers’ to broadcast because its lyrics included words that belittled men.
‘You can’t even do this you jerk, am I asking for something big? You can’t even do this you wicked man, you should at least...
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