Lady Gaga and... Crayon Pop

In case you hadn't heard already, Lady Gaga recently announced the opening act for her upcoming tour: K-pop group Crayon Pop. Do you know them? Perhaps not, but they wear helmets and jump up and down, if that helps you at all. T-ara also started their career with a signature paws for their first song, and Crayon Pop now looks to headline one of the biggest music acts. Lady Gaga recently announced it on twitter, as did Billboard, so we know it to be true, and I wonder if this will mean anything for Crayon Pop's international career. 

And the other question, at least I asked immediately, was why? Why Crayon Pop and not another group? They are relatively new, so they don't exactly bring anything to the table for Lady Gaga's tour.

Of course, there is also the comparison between the Wonder Girls / Jonas Brothers and Crayon Pop / Lady Gaga. Of course, Wonder Girls were significantly more established than Crayon Pop in Korea, whereas Lady Gaga is significantly more popular as a pop artist than Jonas Brothers in the U.S. And of course, she has connections to a non-tween fan group that will certainly cement Crayon Pop more. So we'll see what happens with this latest development.

Relationships: the catch 22

So a culmination of a multiple of things I've seen recently made me want to watch this post.

I'm watching K-pop star (more on my favorite people later) but one of the things Park Jin-Young (head of JYP Entertainment) said to one of the youngest auditionees the past two rounds was that because she was young and didn't have as many experiences (particularly relationship-wise) her singing wasn't emotional.

Despite the fact that I would counter that by saying you can use other experiences in your life, not only from romantic relationships to portray emotion in songs even about heartache, that's actually not the point of this post.

So where am I getting to?

New Kpop Group... Jackie Chan style?

Apologies for the lack of posting these past couple of days but let's get right to it.

I flagged this news piece so I could write on it. Jackie Chan is creating a male Kpop group called JJCC (I read somewhere it was for Jackie Jackie Chan Chan... but I can't seem to find that report anymore. It's looking like they will go by "Double JC"). 

Anyway, in their 20s, 4 of the members are Korean and 1 is Australian-Chinese. 

So why did I feel the need to flag this news report? 

Kpop to Socal (Southern California) & YG

Every year, there is a Kpop festival at the Hollywood Bowl. This year, or actually I believe most years, it's held in May. This year, KBS has agreed to sponsor a free festival in the LA area, with a good K-pop lineup. I'm actually curious as to why they agreed to this, considering there is the Hollywood Bowl concert each year, and its a pretty hefty price tag to bring everyone to the U.S. for one concert. But that actually isn't the main story in this post.

Why SoCal (for those who don't know... SoCal = Southern California)?
Well, in terms of Korean diaspora, Southern California has the largest Korean Diaspora population in the U.S. The greater Los Angeles area is the #1 metropolitan area with the highest Korean American population (see the 2010 Census, or.. wikipedia)

Several K-pop stars hail from the LA area as well, including Tiffany (SNSD), Nicole (Kara), Nichkhun (2pm) and more. In part, because well... because there are k-pop concerts and also places to audition. Particularly with the rise of survival audition TV shows, one of the locations guaranteed to go appears to be LA (and also NY seems to be another popular spot) for K-pop Star, Superstar K, Birth of a Great Star, ect. In addition to concerts (Kim Bum Soo, 2ne1, Big Bang, SM).

So why am I bringing this up?

Athletes and National Identity

I wanted to share a blog post I wrote for another blog, the Journal for International Policy Solutions

read it here: http://internationalpolicysolutions.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-korean-peninsula-athletes-and.html if you are interested in the topic of athletes and national identity (focusing on Viktor Ahn, Korean-turned-Russian speed skater)

KDramas at its finest

Now when I said my last post would be short, I was lying... this one will be.

Just wanted to feature this link from buzzfeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jul13hong/21-vital-elements-of-a-fun-super-addicting-korean-drama

because I think it's hilarious (and commonly found themes in Korean dramas). And yet, why are Korean dramas so addicting at the same time?

Contract expirations & group member changes

I'm traveling, so this post is likely to be short, but I just wanted to point out an interesting phenomenon in Kpop, which has actually also happened in American pop culture as well: group member changes (교체). I thought I had posted on this before, but regardless...

Most recently, it was announced that one of Kara's original members Nicole would be leaving the group after her contract expiration.  Also, Jewelry's Eunjung's contract also expired recently so we will see if she will also leave the group. Davichi's contract expired, and it isn't clear what exactly is in their future (although it looks as if they are going to release an album with Core Contents Media despite the contract expiration). Long time soul/ballad singer Gummy moved companies after her contract expired. Finally, after Wonder Girls unofficially didn't-break-up-but-stopped-promotional-activities-due-to-leader-Sunye-got-married-and-had-a-baby (also known as indefinite "hiatus") Sohee left JYP and expressed a desire to start an acting career. Of course, before Sohee, Sunmi left the Wonder Girls and is now a solo singer.

I am sure there are more that I missed, but notice a trend in these group changes