The Unfortunate Shift in the K-pop World

          Let's talk about a fun topic: K-pop, or Korean pop music! But I want to narrow it down and focus on one thing that may not be so fun to discuss - how K-pop is changing today.

          When I was 7 to 8 years old, we had a TV satellite which let us have Korean channels and we paid for it monthly or something like that and so I could always watch my Korean shows. This included music shows, such as KBS Music Bank, MBC Show! Music Core, and SBS Inkigayo. (Why aren't there any of these music shows here in America, where music artists can promote their new albums by performing their single on TV?) That's when I started liking K-pop. Then we moved and we no longer had Korean TV but we still watched our dramas and shows online, but I didn't really watch music shows then.

          Then around 2009, I started getting into Girls' Generation (소녀시대) and I went to Korea that year for the second time in my life. Being in Korea increased my interest in Girls' Generation as they were advertised everywhere and I could watch music shows again in Korea and so I was all about Girls' Generation then. That was the good ol' days, right before the "baby boom" of K-pop. Now there are too many girl groups and boy groups to count and frankly, they're all the same now. Anyway, so I was all about Girls' Generation, I didn't really have interest in other groups but then that slowly changed too.

          As I got back in to K-pop, I stopped listening to American music, and I thought K-pop was so much more better because American music was either about sex or drugs which I don't want to listen to about. On the other hand, K-pop had none of those things, it was just mostly about cute love. Since then, I don't listen to Pop music really anymore. 

          But as the K-pop industry got big, and I mean in terms of both popularity and the number of debuts of new groups, sex appeal also became increasingly popular. Sex appeal has always been there but now, it's just more widely used, to my dismay. Most other "K-poppers" say they've gotten into K-pop because of it's clean music, but now they're disappointed with K-pop's evolution. New girl group Wassup ("wassup" with their name??) made headlines as they were going to introduce twerking to the K-pop world, which many K-poppers didn't like.

          K-pop may be the popular music genre in Korea, but that's not the only music genre. There's also the usual trot, ballad, R&B, hip hop and etc., and K-pop is supposed to have this clean image. So yes, explicit music has existed somewhere in the Korean music industry, but the fact that K-pop songs are hinting on sexual concepts just upsets me. Plus the majority of the clothes that K-pop stars wear usually expose too much skin, and honestly, a lot of K-pop idols have very young fans, like kids in elementary school, and the clothes they wear and the songs and dances are not so healthy for these young friends to watch and listen to. Arrgggh, frustration!!

          Honestly, I haven't been catching up on K-pop - it's a busy world and I'm also a busy person. And the crazy influx of rookie groups is too much and like I already said, they're all the same now. The last rookie groups I took interest in were B.A.P and B2B (both debuted 2012).

         Anyway, back to the main point of this blog post - I find the whole shift in K-pop to be extremely unfortunate. I get that competition is high now and to be put in headlines, you gotta do crazy things like twerking (....I guess), but honestly there needs to be some change.
(640)