Korean idols

A few days ago I had dinner with Korean friends. We talked that it's already been 7months since we came to United States and then we changed the topic of conversation to some Korean news. Of course most of our conversation was about which singer is famous and what drama is the most popular now in Korea. And I was a little bit embarrassed because I couldn't get what my friends were talking about. After I came to U.S.A, I tried to keep away from Korean news and Korean pop culture and I even haven't call to my friends in Korea so far. I sent them a letter for Christmas but that was all. Sometimes I really missed my Korean friends but it was pretty helpful to adapt myself to new life here.

Anyway I was surprised that there were many singing groups that I had'nt heard about their names. My friend showed me some music videos of them while she was making fun of me that I'm not gonna catch on what people are saying after I go back to Korea. The singing groups were Korean idol groups which usually are consist of young pretty teenagers. Maybe if you are an Asian, you will understand easily what I'm talking about. I think they are distinguished with American idol groups.

Anyway those idol groups are pretty young as I told you above, they are mostly 15~18. And they are likely to focus on appearance and fashion style rather than singing ability. I don't wanna criticize them that they are not good at singing though they are basically singers. Because I think it is one of pop culture and people like them though they know that they are not good at singing.

But, the side effects are enough to consider. Many teenagers want to copy the idols and they are easy to be collectivize that leads teens plastic surgery and judging people by appearance. In addition, some of young idols also have difficulty to survive in competive entertaintment world when they are so young and cannot adapt school life. Moreover, their popularity is just up and down and up and down.

Ah, I didn't intend to talk about social problems in Korean pop culture. I just wanna share with some newest popular Korean idol groups. Actually two groups, 소녀시대 (girls' generation) and Cara. They are all girl-idol groups. As you see, the number of members mostly more than 5. Maybe because of 'the more the better' way of thinking. Although some people don't like one member in the group, but then they might like other members of the group. Other characteristics are that the lyrics are repeated over again and dance composition is not that difficult. It is because of an attempt to make teens to copy them easily.

Ok, here is 소녀시대 and the name of the song is 'Gee'.


Another one is Cara's 'Honey'.


Enjoy!