On waiting...

"If 'love' is another way to say 'waiting'...
Then I want to call you 'love' as well."

Fourteen years and counting...

#youknowwhoyouare

The annual thing...

Happy birthday, Andreas Hermanu!
You never reply my e-mails, hence this public shout-out.
Whether or not you're married, whether you decide to have a barbecue again or go overseas to celebrate, I hope you're surrounded by love on your special day and may your last birthday before officially entering middle age-dom be memorable!

The vampire/goth edition of K-pop

This one entry is dedicated to Simon Bacon and Eva Gledhill, two world-renowned British researchers with a penchant for vampires, monsters and all things gothic. I met Simon and Eva at the third "Celebrity: Exploring Critical Issues" at Mansfield College, Oxford, UK, in July 2014.

Below are a selection of K-pop videos from 2000-2015 that have a dark theme. In the videos, the dark theme is used in a myriad of ways, from a mere cliche (as in Taeyang's "I'll Be There"), a symbol of lost innocence (in Park Jiyoon's "Adult Ceremony") to a take on Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."

So without further ado...


"Adult Ceremony" by Park Jiyoon (2000)
At the time of the song's release, Jiyoon was only 18 years old (international age.) I have already mentioned in a previous entry that while in most parts of the world she was considered legal at 18, in South Korea she was still pretty much a minor, as the age of consent there was 20 (international age) and it wasn't until 2013 that age of consent was lowered to 19. This should come as no surprise as Jiyoon was under JYP at that time, which is (in)famous for sexualizing minors in a variety of dark themes, which would be seen many years later in Suzy Bae (real name Bae Sooji) of Miss A.


"I'll Be There" by Taeyang (2010)
This mega hit by Big Bang's Taeyang (real name Dong Youngbae) is also available in Japanese and English, but his English pronunciation isn't that clear in the song and I'm not a fan of K-pop songs in Japanese, hence this original Korean version. Find Taeyang's tribute to that iconic scene from "Nosferatu" at 02:01.


"Pray" by Sunny Hill (2011)
A main fixture on the lists of K-pop videos to watch for Halloween, "Pray" was released when Sunny Hill was a co-ed group (it remains the only co-ed group in K-pop history) in 2011. In 2014, Sunny Hill's only male member Kim Janghyun left the group after completing compulsory military service to focus as a producer for the group.


"Touch" by Miss A (2012)
The opening scene still kinda gives me nightmares, more than four years on. Oh, and by the way the album version has a rap break by one of the group's Chinese members, Meng Jia.


"Hyde" by Vixx (2013)
Vixx stands out from the rest of K-pop boy groups for its consistency in the exploration of dark themes. If blood and gore are more your cup of tea, check out "Voodoo." For more loose adaptations of famous gothic literary pieces by the six-piece band, take a look at "Error", which is their take on "Frankenstein."


"V" by Lee Junghyun (2013)
Directed by Park Chanwook, dubbed the Korean Tim Burton, "V" by Lee Junghyun reminds me of "House", a 1977 Japanese slapstick horror movie. I totally dig the vampire brides, and my favourite scene is one starting at 03:38.


"Bad" by Infinite (2015)
What makes this one special is that "Bad" was actually released during summer time, a time when K-pop is bombarded by videos around the theme of beach and pool and skin-revealing outfits (hahah here's looking at you Sistar)! I love how the "Bad" video plays with the mirror theme as much as I love Sunny Hill plays around with the crucifixes in their "Pray" video.

Fellow K-poppers, am I missing anything? Which one do you like best?

First entry in twenty-sixteen

Back from a two-month long unannounced hiatus everyone! Oh and annyeong haseyo to my Korean visitors. I got more visitors from South Korea than ever while I was away.

Been busy teaching short semester (which would be called summer school overseas but Indonesia is a tropical country) and tending to my thesis students - all but one got panicky around a week before the final draft deadline. Talk about typical.

Now on to what I wanna talk about.

I know it's super duper late but I've been crazy about this single lately.



I have almost as many followers on Instagram as she does...which is not a big number. "Clutch Bag", which was out in September 2014, is her last single so far, and as not all solo artists in the K-pop realm are as lucky as IU (real name Lee Jieun) or Eric Nam, there's not a wonder that Hi.Ni is so little known despite debuting in 2012. On top of that, there's very little information about her on the internet. Her birth date is still unknown, and a source mentions that her real name is Won Yuri. If the latter is true, there's not a wonder in the world why she goes under a special stage name (the same source says that "Hi.Ni", which is Vietnamese for "baby", was given by her dad when he was working in Vietnam) because otherwise she'd be mistaken for Kwon Yuri of Girls' Generation.

People who have listened to "Clutch Bag" complain about the rap part a lot, and at first I did find it annoying. But overtime I just got used to it - it didn't grow on me, I just got used to it. And I started listening to the song just as I started to collect clutch bags. Hi.Ni is so talented, she definitely deserves lots more love. For more Hi.Ni, check out her earlier single "Legend of Tears."

Nine Muses in the analogy of Infinite

I've been playing that song for five days straight, since its release on November 24 2015.


"Ticket", the second Nine Muses song that got me hooked on the band after "Figaro", which I've already put on this blog twice. If you happen to be Indonesian and remember the '90s Indonesia, don't you think it sounds a little bit like the disco dangdut genre that was popular at that time?


If you're a Nine Muses fan (henceforth a "Mine") who also happens to be an Inspirit, you should notice by now that Park Minha is like the Lee Sungyeol of Nine Muses. Both are considered the "dead weight" of their respective groups, not as talented as the rest of the group in terms of singing and dancing. While some fans argue that Minha is the visual member of Nine Muses just like some Inspirits consider Sungyeol Infinite's visual member, there's no denying that Park Kyungri is the most famous member of the eight-member girl group. In other words, whether or not Kyungri was meant from the start to be the visual member just like Kim Myungsoo was set to be so for Infinite, she attracts people into Nine Muses just like Myungsoo lures girls to become Inspirits. And let's not forget the fact that both Kyungri and Myungsoo are pretty decent vocalists with more lines than Sungyeol and Minha combined.

And after the departure of Ryu Sera, who is herself a legit all-rounder (a super gorgeous multi-instrumentalist who writes songs, danced well (though not as well as Park Eunji, also a former Muse) and served as one of the main vocalists), a lot of Mines have stated that they stay because of Moon Hyuna. Hyuna is another main vocalist who's turning 29 in January 2016 (international age) and one of those bonafide 'vampire idols' alongside 2NE1's Sandara Park and Super Junior's Choi Siwon. In short, she's the Kim Sunggyu of Nine Muses.

A 'dead weight' member is totally nothing new in K-pop bands. Almost each band in the genre has one such member, another example is Juliane Alfieri of the now-defunct girlband Chocolat. As with the history of all girlbands and boybands anywhere in the world, K-pop bands are formed mostly, if not entirely, for commercial purposes. Visual members are there to attract people to their bands, a duty they share to varying degrees with the main dancers, while main vocalists are usually those that make fans stay. All in all, each member has their own reasons to shine and each has more or less equal amount of chance to become favourites among fans. But what about the dead weight members? Do they serve other purposes besides backing vocalists? Are they there to...make young teenage fans with low self esteem feel as if they have someone to relate to? You tell me.