A devoted watcher of Korean soap operas, I happened to click on a suggested video. I had discovered k-pop, short for the popular music that dominates the Korean entertainment industry. I was in love—my budding hormones were grudgingly but ardently ignited by their flaming charisma and brightness.
At first, I felt guilty and self-consciousness about liking k-pop, a result of prejudices against the industry inherent from my compulsion towards purity in art, a preoccupation with being “real.” Essentially sold as a product to a fan-base of teenage girls, k-pop, like western boy-bands, is often perceived as artificial and manufactured. Attempting to reconcile my enthusiastic presence in the k-pop fan community with my artistic identity, I constantly probed for the suffering beneath any crack that might appear under the veneer of pop-star