☊ celebrating 90’s kpop fandom ☊

Smoldering passions, excruciating heartaches, simple-minded yet mortifying mistakes, and outrageous hormones. Smells like high school!!! ㅋㅋㅋ



Watching 응답하라 1997 is like returning to those insanely cruel years... It made me look back and wonder how the heck I lived back then. And I started to wish that I was part of this grand fandom starting from its heydays in the 90's! It feels like an out of body experience NOW ~~~ I'm seeing my more recent fangirl struggles circa 2008-2012 happen during the era of my own teenage drama years. Ahhh this is crazy!!!




Discovering this world of hot-blooded fangirls from the 90's is infinitely fascinating! It is hard to imagine Korea and kpop before this age of netizens took over. The girls lining up all night to buy concert tickets, recording the broadcasts on VHS tapes, and calling from payphones for something similar to the "Starcall" we have now... WOW, those were some real trying times. I can imagine how those first generation fangirls would scoff at how we now worry about raising youtube views for our idols. How our present day crises must seem laughable to them hehe~




And so Sung Siwon's character commented that fangirls have it easy nowadays as almost everything can be done online already. But if you look at it closely, "easy" is not exactly accurate. I would say that fangirling is most definitely different nowadays. Hallyu brought international fame and added a new complication to fandom. Korean fans had to welcome this change and make the most out of it. I've heard plenty of stories on how some k-fans are disappointed at the behavior of international fans during concerts and live broadcasts. It can be a love-hate relationship between fans of the same group! So indeed, diversity can be both magically amazing and painfully challenging at the same time.

And then you have to consider the perspective of a foreign fan as well. It could be a foreign fan living in Korea, a foreign fan living overseas who has been a fan for multiple years, or lastly a foreign fan who was a more recent captive of Hallyu... The difficulties vary for all three types but the feeling of being an outsider with your heart on your sleeve must be the same.



I wonder if they will make a drama or movie about US (foreign fans) in the future ㅋㅋㅋ How crazy we are doing our best learning Korean, lining up for concerts and plays we don't understand and streaming on online music sites like there is no tomorrow. I wonder how nostalgic THAT would feel...