Tag: Korea

Legends of the Weeaboo

I’ve already spoken about Koreaboos before. The people who want to be Korean, marry a Korean, want to be just like a Kpop idol or Kdrama star. They reject their own culture in the name of adopting Korean culture (or rather, what they think Korean culture is like).

The weeaboo is almost like this. Actually, they are the forefather to this. The weeaboo, rather than being centered around Korean pop culture, is centered around Japan. The weeaboo rejects their own culture in order to adopt what they believe is Japanese culture, proclaiming it as superior to everything else. They base their idea of Japanese culture off of anime and manga, imagining it as some perfect society that is more advanced than any other culture, and that it has had no bad history or political issues.

The weeaboo began to form around the 1990’s, when the West had access to popular anime and manga. Young generations now had access to watching anime, influencing an entire generation, causing some to go a little overboard and become weeaboos.

Except, at the time, they weren’t called weeaboos. Until the mid-2000’s, weeaboos were called “wapanese”, meaning white Japanese (despite people of all races having the potential to be a weeaboo). The old name was mostly given on online forums, with sites such as Reddit and 4chan coining the terms.

However, in the mid-2000’s, some 4chan moderators decided that they were sick of the term. They banned the term wapanese, causing users to scour the internet for another name. This is how they found the term weeaboo. The term came originally from an obscure comic, which is in no way connected to the actual group of people. However, it was a word that also didn’t have a meaning of its own, and was thus made what it is today.

Weeaboos are still going strong, although they now have to compete with koreaboos, causing an ironic and hypocritical battle between the two groups. They are both disgusted with one another, but can’t seem to relate the traits of the other groups back to themselves. It’s kind of weird, but amusing to watch.

How Kpop got its Place in Western Media

Now that the season of music and movies has hit, Spotify has begun releasing a weekly playlist called “New Music Fridays”. I’ll listen to it sometimes to find music to add to my own personal playlists, and am unsurprised with the typical English and Latin music that comes on.

Today was different, however. Today I was pleasantly surprised to hear Blackpink’s “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du”, which had been released today (along with the music video for it). Blackpink is a prominent girl’s Kpop group, whose song “Boombayah” had broken records for being the most viewed debut song on Youtube, and achieving 150 million views in less than six months. Even as I write this, the music video “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” became the fastest girl group Kpop music video to hit 10 million views. To hear their newest song on a playlist of otherwise Western songs was interesting.

The song (which was pretty good, by the way) got me thinking about Kpop as a whole. Just six years ago, most people outside my neighborhood (I grew up in a Korean neighborhood) had never heard of Kpop. Now, advertisements featuring BTS (the most popular Kpop group of right now) are growing increasingly less uncommon, and just about everyone I’ve spoken too knows about Kpop. This did not happen for no reason.

No, the reason Kpop has burst on to the scene goes beyond the accidental popularity of “Gangnam Style”. South Korea’s entertainment industry sits in an interesting situation, receiving direct funding and advisement from the Korean government while at the same time holding themselves as a private industry. This is because while the South Korean government is promoting a market economy with both a private and public sector, they are promoting it in a way that gives them control over how they promote the nation’s image. They want Kpop and Kdramas to spread and show how “cool” of a country South Korea is. The goal is to have their pop culture be known not only in Eastern and Western markets, but also in what’s called “developing” markets as well.

With the massive amount of funding the entertainment companies receive, they can push out higher quality media, to the levels of Japanese and Western media. They promote a Western appeal (adding rap, street wear), while at the same time keeping a unique flair that is inherent to Korean media. They were trying to make their brand known.

But even with all the effort put in, many were shocked to find that “Gangnam Style”, a lyrical satire about the Beverly Hills of South Korea, took the cake for breaking into Western markets. The song, which makes fun of the mannerisms of the rich in South Korea, was not the song the government wanted to be the first Kpop song that new audiences heard on a large scale. While that isn’t to say that they didn’t want singer Psy to make the song at all (he was a relatively popular artist within South Korea), they certainly didn’t want it to become that popular. But not everything can go according the plan, however.

I can’t say “Gangnam Style” was the song that put Kpop in the spot it holds today.  It seems more like the genre gained a more permanent footing when BTS shocked audiences by snatching the title of Top Social Artist at the American Billboard Awards in 2017, beating out prominent names like Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. It sent the internet ablaze, being divided between fans who were excited for the win, and quite a few people who were asking “who are these guys?”. And while Kpop was popular already, I felt it opened more people to exposure from Kpop, getting more people to jump on the “Korean Craze”.

Crazy Kpop Fans vs. Koreaboos- the Important Difference

Since the release and popularity of “Gangnam Style” by PSY, Kpop, and Korean pop culture in general, has soared in popularity in Western pop culture. This continuing rise in popularity has led to BTS’s recent performance at the New York New Year’s Show, and the rising presence of Kcon (a convention centered around Kpop and other pop culture). It has also created created a rise to the super fanatics, or the “crazy Kpop fans”, and the koreaboos.

What is the difference between the two? While the koreaboo does classify under the category of “extreme fanaticism” like the crazy Kpop fan, one is distinctly different from the other. How is this so?

Well, the differences come in attributes. For the crazy Kpop fan, which holds the name sasaeng (a Korean term which literally translates to “private life”, referring to the regular invasion of privacy of Kpop artists by their crazy fans), the attributes come in the form of deep psychological and emotional obsession with Kpop, and certain groups in particular. The sasaeng fan are not considered “true fans”, constantly trying to rip off artists’ clothes, kiss them, and stalk them. While the sasaeng fan is in the West is much more virtual-based, writing fan fictions of all sorts about their favorite idols, buying anything and everything that they believe belongs to their favorite idol, and “virtually” stalking their idol, there has been increasing physical contact, with some sasaeng flying out to South Korea in order to try and find their idols.

The Korean sasaeng fan is much more direct, and will break into idols’ rooms, set up cameras, drug the idols, hit the idols, in order to be remembered. They will get in taxis or their own cars in order to follow their favorite idols, which have resulted in previous multi-car accidents and stand offs. They will even go so far as to try and kidnap their favorite idols in order to get close to them. This cultural phenomenon has existed since the 1990s with the rise of “fandoms”, although they are gaining heightened momentum and attention under the digital era, with as many as 100 sasaeng fans following the biggest Kpop idols on a given day. Their behavior is erratic and dangerous, having a direct impact and life-threatening impact on the Kpop idols.

The Koreaboo by contrast, represents a much different and more muted form of harmful. The koreaboo is best described as someone who denies their native culture, idolizing Korean culture (based off of Kpop and Kdramas) and claiming it as their own. The koreaboo wants to be a Korean, seeing them as the “most attractive” or “best” ethnic group, and dreams of moving to Korean and marrying a Korean person. They try to act like how they imagine a Korean person acts (based off of Kpop and Kdramas) and are basically Korean fetishists. Kind of reminds you of Rachel Dolezal and Ja Du, right?

With this is mind, how can they possibly be harmful like the sasaeng fan? Well, they’re more harmful in the way that they ruin things for everyone else. Because of their cultural fetishism, they stigmatize liking Korean popular culture, and make anyone who has an interest in seeing South Korea or learning about their culture look bad. They do not directly harm the lives of their favorite idols, but they do promote cultural stigma, and make enjoying other cultures look “wrong”, particularly among younger populations, who are affected by the Kpop phenomenon the most. They represent a mutation in fanaticism, a minority with a big and memorable voice that exists not just with Korean pop culture but also Japanese pop culture (the weeaboo, which influenced the name koreaboo), and European pop culture (although they are considered much more socially acceptable by the West). They force casual fans to feel “bad” about what they like, and ruin all the fun.