By Ilena Peng
When MJ Choi was a child in Korea, the term K-pop didn’t even exist. But by the time Choi founded her hip hop dance studio I Love Dance in 2006, the genre had already emerged and people were mimicking the dance moves they saw in music videos.
“When we actually copied the movement doing the exact same thing, it [felt] very cool,” Choi said to AsAmNews. “We feel connected and we feel like ‘oh we’re cool like them.’”
Driven by that feeling, Choi’s dance studio began offering K-pop classes in 2006. As interest in the genre increased, the classes became a mainstay of the studio.
Choi’s studio is one of many locations worldwide that offer K-pop classes from San Francisco to NYC , as well as internationally in countries like Canada and Australia . Choi said people want to be a part of
K-pop — not just spectators watching and singing along.
She said the large number of people in each K-pop group boosts the group’s popularity, since fans can always find a member they relate to. She also said frequent participation in TV shows and commercials also gives fans a more personal
connection that they might not find in other musical genres.
“You get to see them more often on the screen, not just on the stage, so you feel like they’re next-door friends and you get to like them better,” Choi said.
K-pop has been referred to as a “global phenomenon” by publications, like in this video from Forbes and article from Vox — and its popularity continues to soar. Since the first K-CON was held in 2012, the
popular boy band BTS has appeared on Ellen in 2017 — the four-minute video now has nearly 17 million views. The group also debuted on Saturday Night Live in April, making them the first South Korean musical guests to do so.
In the same month, K-pop girl group Blackpink performed at Coachella . Although South Korean artists have performed at Coachella before, the Los Angeles Times noted that the performance was the first time a “K-pop idol group at the height of its powers” performed at the festival.
Ying Dong, the operating manager and a K-pop instructor for I Love Dance, became a fan of K-pop when he was 16, and joined I Love Dance as a student before becoming an instructor.
Dong said that K-pop classes are different from watching online tutorials in that it provides people with an opportunity to connect with other K-pop fans. He added that the studio teaches dance routines from different music videos — each dance into four parts that are taught over the course of four weeks. Each week, there are multiple classes for students to get more practice, as well as build confidence.
“Sometimes K-pop choreography can be very hard, so we do our best to keep trying even though it’s hard, but it’s something they like and it’s something we can make learnable for everyone,” Dong said.
I Love Dance currently has two locations in New York, and is looking to expand that number. Last fall, they opened a new location in New Jersey.
Nearby, Born Star Training Center NYC provides students with classes in singing, dancing and Korean to prepare them for a career in K-pop. Born Star has training centers throughout South Korea, and the
one in NYC is the first center they created in the United States.
Hannah Hong, the center’s CEO, said the center was created because of the global interest in K-pop, as well as the interest of South Korean
entertainment agencies in hiring native English speakers.
“Now because [in] the U.S., a lot of students love K-pop so a lot of Korean companies are coming here to try to pick the students from U.S. because they speak English,” said Hong
Hong thinks the center may expand to different locations in the U.S. in the future. The center also gives students opportunities to perform at events and audition for agencies in South Korea. If selected by
an agency, the student has the opportunity to train and debut in South Korea, Hong said.
The center has 60 students of varying ethnic and economic backgrounds, and Hong aims to create a supportive environment for all of them. At times that comes in the form of family orientations, and
other ways of informing parents about their children’s K-pop endeavors.
Other times, that supportive environment is a direct result of Hong’s own connection to her students.
“It’s like a family, all my students,” Hong said. “I feel that they’re my children so I’m supporting them well so that’s why they study hard.”
At Orange County K-Pop Academy , founder Ernest Cho said he hopes K-pop music and the classes the studio offers will help younger students in another way — through increased confidence.
“K-pop music [is] not just about love … I think they represent young people’s minds or young people’s thinking,” Cho said. “I hope young people just gain more confidence in their life and they just work hard for their careers in this world.”
Cho first started offering K-pop aerobic classes in 1999, catering mostly to Korean American students in the area who already listened to K-pop and were looking for a way to exercise. He began offering K-pop dance classes seven or eight years ago. Soon after, students of other ethnic backgrounds began joining those classes.
He referenced his own interest in American music as a teenager to help explain why he thinks K-pop is becoming so popular.
“I couldn’t speak English but I just loved American pop music, I remember when I was a high school student,” Cho said. “I think that’s the same thing for American students [now.] Even though they don’t
know the Korean language, they just found out there are other kinds of music.”
He said K-pop music blended other genres of music from different cultures and made it their own, true to what Koreans often do. He added that he hopes that this interest in K-pop will lead people to learn more about Korean culture and how the country is developing and changing.
Mickey Hyun, the external relations manager for the Korean Cultural Center NY , agrees that K-pop is an introduction to Korean culture. Hyun said the goal of Korean Cultural Centers is to spread Korean culture — everything from arts and cuisine to sports. In recent years, that includes K-pop as well.
The Korean Cultural Center NY was one of twenty participating centers worldwide in the K-pop academy, a four to five-week program that was created in 2016 by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Hyun said the program is taught by South Korean instructors working in the industry and has roughly 40 students per year.
“Times are changing right and K-pop is becoming so huge that it is a part of contemporary culture and especially because it’s so wildly popular,” Hyun said. “It’s such a great gateway for people to learn about Korea.”
As a native Korean who grew up in the United States, Hyun said she is fascinated by the amount of traction K-pop has gained worldwide but is unsure of the driving factor behind the genre’s popularity.
She describes K-pop as a mixture of different dance styles and musical genres, and says that even within the K-pop genre, there is variation between the styles of different bands that could contribute to the appeal of K-pop.
“There’s a lot of things to find really fascinating about K-pop and I think people kind of are able to pick and choose from that kind of magic bag of aspects that are so interesting,” Hyun said.
Like Hyun, Hong found it difficult to pinpoint a specific reason people of different backgrounds are drawn to K-Pop. Hong said that people like the music, and then become immersed in other aspects of Korean culture. She doesn’t know why, but she can see the happiness K-pop brings to them.
“Music makes Black, White, Asian or whoever come together — even families come together, and then it’s like a United Nations and [it’s] just all happy,” Hong said. “[The] only music [that] makes the whole
world happy is K-pop — that’s what I think.”
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