What kept me tethered for so long was how magical it originally felt to be part of the fandom in those early days. Being a fan before the genre became a global behemoth felt like being part of a secret society. Curated playlists didn’t exist, and official music videos were rarely uploaded immediately after a song was released. To access full albums, I had to dig through Tumblr or LiveJournal for 4shared links hidden in fan comments, often in zip files labeled something like ‘BIGBANG_ALIVE_[HQ]’. LiveJournal, especially communities like Omona They Didn’t, was the epicenter for international fans like us because it archived translated content and hosted discussions on comebacks, teasers, and K-pop scandals. It was a chaotic, funny, and deeply nerdy platform. It also felt like a second home.
Buying albums was also a hurdle. Being an international fan meant that if I wanted to buy a physical album, I had to rely on group orders because of the expensive shipping costs. Someone on a forum would collect money, place a bulk order on our behalf, and redistribute the albums which thoroughly saved my pockets. Eventually, I got exposed to more second and third-generation groups such as B.A.P, EXO, and 2NE1. By this time, my room was completely plastered with K-pop paraphernalia, especially posters of my favorite group, BIGBANG. As the genre gained traction outside of Asia and third-generation groups such as BTS and BLACKPINK hit global stardom, I was already a veteran fan and part of many online K-pop spaces, including r/kpopnoir, a subreddit for Black K-pop fans.
But as the years progressed, my devotion to the music that shaped my identity as a teenager started to fade as I continuously witnessed a series of racially insensitive incidents by K-pop idols. I was an avid watcher of K-pop variety shows in the early days especially during the second and third-generation K-pop groups. Back then, it was nearly impossible to get through an episode without encountering something blatantly racist — whether it was the idols or hosts mocking Black accents, or playing stereotypes of Black people just for laughs. I remember watching an interview on C-Radio’s Idol True Colors in November 2014 with Red Velvet, when Wendy gave an exaggerated impersonation of how she thought Black men speak. It was chock-full of exaggerated stereotypical mannerisms. Of course, it wasn’t the worst offense I’d seen by then, but it made me pretty uncomfortable how the idols and the hosts found humor in offensive stereotypes. No acknowledgement or apology was ever made.
Each successive instance of cultural insensitivity, appropriation, or blatant anti-Blackness left me feeling more uncomfortable than the previous one. As I weathered them, I convinced myself that most idols didn’t fully understand the cultural significance of what they were doing, that their mistakes came from ignorance rather than malice. I held onto the hope that they would eventually learn and improve, or at least, their management companies would educate them.
