Anyone who's known me over the past several years is probably aware of the fact that one of my greatest pleasure-only passions is following Japanese and Korean idol bands, but I've never quite had the opportunity to articulate well why I'm so passionate about the groups that I follow. To my immense delight, there were parallels that I found between the nature of my interest in idol bands and Stef's love of One Direction, and since she expressed an interest in learning about the group that I'm currently
obsessed with, I selfishly latched onto the opportunity to put together a primer and share my love more broadly.
A lot of the draw that the Korean music industry has for me is the fact that there's such a uniqueness to its structure. If you've ever watched the Fine brothers' K-pop reaction videos, they touch on that point in every Q&A. There is, to my knowledge, no other existing market that has such a regimented process for creating mainstream stars, and even within Korea, it's still a relatively new phenomenon. So, in the process of sharing my ridiculous love for these specific stars, I also want to be able to provide background and context, which I think can make navigating the Korean idol space much easier.
Since Stef's One Direction primer was so delightful and well-structured, I'm going to take a note from her book and split each one of my band primers into two sections — performance and personality. Given that EXO is the first primer I'm putting together, I'm also going to tack on some broader industry specifics at the beginning.
I really hope, even if no one latches onto these artists deeply, that these primers can at least be an interesting read. ♥
( This is long. You have been warned. )![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
