SNSD’s Tiffany interviews Brad Pitt

Known for her good English skills, Girls’ Generation‘s Tiffany and  Hollywood actor Brad Pitt sat together for an interview date in SBS One Night TV Entertainment.

Brad Pitt recently visited South Korea to promote his latest movie, World War Z. During the interview, Tiffany asked the Hollywood actor to greet her fellow member Sooyoung who is known for being a big fan of the actor. Brad Pitt also revealed the experience he had in Korea and his inspiration on making his latest movie.

Tiffany taught the Hollywood actor what “daebak” means. On the other hand, Sooyoung who is currently one of the MCs of the said show wished that Tiffany has asked Brad Pitt to say “I love you Sooyoung” instead of just saying “Hi”.

Check out Tiffany’s interview here:

[1080p HD] 130612 SBS One Night TV… by bugfany

Sources: News-smtownsnsd, Photos-smtownsnsd (1), (2) and video-bugfany on Daily Motion

Chart analysis: T-ara N4 album sales confirms the idol group is still one of a kind

This is an outstanding underlined fact perhaps mostly ignored in the K-pop world, but T-ara is indeed one of the top Korean album sellers on earth.

The main reason for it being that those physical sales are completely overshadowed by their records breaking digital sales, nevertheless, ever since their debut in 2009, the CCM’s main group physical sales have only been second to IU and SNSD for a female artist. Overall, the group has sold about 500,000 albums in Korea alone, and close to a million worldwide (including their Japanese releases).

Up until the huge controversy last year which lead to member Hwayoung‘s dismissal, every T-ara physical release would sold between 70k to 100k. However, their last Korean release, Mirage, saw a fall to 36k. Time passed after, and T-ara’s first original Japanese single, Bunny Style, broke their own weekly record in Japan and is expected to be certified ‘Gold Disk’ before the year is over. T-ara’s subsequent Korean release came on the dying days of April 2013. CCM’s official announced they would only produce 40k albums of the idol group first sub unit T-ara N4. As many expected, they did not sell out their stock. No, T-ara N4 debut single sold exactly 26,080 copies.

The number could sound a derisive disappointment to the charts ingenious, well mind you, it is more than female heavyweights of the industry such as SISTAR, Secret, Brown Eyed Girls, Rainbow and Girl’s Day ever sold; and more than Davichi, Miss A and After School sold since 2011. As for direct competitions this time around, this is simply twice as much than Name is 4Minute who sold 13,508 copies since release, Lee Hyori‘s Monochrome (12,573 albums sold) and three times as much as Secret’s Letter from Secret (8,388).  T-ara N4 simply grossed the highest sales to date for a female sub-unit next to Taetiseo (SNSD’s subunit); all this in just a month.

Despite the backlash in public opinion and the guilty pleasure some media outlets rejoice on denouncing the disgrace, T-ara, as a whole, continues to make history. Certainly, it’s not as impressive as SNSD and chances are it never would be. T-ara has only an edge or two above their female counterparts but they have this unconcerned brawn that brings them to heights you never truly expect them to reach.  T-ara currently stands as the 11th best physical seller of the ongoing decade in Korea; and the second best female physical seller. The performance of their first sub-unit indicates the idol group is the same ground breaker it always has been. It comes as a big nod to the naysayers: notwithstanding haters’ desires, T-ara will continue to reign charts, sells records by the ten thousands, and walk ga-ring ga-ring ga-ring upon the K-pop scene.

The opinions and views expressed reflects those of the writer and not that of hellokpop as a whole.

Source: Melon  Gaon

Pure Love f(x): Feminisms and K-pop Girl Groups

By Crystal S. Anderson PhD

Elon University (U.S.)

K-pop girl groups tend to be described as sexy, fierce or cute.  Some suggest that images of fierceness encourage girls to be empowered, while images of cuteness take away their agency.  However, responses by fans of f(x), a K-pop female group, suggest that fans prefer unique and diverse images of women.

Male groups outnumber female groups in K-pop, but girl groups attract large numbers of mostly female fans.  Commentators and fans describe these girl groups as cute, sexy or fierce.  On the blog Miss Unconditionally Moilicious, Miss Mila describes the difference between 2NE1 and SNSD, two of most popular girl groups, this way: “First of all, 2NE1 and SNSD are completely different. 2NE1 is westernized in every way and makes music with “the independent woman” theme. SNSD is much more oriented towards the Asian audience and makes cuter and less intense music.”

Fans tend to think of the independent image of 2NE1 as more empowering and the cute image of SNSD as less empowering.  One respondent wrote:  “I’m not interested in girl groups that go over the top with the cuteness and the aegyo because I just find that plain annoying. So to see a group that focuses on how strong women can be and how sexy women can be without the overuse of ‘cute’ is something that drew me in immediately.” (Anderson, “2ne1 Data Set”).

Lizzie at Beyond Hallyu echoes the critique of the cutesy image for women when talking about SNSD’s “I Got a Boy”:  “However, I was still shocked by how blatantly this song flaunts it’s reductionist, and frankly insulting, view of women. By using a more complex song structure to tell more stories and show more points of view, this song manages to create an even worse image of young women than songs like ‘Oh!’ by the sheer number of negative portrayals. Both the video and the song consistently portray women in numerous different examples as vain, petty, manipulative and incompetent.”

These opinions suggest that fans of K-pop’s girl groups only see images in terms of cute/fierce.  However, fans of f(x) say they like the group for reasons that go beyond the cute/fierce binary.

Like most K-pop fans, fans of f(x) like the group because of the music, which fans find to be unique.  One respondent wrote:  “Just like the meaning of their name, their music does not stick to a single or fixed genre, which i believe is a very good point in terms of music flexibility. they can go from dance to bubblegum pop then to ballads, showing their strength in adapting different genres of music” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”).

This range can be seen in the ballad “Beautiful Goodbye” and the dance single “NU ABO”:

Respondents also embrace the variety of concepts of f(x).  They say that the members have different personalities and different talents. One respondent wrote:  “Their music is amazing and their personalities are even better!” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”). Several respondents also made reference to their appearance, calling members cute and beautiful. At the same time, respondents identified Amber‘s “tomboy” concept as something they liked.  One respondent wrote:  “But most importantly I like the fact that they have Amber in the group, because she is a tomboy, and not any other group in Kpop or even in the mainstream really have an “amber” in the group!” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set).

This range of images can be seen in f(x)’s photo shoot for Marie Claire Korea and a photo from a Thailand trip:

Other respondents see the images of f(x) as falling in between those reflected by SNSD and 2NE1.  One wrote:  “I don’t always follow F(x) but they’re another unique image among girl groups! They also don’t go with traditional cutesy and sexy like 2ne1.” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”)  Another wrote: “They are  often over shadowed by their SNSD seniors which is what provokes me to pay attention to them even more.” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”)

Other respondents also identified the diversity of the members themselves in terms of ethnicity. One respondent wrote:  “Two Chinese members and two English speaking members which makes for me being able to understand them more. Support Victoria because she’s mainland Chinese like myself ” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”).  Another wrote:  “I also like how the group is half Korean and mixes members from different places.” (Anderson, “f(x) Data Set”)

Instead of limiting the members of f(x) to one image of women,  fans demonstrate that they like a range of images for women. Respondents shows that they include cuteness as just one of a range of images that women can take on. When commentators use the cute/sexy binary to describe girl groups, they are using an Anglo-American feminist lens that not only eliminates other modes of being a woman, but it also overlooks the role that race and ethnicity plays in expressions of feminism.  Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal write:

Many feminists who identify themselves as Marxist view all women as belonging to a unified class with a homogeneous class consciousness. The Eurocentric and class-bound nature of this analysis is reflected in the theorization of the family as the primary site of oppression. Third world feminists and feminists of color have objected to a hegemonic approach that demonizes non-Western families as more oppressive than their first world counterparts. (351)

In other words, commentators measure the feminism of K-pop girl groups by Western definitions of empowerment. These definitions do not take into consideration how different women may value different kinds of femininity. Specifically, commentators define feminism in K-pop by rejecting cuteness.  However, fans of f(x) show that they embrace a range of concepts of women, including cuteness. In this way, they are like other fans of K-pop girl groups. Sun Jung and Yukie Hirata explain that Japanese fans like K-pop girl groups for a variety of reasons:

K-pop girl groups present variedly constructed images including strong female images less visible in the Japanese aidoru pop scene, and many young Japanese female fans see them as role models. As widely reported, these fans find K-pop girl groups are kakkoii (“cool”) and sexy, whereas J-pop girl groups are mainly kawaii (“cute”) (Y. S. Jeon 2011; H. S. Kim 2010).

Fans of f(x) also value the variety in both concepts as well as the members of the group.  Specifically, they recognize the different ethnicities of the members of the group, something that also challenges an Anglo-American form of feminism.  The responses of fans of f(x) demonstrate that there are multiple forms of feminism at play in K-pop girl groups.

Images: f(x) 1, 2, 3

Sources

“에프엑스 f(x)_NU ABO(NU 예삐오)_MusicVideo.” Uploaded by SMENT.  YouTube. 4 May 2010.

“f(x) – Beautiful Goodbye.” Uploaded by CodeAnalysisSeason5. YouTube. 14 July 2011.

Anderson, Crystal S.  “2NE1 Data Set.” Unpublished raw data.

—-.  “f(x) Data Set.” Unpublished raw data.

Kaplan, Caren and Inderpal Grewal.  “Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies: Beyond the Marxism/Poststructuralism/Feminism Divides.” Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms and the State. Ed. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcon and Minoo Moallem. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Jung, Sun and Yukie Hirata.  “K-pop Idol Girl Group Flows in Japan in the Era of Web 2.0.” ejcjs. 12.2 (2012).

Lizzie, “Girls’ Generation has a boy and some serious gender troubles.” Beyond Hallyu. 1 Mar 2013.

Miss Mila, “Keeping up with Kpop – SNSD vs 2NE1.” Miss Unconditionally Moilicious. 24 Apr 2011.

Reprint of “Pure Love f(x): Feminisms and K-pop Girl Groups” © 2013 Crystal S. Anderson, KPK: Kpop Kollective, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Which is the current best selling song of 2013?

Five months into 2013, we take a look at the highest selling songs so far.

With or without surprises, it is still Baechigi‘s Shower of Tears (feat The SeeYa) that sits on the throne of the current leading digital song. It is closely followed by Sistar19, Leessang, Huh Gak, SNSD and a new entry PSY, whose track Gentleman has broke a few records for this year, such as highest first day of sales, highest first week of sales and highest first month of sales.

Watch Baechigi’s Shower of Tears (feat. Ailee) here:

Further up comes CNBLUE, which is quickly loosing ground with I’m Sorry whilst Davichi‘s Turtle and Be Warmed (feat. Verbal Jint) are both fairing strongly along with K.Will‘s Love Blossom which scored the second highest grossing monthly sales of the year. All the details and exact digital aggregate numbers are gathered below:

Source: Gaon  Melon (1, 2) neowizinternet

Stickers selling well on Line app

Jaejoong posted a photo of himself on Line with stickers on March 1.

Line, a smartphone application developed by Naver operator NHN, reported its 2013 first quarter earnings, revealing that its revenue was $58.9 million. 80% came from Japan, where the application was first introduced. Half of the revenue came from in-app purchasing, and paid stickers contributed another 30%.

Recently, Line revealed that it passed 150 million registered users and planned to extend its services to Europe and South America. In Spain, for example, they gained more than 10 million users after the rollout of the app for iOS and Android, backed by effective TV ads.

Line is a messaging application that includes games, multiple-user chats and special features, like kawaii emoticons called ‘stickers’ that can be attached not only to messages but to photos as well.

K-pop celebrities also use Line to communicate with their international fan base and to share exclusive in-app content. JYJ, for example, shares behind-the-scenes photos and audio/video messages and hosts random chats with members, while Big Bang leader G-Dragon released his MichiGO track exclusively through Line.

Other celebrities using the service include FT Island, Super Junior, 2AM, 2PM, the Wonder Girls, Miss A, Kara, Girls’ Generation, ZE:A and Lee Min-ho.

Are you following any K-pop favourites through Line?

Sources: Techcrunch (1, 2)
Photo Source: JYJ account on LINE application