Confession of a Fangirl; my 2 year old sister is a Kpop lover.
By: Jeysee Christine C. Hong
Back in 2009, I became a fan of Super Junior and Kpop in general though I’ve known their music even before that. When Super Junior invaded the nation with their phenomenal Sorry Sorry, I was a convert: from jpop to kpop, though my first love is still jpop.
A year before that, my third sister was bugging me about Jaejoong and Changmin, claiming that they are ‘hers’, well I didn’t bother, don’t hate me but I didn’t like TVXQ then, I prefer Arashi. But now there is a greater love for Kpop but I still love jpop, and in TVXQ, even though 2 of them remained in the group, I claimed Yoochun; or the fact that he was the only one left to claim XD.
So this is a story about my 2 year old sister who is a kpop fan, and I’m not lying, she really is a fan. Me and my 2 younger sisters, Mee is turning 18 this October and Lee will turn 16 by February, have the habit of ‘claiming’ idols, whether it’s jpop or kpop. In Jpop, I have the habit of claiming one member per group, but when I discovered Super junior, I claimed the whole group (lol). But Lee begged and asked that she may have 2 SJ members and I agreed, she irritated me enough to persuade me. But we don’t know the members back then, we only know Henry from the Don’t Don video for his name was the only English.
So the power of internet aided us and when we searched for Super Junior, she picked Donghae and Eunhyuk which I ‘gave’ to her. And I also gave Heechul and Shindong to Mee just to be fair.
Looking back at the One Love Video where Lee pin pointed the members that she liked, she told me “Achie, the members that I liked are actually Ryeowook and Heechul” and Mee turned to her and said “NO!! Heechul is mine!!” and I won’t give Ryeowook away too.
And so we decided to have our top 5 favorites in Super Junior, such that when we sing their songs, we won’t battle it out who sings what part. The game was first come first serve and on the first round, Lee immediately said Sungmin! I was surprised then Mee shouted Siwon, I was stunned, which member should I choose? So I shouted Ryeowook. On the second round, I was not going to go last so I shouted Yesung! Mee took Kyuhyun and Lee took Hangeng. To cut the story short, I ended up having Ryeowook, Yesung, Heechul, Kibum and Kangin as my favorites, but since I can’t sing the rap part of Kibum in Don’t don, my sister Lee exchanged Zhou Mi for Kibum.
And now when we have discussions about our favorites, we will look at Mee and tell her that it’s unfair, for she got Kyuhyun, Siwon, Eunhyuk, Donghae and Shindong, all of them have parts in every song: which means 60% of any SJ song would be Mee’s part, while me and Lee would settle for the chorus etc.; glad I took Ryeowook and Yesung, the two lead vocals.
Maybe I influenced my sisters way too much, now even my younger brother knows them, he would ask me, “is that Kyuhyun?” And I would answer “you know them?” and he looks at me with plain face and replies “duh! How can I not know when you talk about them and watch them every single day!” Yeah, my brother is right and I would just laugh at him and myself.
But most surprisingly, my 2 year old sis, Dee is a kpop fan too! It started back in 2009, after the release of Shinee’s Ring Ding Dong. I downloaded the video and was watching it when my mom, asked me to look after my baby sis, she was just a year old then. She was sitting on my lap and we were watching the video when I asked her “point to the handsome guy that you like” she pointed to Jonghyun, and he was one of my Shinee bias aside from Onew. Then we repeatedly asked her all throughout the video and she would consistently point at Jonghyun; for a year old, she is one smart girl.
Whenever my mom would do an errand and I am left with my baby sis, we would watch kpop videos, one of them is Sorry Sorry. During that time, she even learned the Sorry Sorry Hand movement, so cute^^
Ok, I’m a real bad influence now, but what can I say, the kid has a knack for Kpop. When 4jib was released, me and my sisters would play Shake it up, coz we love the upbeat song, and in a matter of hours, Dee was singing along in her broken baby language and you can only hear ‘it up”; last night when we played the song again she can mutter “shake it up” and not to mention that she dances along with it.
After No other video was released, me and my sis asked her to point to the one she likes and she consistently points at Ryeowook, Sungmin and Kyuhyun, did I tell you that Dee has good tastes? Hahh yeah, she’s claiming every one of my biases. Moving on, when Shinee released Hello MV, there was a part in the video that made me, Mee and Lee really laugh hard. During Jonghyun’s scene with the bubbles and a kid, Dee would point at the girl and shouts “that’s me!!” repeatedly; during that itme she is fond of bubbles. Yeah, she loves that guy way too much that she may even used ESP to make the director add that scene XD.
And that’s not all, she would reply “hello” in each part that has Hello, and she waves at the screen too. And only recently, when I opened my laptop, she came running to me and shouted “Achie, hello!! Hello!!” My face looked really blank then like a relieved idiot I understood her, she wanted to watch the video.
During the first leg of SS3, Zhou Mi actually sang I will always love you for his solo, during that time, I would always sing that song instead of a lullaby when I put my sis to sleep, a couple of days later, she was singing along with me, when I sing “and i…” she would reply with “rabu”. At first I wasn’t sure if she was singing or not, but my mom would say , “wow, my daughter is a singer” , so it was confirmed, she is really singing that song.
Anyway, more stories and this one are from an aunt who got converted recently. She was really mad at us when we do researches on Kpop and hog the computer because of that, but after playing No other on loop for several days, we were surprised to see her sit beside us and asked for the video of the song. We all laughed but as we watched the video, she instantly liked Donghae, muttering his name as Kicheol, or the character played in a KBS drama.
Moving on, we would joke around with our sis Dee and points out that the SJ mems as our Boyfriends, and Donghae was our aunt’s BF, actually Lee was kinda mad, Hae is her BF (lol). So while watching No other, all of the sudden, when Hae’s part came up, she shouted “ah.. that’s our aunt’s Boyfriend!” My sister Lee flared up and shouted at her. “No, He’s my boyfriend!!” Cute siblings aren’t they. And when we let her point to our boyfriends, she then pointed Kyuhyun as my boyfriend, well at least she chose one of my biases, I think she pointed to Heechul for Mee’s BF, she was delighted.
And last on this long story is Dee’s love for Kim Tak Gu, yup that baker king has stolen my sister’s heart! When GMA 7 decided to air it on local TV, Lee was overly excited for she really liked Baker King, but then our baby sis Dee started shouting Tak Gu!! And that’s it she liked that guy and my sister Lee just gave up the idea of claiming Tak Gu.
I’ll end it this way~ just sharing my side of being a fangirl.