ew kpop
Click to viewnostalgiaaaaa of middle school, high school, college
aka evolution of korean hit songs
i thought i was pretty uninterested in korean things for a korean person ever since leaving the fob clique in middle school but considering how i (surprisingly) know 90% of these songs probably not. i did really cut myself off from korean things around 2005-2006 though. so i don't know a lot of the songs that were popular around that period.
i don't know why there are zero shinhwa songs here though. they had at least two songs that can be considered huge hits. bigger than some of the songs here. oh well. even if shinhwa itself isn't in here there's one song that is written by minu and another featuring eric. and one song which has a music video starring dongwan. lol HURR
hit songs reminds me, there is this aspect of korean culture i used to loathe--koreans tend to become really intensely and collectively obsessed over a certain trend briefly before moving on to the next. i mean that is what pop culture is, i know, but in korea EVERYONE does this and if you don't follow the trend you end up effectively isolating yourself from the rest of society. resistance is futile. everybody force-feeds you the trend and if you don't accept it you still get it forced on you anyway and people look at you weird if you don't like it. and when you look around everyone is wearing the same shoes or sunglasses or listening to the same song and sporting the same hairstyle and it is ridiculous.
i didn't mind this when i was in elementary school because i was a babby but eventually with puberty and the onset of i'm a special butterfly syndrome i found it suffocating and it was part of why i decided not to hang with korean people anymore. i mean there were lots of other reasons because i'm sure i didn't decide to abandon my heritage because i wanted to be a snowflake, but anyway. during puberty i was really annoyed at everything though.
but by the end of high school and in college i started to calm down and revisit korean things. i mean i still don't like getting stuff forced on me but with the whole retardedly emotional part of puberty gone i could deal with koreans and their korean ways without feeling nauseated like i used to. and i don't feel like i need to run away from them. but that might also be because there are very few koreans i deal with now, and none of them are the unbearable types straight from seoul that i got sick and tired of in middle school. i still don't feel the need to surround myself with korean people. i think it was actually a good thing i stopped hanging with fobs because if i didn't i probably would not have lost the accent fast enough or not learned enough vocabulary or something else that made me even more illiterate than i am now.
sometimes i feel like i am having an identity crisis because i don't know if i'm korean or american or canadian. i know i am a little bit of all but sometimes i feel like i belong to none of the above. i think i'm more american than canadian nowadays but when i talk to my coworkers i find i have nothing in common with them and i make better small talk with korean strangers than american strangers.
i think i would want to meet another korean who is the exact same mix of cultures as i am. it might be interesting. all the koreans i have ever met in my life were either way too fobby or could barely speak any korean. or not my age. i'm sure my problem is the world's third most common first world problem but i haven't met anyone who is just the right mix of korean and [something else]. it's not even a problem and it is kind of a random time to be having thoughts about identity but yeah.
i am also realizing only lately how convenient it is that i am bilingual and that my second (fluent) language is korean instead of something obscure like burmese (or norwegian..). when i start working somewhere i automatically win points by being able to deal with clients who often don't know english. said clients are often really grateful about having a translator too. i haven't had bad experiences translating for someone even though i know some koreans like haggling and being in people's faces. i also find that koreans just become more friendly to other koreans in general when there are foreigners around. the less whitewashed(? i don't even know what the politically correct term for this word might be) they are the more they are like that. even the korean vets are kind of like that and sometimes i find they are nicer just because i am korean. or i still have self-esteem problems and attribute their positivity toward me as something that i didn't earn. whatever.
but sometimes i find that even the animals of clients are racist and even the retarded and aggressive ones respond better to korean because their owners are korean and it's kind of funny. but i also feel kind of bad that the dog is like that, like it's my own dog being rude to other people.
teddie isn't racist. actually i think he likes blonde women.