Finding the Right Words

Part One; Journey Through the Stars: Chapter 1- Hooked on Korea

It was the last day of the year 2011, New Years Eve. Just like every year since Middle School, my friends gathered at my house to stay up until sunrise to make a wish, and then crash. Just like every year, we would eat a lot of food, do a lot of crazy stuff, and then get barely any sleep. The only difference this year: Alison brought a Korean drama.

Okay, so when most people think of a girls' sleepover, they think of pillowfights and nail-painting. Definitely not failing miserably at trying to scare the friends coming to the door because the coatrack fell down (Ali, not me), making horror movies about a teddy bear, and managing to get "drunk" off of punch and sparkling juice. 

When all of those activities were done, and we had eaten and played a few games, we sat down to await midnight. That's when Ali brought out the drama. She'd been trying to convince us to watch one of her Korean dramas for months now, but we were all a bit skeptical. Now, my friends and I are all extremely diverse, open-minded people. I'd been an anime fan for a few years, and had been learning a lot about Japanese language and culture. So I guess the Korean drama wasn't much of a stretch for me. But there's something about the word "drama" that turns away people like us. After all, Ali had stumbled upon her first Korean drama by accident. But Ali had recommended shows to us before (mostly animes for me), and she'd had pretty good judgement in the past, so when she declared that we were GOING to watch it at New Year's, we consented. How bad could it be?

It turns out that it wasn't bad. AT ALL. Within a few hours, Jacklyn, Emily, and I were completely glued to the screen. Who cared that we had to read subtitles to understand what was being said? Who cared that we could never remember one of the main character's names? The drama, "You're Beautiful," was absolutely riveting. Ali laughed at us countless times, saying that the only thing keeping her awake was the "commentary from the peanut gallery." Although, maybe we'd all had just a BIT too much punch. After every episode, at least ONE of us was running to the bathroom (usually me), begging everyone to wait to start the next episode until she came back.

Midnight came and went, with a brief pause, but everyone was much more interested in going back to the drama. We cheered "Happy New Year," drank our mock champagne, and then got right back to "You're Beautiful."

We barely noticed when sunrise came. We'd been so focused on the show that time had faded away, and our eyes had become heavy, but we ignored them and stayed awake to keep watching. We made a wish, and then Ali declared that she'd have to leave in a couple of hours. "Just one more!" we all yelled. So we ended up not getting ANY sleep that day. As her time to go approached, she told us that two of the actors of the characters we'd fallen in love with were members of bands, and that they were really good, and we had to go look them up. That was the hook. It was that night, that discussion, that pulled me into this world. 

 Ali left, taking her drama CDs with her, and then those of us remaining ate breakfast... and then went to the computer to watch one more episode. In total, we'd watched eleven episodes of "You're Beautiful" during that party, each about an hour. 

Each of us had had a different favorite character,  thus a favorite actor, and thus a favorite band that actor was a member of. Emily liked Jeremy, thus his actor, Lee Hong Ki, and thus his band, F.T. Island. Jacklyn and I liked Kang Shin Woo, thus his actor, Jung Yong Hwa, and thus his band, CNBlue. We embraced their music, realizing that there were places in this world where popular music wasn't always about partying, getting drunk, and sleeping with people. That there were songs at there that were fun to listen to, but didn't hint at things society was supposed to look down upon.

Okay, so I'll admit that we weren't the most loyal of fans. Within a few months, as we all discovered more Korean pop music, everyone's favorite groups changed. Jacklyn went from a Boice (CNBlue fan) to a VIP (a BigBang fan) and a Love (NU'EST fan). Emily went from a Primadonna (F.T.Island fan) to a Baby (B.A.P. fan). And I... didn't necessarily abandon CNBlue. I still liked them... I just liked the thirteen-plus-two member pop group, Super Junior... more. 

It didn't take too long for us to pull in other people. One of my best friends, ELiz, finally decided to listen to our encouragement and watch "You're Beautiful", and it didn't take long for her to get hooked on Korean entertainment as well.

In less than a year, my friends and I knew more about the Korean entertainment industry than we knew about the American one. We knew the names of countless popular groups, the names of each member, the fan name and color, and sometimes even the dance moves to go with their songs. We knew the most famous groups, and we knew their entertainments companies. Prevalent among them were the "Big Three:" YG Entertainment, JYP ENtertainment, and the one we found had most of the best music, and the worst English - SM Entertainment.

Ali and Eliz were avid SHINee fans. I was wildly obsessed with Super Junior, nicknaming myself an "ELF" or "EverLasting Friend," the name of their fangroup. We liked Girls' Genereation, f(x), and TVXQ. All of them were under the SM Ent. label.  The things SM did became extremely important to our lives, and as we became more and more obsessed with its artists, our feelings about SM became more and more mixed. 

SM picked incredible artists. There was no denying that. They had an eye for talent, and they knew how to pump fans for every bit of money. But as we learned more about our respective groups, we started to hate SM. Not for what it did to us - but how it treated its artists.

The lawsuit with TVXQ members that later formed JYJ didn't really bother me. But just when I had started to learn all of the members of Super Junior's names, I learned why, as I found songs from the more recent years, why Han Geng, the one I had nicknamed the "Sexy Chinese Member" before I had known his name, wasn't present in the music videos. I had loved his sweet personality, and his hilarious Korean during the Super Junior variety shows I'd watched. So when I found out that he had sued SM Entertainment and left the group, I wasn't angry at him. Not at all. I was, instead, unbelievably furious at SM. I was furious at how SM had treated him, to push him to that length. They had refused to give him a decent vacation for almost a year, they had ignored his difficulty communicating because he was Chinese, they had failed to understand legal procedures so that he could appear onstage in his first years of performing, and finally, they had failed to let him visit his family. "Furious" didn't quite describe how angry I was at SM Entertainment. They had found an incredibly talented, yet hard-working and gentle person, and crushed the life out of him. 

Yeah, I loved SM's artists, but I hated the company. With a passion. So you could say that SM and I had a love-hate relationship. Not that they even knew I existed, of course. After all, they were a Korean entertainment company. And I was a solitary ELF, wearing sapphire blue to celebrate SuJu's new albums, cheering "HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEE SUNGMIN!" instead of "Happy New Year!" all the way across the world in the cold, Great-Lake-State of Wisconsin.