Growing Up With (and Out Of) K-pop

Written by Sharon Hamza

Red Velvet at the 25th Seoul Music Awards in January 2016

“ By twenty-one, I’ll be done with this K-pop thing”, I said at seventeen. I am twenty-years-old now. So, with one year left on my self-prescribed K-pop clock, am I close to being done with it? Well, sorta kinda. My first encounter with K-pop took place in my cousin’s house back in 2016, where she introduced me to the song“ Call Me Baby” by EXO, and I was gagged. Before I knew it, I started watching“ EXO acting crazy for 10 minutes straight” videos on YouTube and memorising their birthdays. Then, I discovered BTS and yeah… I was officially in this K-pop thing. 

At the time I was exposed to the vast industry of K-pop, I was around the age of ten or eleven, so it has been a major part of my lifestyle and interests. Growing up with K-pop has influenced many facets of my life: obviously my music taste, but also my sense of humour, and it’s also ushered in many embarrassing fashion choices. The K-pop industry is more than just music; it’s intricately designed to draw its audiences into a never-ending cycle of continuous consumption. Being a ten-year-old, I didn’t understand that this, in fact, is what made K-pop so alluring. There was always something to look at, something to buy, someone to adore. But once I blew out the seventeenth candle, things changed.

“The K-pop industry is more than just music; it’s intricately designed to draw its audiences into a never-ending cycle of continuous consumption.”

One thing that I believe prompted me to say what I did at seventeen was my views on what it means to be an adult. I believed that the ignorant bliss I experienced while being a young K-pop fan had to end at some point. The age of a legal adult in the United Kingdom is eighteen and I guess, I felt as though I had to subscribe to the stereotypical ideas of adulthood; be serious, get a job, pay bills. 

An adult K-pop fan can’t do that right?

The frameworks built from all the years of being engrossed in the industry started to falter as I became more aware of myself and of things I perceived as holding greater significance in my life. In my head, K-pop served as a distraction to the heights I had to achieve (I know, seventeen-year-old me did not play about her future). 

In addition to this, I realised the capitalistic and exploitative nature that lurked behind the seemingly-perfect smiles of all those within K-pop. My perception of K-pop as an industry rather than a peaceful utopia was most likely the last nail in the coffin of my preteen K-pop stan self. 

But looking back I think,“ If I thought eighteen was the be-all-end-all for fun and my love for K-pop, why did I give myself to the age of twenty-one?” Because, in some ways, I didn’t want to let it go so soon. The thing that played such a large role in my formative years was not that easy for me to discard. Gradually, I became less involved in the“ stan culture” side of K-pop and only tuned in when my favourite artists dropped a new song or album. Thus, I left the hard work to twenty-one year old me. At both ten and seventeen, I had equally intense feelings towards K-pop. I don’t have to let K-pop consume me and I don’t have to completely reject it either. 

There is never a deadline for something you enjoy! So, here I am at twenty with eight months to go and I can proudly say that I am extending that deadline till the day I die.