Episode 95: “I’ll Love You Forever” feat. Giaae Kwon
My guest for this episode is author and OG K-Pop fan, Giaae Kwon! Her book I’ll Love You Forever: Notes From A K-Pop Fan mixes K-Pop history with personal narratives. With so much of the “K-Pop” conversation in the media dominated by a post-BTS influx of stans, it was really refreshing to hear from a fan who had been here since the days of H.O.T.
Some of the topics we discussed:
My (in progress) series on BigBang.
I’m pretty sure the Taiwanese drama I watched in 10 minute chunks on a janky streaming site was It Started With a Kiss starring Ariel Lin and Joe Cheng.
RIP to the Soompi Forums; a lot of English language K-Pop fan history was lost when they shuttered.
The pimp post was a time honored LiveJournal tradition to get your friends invested in your new thing with a pimp post, explaining the new thing and why it’s awesome. I vividly remember one explaining how if you liked Arashi, you’d love SHINee and then going through the members like Ohno → Onew, etc. Most of these pimp posts are lost to time but here’s an archived example.
I had no idea Dramabeans was still active but there you go!
THERE IS ONLY ONE PRINCE OF ASIA and it’s Jang Geun-Suk.
The “remove the K from K-Pop” discourse reminds me a lot of the old “Beyond Bollywood” discourse. I wrote about that simularity here.
I’ve written more on “removing the K” and “westernization” here and here.
The Korea Times held an annual concert in Los Angeles, at the Hollywood Bowl, from 2003 to 2019, featuring Korean musicians. By 2008—a year that featured TVXQ—media was noting the influx of foreigners to the event. You can find ancient fancams of BigBang performing there.
As best as I can tell, Se7en last released music in 2022, “Mona Lisa” and “Ride”. He is also still performing in musicals and was last in a production of Dream High in 2025. Please enjoy Se7en on Sketchbook:
“Tell Me” was a pivotal moment for K-Pop. I’d go as far to consider it the first K-Pop hook song. It still sounds very contemporary while the early 2000s sexy R&B hunks have been relegated to the dustbin.
BigBang doesn’t get enough credit today for helping turn K-Pop cool and trendy in the West—including among the young second generation Asian diaspora. I wrote about it here. In some ways, the BigBang reunion concerts feel like the Oasis reunion concerts in their nostalgia and meaning.
Rolling Stone, Billboard, NME, and other similar publications, in their current form, seem to exist solely to give the gloss of their historic credibility and credentials to current industry products. I’ve also written about this.
Because of the overblown press and the way that mass sales/streams can obfuscate demographics, I don’t think fans (and companies?) really understand how small the in person market is for K-Pop concerts in the west. A lot of fans will travel—and quite far—to attend concerts. In the past, especially since most of us were “multis” by necessity, fans would travel to see whatever group was touring but that takes money and planning. The specific concerts I refer to in the episode were BTS’s Wings held March 24, 2017, in Newark only a month before EXO’s Exo’dirum on April 25, 2017, in Newark. Still, many local fans did attend both. Even with the online fans battles, most K-Pop fans in the USA were still “multis” in 2017. (We don’t even have to get into the questionable reputation among fans of the touring company for that EXO tour…)
Miss A isn’t mentioned much among K-Pop fans these days but they were huge back in the day. Suzy made her acting debut in Dream High (2011). She was only 15 when Miss A debuted in 2010.
The Chris Brown situation we reference is when BTS members RM and J-Hope posted on social media about attending a Chris Brown concert. Chris Brown has earned himself a rather unsavory reputation that can best be explained by skimming this list of his “legal issues.” Some BTS fans took this opportunity to bail on the group; others tried to get the members to reflect on their actions and apologize; and yet others pushed back on the pushback by either saying that 1) the members didn’t know better or 2) who cares, all these other K-Pop artists have also mentioned Chris Brown at some point. It was a whole K-Pop fandom mess.
For some reason, Bang’s legal dramas haven’t been getting all that much English language press.
This is a good example of the jazzy ballad style I lament the loss of in contemporary K-Pop:
Shinhwa returned from military service with some absolute bangers. Due to the various controversies and legal incidents of some of the members, we likely won’t hear from them as a group any time soon. Member Andy has his own idol company and produced the 3rd gen icons Teen Top and now has the underrated group MCND.
It’s a long held K-Pop fan conspiracy theory that idol/celebrity scandals are used to run cover for more serious incidents.
RIP SuperM, gone too soon. I’ve had to take down almost everything I’ve posted on them because their secret fandom (Armys) refuses to leave it alone.
Alice in Borderlands was great and is worth a watch! (Discussed a bit in a previous episode here.) Yamapi and Jaejoong are buddies, which feels correct.
The post-processing and terrible encore performances on music shows (and live shows) are a Hybe group staple. Many such examples exist.
The Connect BTS stuff feels like a fever dream now. Remarkably, I’d hung on to being a fan into early 2020 despite the massive harassment campaign from Armys I’d already been through in 2019. I would stop being a fan with the release of their next album because, in my opinion, it was half baked and sounded terrible.
Jimmy from Psychic Fever worked with Seunghan (ex-Riize) on a new song. It’s very cute!
RM’s “art” persona is a source of endless amusement in the chat. It really feels like a surface level copy-paste of T.O.P.’s personality. Don’t take my word for it, listen for yourself to RM say absolutely nothing about art.
JUSTICE FOR 1TYM (for your mind).
The songs played in the episode are:
“Perhaps Love” by J & Howl (aka the theme from Goong)
“Day After Day” by EXO (classic B-side from one of the best K-Pop albums of all time, EXO’s Obsession from 2019)
“With Me” by Wheesung (watch him sing it live!)
“Ego” by BigBang
“열등감” by H.O.T.
“Never” by 2PM (K-Pop B-sides just used to sound like this.)
“Promise You” by A.N.Jell (we put respect on the Prince of Asia’s name around these parts.)
“Love Me Love Me” by Winner (and this one still gets the crowds going—even with the group down to three members)
“Odd Eye” by SHINee
“Drowning” by Jaejoong (cover of the Woodz hit song)
“Skibidi” by HRS (Girls Generation; live on Show! Music Core, Sept. 5, 2026, as an example of the 5th generation aethsestics with a 2nd generation performance style)
“Candy Sugar Pop” by Astro (this is the song I always point to as THE example of the Hybe overly compressed vocal processing used—and used well—as a deliberate tool by a group that can sing, properly. Check the official MV! It’s cute!)
“Bet Bet” by Nu’est (Gone but not forgotten! Check the official MV!)
“Sticker” by NCT 127 (Watch the official MV for clear skin etc. and the viral M Countdown encore video.)