Ask 10 of your friends rightnow if they wanna be a Kpop idol, 9 of the answers would be
“Oh my god yes”. But, if time turned back to thirty years ago, the answer would probably
be “Hell no”. Nowadays, Kpop idols get so many privileges
and convenience, however, things didn’t go very well for idols in the 90s. So today,
let’s BeBossTV help you tackle what difficulties Kpop artists of 30 years ago and their fans
had to suffer.
Lightstick wasn’t even a thing You know, lightsticks are like part of the
group’s soul. Many Kpop groups really work on making their lightsticks, considering the
meaning, beautiful designs and advanced technologies. However, back in the 90s, when fans went to
the concert, the best they could do was to bring along some balloons to cheer up their
idols, and hoped that they wouldn’t pop. Still, if you went there with a random balloon
bought at the entrance of the concert stadium, people would look at you like you were an
alien because according to the representative color and fandom’s requirement, only a certain
type of balloon could be brought in. For example, with H.O.T, white round balloons
would be used but for Sechskies, only the yellow ones were allowed to be brought in.
SNS was limited to Cyworld only If idols nowadays can spread their virtual
presence from Twitter, Instagram to Youtube, Vlive to many other platforms, the only place
where idols in the 90s could interact with fans was Cyworld.
I just want to mention again how lucky you guys are when being a gen3 and gen4 Kpop fan,
because you would not imagine how desperate Kpop fans in the past were.
Here on Cyworld, besides posting some super short tweets and random congrats or happy
birthday wishes to fans, there was absolutely nothing idols could do on the Internet. [chèn
meme này] While idols today can update their status
several times within an hour, posting high quality pictures, comments and tweets to multiple
platforms, idols in the 90s could hardly do the same because the 90s doesn’t have smartphones,
the internet were new, and not many fans were there to interact because getting broadband
installed is costly as hell. Cyworld also got on the nerves of international
fans because to join this platform, you must have a Korean resident registration number.
[chèn meme black man crying - có tiếng] Anyway, it’s understandable because Kpop
was not that internationally popular back then.
Accessing KPOP content was a job for resilient people only
Before iTunes and Spotify, the world of music downloading was like the wild west: chaotic,
complicated, and a little bit dangerous. Oh, and to make it through, you also need
luck because without angels sent from heaven—aka who uploaded songs that they actually bought
with pocket money, ripped it off from the CDs and then uploaded to international forums,
you’ll never ever get your hands on such precious things.
How about downloading a more hardcore things like videos? Well, it was a true test of patience.
First, you will need to install many softwares specializing at downloading heavy files like
Clubbox. However, as the Internet connection back then ran at the speed of a snail, and
obviously every music show lasts at least fifty minutes, you’ll need to opt for two
other softwares called Megaupload or Mediafire to download smaller parts of the video.
After waiting for other several hours, it’s certainly showtime, right? The answer is no.
The last step of this arduous procedure actually needed you to piece everything together by
another software called HJSplit and let it be processed for some hours more.
Oh my god, only reading this out loud makes me feel tired already. Maybe after this I’ll
go on Youtube and watch 10 concerts in a row to remind myself how lucky I am to be born
in this age. And as I mentioned above, do you know why
this downloading thing can be a bit dangerous as well? Since both the softwares and the
contents uploaded weren’t examined, more often than not, they were riddled with viruses,
and if you didn’t have a good antivirus program, be prepared to watch your computer
being burned down in flames.
Of course, fans back then could just watch streaming shows in real time, but streaming
was a luxury because you could hardly watch a show without undergoing some sudden pauses,
glitches or a complete disconnection from the Internet. On top of that, as software
like TVAnt were also filled with viruses and always aired super low quality videos, the
best option was still to download everything and watch them offline.
Subtitles? Find that in your wildest dreams [chèn meme như ảnh dưới]
Back in the day, international K-Pop fans had two choices: learn Korean or…learn Korean.
[Blinking guy meme] Up until the 2000s, subtitles were extremely
difficult to find, especially for lesser known groups who lacked dedicated subtitling teams.
Moreover, as many Korean channels didn’t have official YouTube accounts, they would
try to copyright claim all videos of their shows off this platform, fan-organized subbing
teams had to use weird symbols in the titles to hide the videos from copyright infringement,
which also made people like us hard to find those videos with Engsub.
Idols must keep their life super lowkey While idols nowadays grow their fanbase by
being a sociable and relatable persona by inviting fans into their daily lives via daily
vlogs, reality shows, home tours, and live broadcasts, pretty much making us feel like
they are our best friends; idols in the 90s were prohibited from showing even just a bit
of their ordinary life. From nugus to top acts, they all had to create a kind of mysterious
fog surrounding them, and were restricted from expressing their true personalities.
Compared to the way EXO-Ls often poke fun at the “mysterious” concept that EXO has
failed to pursue, back in the days of H.O.T, Fin.K.L, and S.E.S, this celebrity mystique
was a very real way of life that everyone deemed normal. Here’s the craziest thing:
Because idols kept their private lives so far removed from the public eye, people were
even convinced that idols were extraordinary creatures and they didn’t poop! [chèn meme
này]
The seven-year curse wasn’t a thing because... no acts lasted that long
One of the most surprising changes to K-Pop may be the span of time a group was bound
to a contract and active in the industry. Back in the 90s, the average life of an act
was around five years and disbandment was also quite common. Even the most popular groups
formed in the 90s typically disbanded or became inactive after 2-5 years. For example, H.O.T
was only active for 5 years, for Fin.K.L, it was 7, S.E.S was 5, and for SechsKies it
was only 3 before reunion in 2016.
How about now? As you can tell, most successful K-Pop groups stick around for a minimum of
7 years, which is still considered quite short and so, many of them continue to renew contracts
as expected by fans, so the total number of active years can be 14! Disbandment is also
treated as the worst resort and to avoid this, idols often split ways with a promise that
they would come back as a group some time down the road.
Idols were low-class people In total contrast to nowadays, where literally
every kid around the globe wants to become KPOP idols, in the 90s, this was considered
an extremely “low class” job, and most parents were steadfastly against their children
becoming professional KPOP artists. That’s why during this period, the number
of KPOP acts could only be counted on the fingers, and even when the talented group
Seo Taiji and Boys managed to debut on a talent show in 1992, despite being the only act of
the whole KPOP industry, they still got little attention from the audience. Also because
of this prejudice, in the span of seven years, the greatest total number of group debuting
was only 11 in 1997, and the smallest was 1 in 1992.
Only the minority wanted to become idols and as you can see, the support and respect of
the audience was so small that KPOP acts could only sustain their career for around 4 years
on average.
It was not until the 2000s when the love and demand for KPOP culture really took off and
parents started to do everything for their kids to break into this fertilite industry.
Nowadays, idols can not only earn lots of money, but their position in society is also
important enough for them to even go to political events and meet senior officers of a country,
like Red Velvet was assigned to go to meet Kim Jong Un or SNSD’s Yoona was invited
to the Blue House presidents for her donation. Idols’ reputation and influence is also
projected out of the music boundary to many other fields, like Lisa was chosen to be in
the jury of 2021 ANDAM Fashion Award, Kai was picked out to be the first ever Korean
global ambassador of Gucci, BTS was the first ever KPOP act to collaborate with McDonald
and BLACKPINK was once the ambassador of Samsung. Right now, being Kpop idols means you have
the world in your hands and instead of being low-class, they’re now world-class.
Dating can put idols in danger Here comes the last nightmare in the life
of a 90s Kpop idol. Although many idols today still abide by dating bans and experience
dating scandals, it’s nothing compared to dating in the 90s. Idols back then had to
have secret agent skills if they wanted to see someone. Since most idols were not allowed
to have phones, they had to ask staff to secretly deliver their messages or use more creative
methods, like hiding notes in vending machines, or taping their contact info under soda cans.
In a 2010 interview, H.O.T’s Tony revealed that dating had extreme consequences because
instead of being congratulated, idols would be “threatened with acid”. Though such
terrifying cases had never happened, Baby VOX’s Kan Mi Youn and her group mates actually
suffered from a quite close scenario, where they underwent a real life nightmare after
Mi Youn was caught up in a dating scandal with H.O.T’s Moon Hee Jun. On her appearance
in Radio Star in 2013, Mi Youn revealed that she once received death threats from people
with pictures of her eyes gouged out and letters filled with box cutter blades. “And then
there was someone who wrote a letter in blood saying, ‘Let’s go to hell together. I’ll
go with you so you won’t be lonely.’”—Kan Mi Youn recalled.
Shim Eun Jin, who was also part of Baby VOX, chirped up and talked about how some people
actually attacked physically: “They meant to hurt Mi Youn, but Mi Youn never got hurt.
Instead the members around her always did,” referring to the rocks and raw eggs being
thrown at the act or the fans pulling the hair of managers.
Even when we all know that glory will never come easily, it’s hard to believe how much
KPOP idols and their fans have been through to get this far. From starting small with
the despising sights of people, spending days and nights in practicing rooms just to last
for utmost five years in the industry and living under suffocating conditions, idols
nowadays have gained what they deserve and gotten their name embedded in many important
fields of the world. KPOP fans in the earliest days also deserve a big shout out [chèn meme
này], because without their steel resilience and support, the influence of KPOP culture
can never be as huge as what we see today. So, which fact has surprised you the most
of these eight changes? Comment down below to share your thoughts with us. Also, don’t
forget to like, share, and subscribe to BeBossTV since we’ll be back with more interesting
content. Thank you for watching!