Before we came to Korea, we'd heard rumors of how awful the pop music was. But we never knew... it's everywhere, and there is a rotation all of 3 songs long. By far the most popular song right now, and ever since we got here, is Nobody But You, by the Wonder Girls. Allow me to demonstrate.
Everyone in S. Korea knows that entire dance by heart. I wish I'd videod this incident, but every school puts on what they call a festival. It's like a talent show but not a competition and a whole class does their gig together. Well, I watched the dress rehearsal at Dong Cheon, and not only did the kids do a great job, so did the cleaning ladies, who put on a spectacular jump roping exhibition, with double, quadruple, and 10 people dutch. But perhaps even better (and stranger) was the mothers' performance. That's right, the moms had a spotlight too. There were 5 of them and they did the Nobody But You dance... and they were good. They sure showed up those 1st graders.
Which reminds me, Koreans never let kids win at something. David plays soccer with his kids after school with another teacher, and the other teacher plays as hard as he can against 3rd graders. David said they all jump out of the way when the guy shoots on goal because he kicks it so hard the kids are afraid to try to stop it. Yun Jae told us about how his son cried one day when he lost the board game they were playing because he never wins and found it frustrating. Yun Jae said he got mad at Yae Dam (the son) for not understanding that it was ok to lose. When will these kids learn? Their parents fully subsrcibe to the if you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch mentality.
But back to the K pop, here's the second most popular group - Brown Eyed Girls. This is their painfully popular How Come.
"Revenge" is hillarious.
And to finish it off, song number 3 on the current cell phone store rotation (these stores are always blasting K pop into the streets): I'm so hot by the Wonder Girls.
So the songs are kind of awful, but the girls are lovely. The make a pop star formula's the same here as in the states. For our next adventure we're off to the mountains of northern South Korea this weekend for a ski trip with the regular gang (David, Duck, Ryan, and Shannon). And now we're all booked up for our winter vacation in the Philippines!!!!!
Jess
