K-Pop reaches Australia: “We’re so close to Asia — it just has to filter down”
It’s 2pm on a wintry Saturday. Melbourne’s CBD is near empty. As I near an old pub, I spot a few weathered barflies, a few pokies fiends. I dither. This doesn’t seem right. But then I catch sight of two teenage girls, slipping up the stairs to the first floor. I follow. A low murmur of voices, and then, as they open the door, a wall of noise. I’m greeted by an Asian-Australian man speaking broad ‘Strine. He’s like a circus greeter — roll up, roll up.
Before me — seeming chaos. Hundreds of people — teenagers, for the main, and mostly with Asian backgrounds, all pushing like a giant conga line past photocards, solo albums, A3 posters, vying for the rarest pieces of K-pop ephemera. Hallyu — the Korean wave of culture — has conquered all of Asia — first north, through Japan and China in the 1990s and early 00s, then south east, through Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, and now, at last, to the outlier — Australia. K-pop — Korean pop — is heading mainstream. And here, in this unprepossessing room adorned with limp Irish flags and an empty bar, is the proof. ThatKpopShop runs pop-up shops every month or two across Melbourne and Sydney. On the day I arrive, fans queued around the block just to have a chance of getting their hands on rare merch.
I was in Korea as 2009 came to a close, writing about their professional videogaming industry. Almost a decade years later, pro-gaming has left its Korean redoubt and taken Europe, America and Australia. Now K-pop is making the jump too.
I remember one bone-cold night in Seoul where I sought refuge in a restaurant serving set meals. I ate alone, grateful for the warmth. And then an ageless Japanese woman — she might have been anywhere from 40 to 60 — smiled at me and invited me over. We ate together and in small fragments I found out she was here for one thing: K-pop.
She was a housewife, she told me, and her children were grown. Her husband had grown cold and sunk deeper into his work. There was a void. And then, one day, a friend introduced her to the light and colour of K-pop. It looked a little like Japanese pop — ‘idol’ groups of young men or women dressed extravagantly. And K-pop has certainly taken much from the pioneers of Japan. But K-pop was different. The film clips were masterfully staged and choreographed. Every member had worked their guts out to get there — and everyone could sing and dance to perfection. And most importantly for her, the boy groups like Super Junior featured very attractive young men with impeccable dress sense. She was hooked. This was her third trip to Seoul, she said. Was she here for a concert? She nodded. She’d come with a group of friends. They would go to the concert and weep at the sight of their idols made flesh.
For a while in the 1990s, Japanese pop’s enormous local following led to some overseas success. But it was often too niche, too weird. Idoru pop groups styled themselves after the popular visual kei trend — heavy makeup and androgynous, or bubblegum cutesy. The dance styles were particular to Japan and did not translate. The term ‘Japan Galapagos Syndrome’ has been coined to described Japan’s inward cultural turn, where, increasingly, they make products only desired by the archipelago’s people.
The K-pop pioneers, by contrast, did not want to remain isolated in a nation of just over 50 million, cut off from the rest of Asia by the North Korean hermit kingdom. Korea had long been influenced by American pop culture and was much more open to Western dance styles. K-pop performers often learn English and Chinese, and throw English lyrics into nearly every chorus. The dance moves range from Japanese style cutesy through to the power of American hip-hop, with the music borrowing also from R&B, soul and rock. And while American pop has left boy bands behind in favour of solo artists and backup dancers, the idea of a multitalented group with no single personality dominating has proved an enormous hit in Confucian-influenced Korea and China. Group members often release solo albums tied into the group’s image, so that superfans will buy more and more.
Australians first noticed K-pop with Gangnam Style, Psy’s 2012 runaway novelty hit that had my nieces doing the horse-riding dance along with the rest of their school. But we were late to the party. K-pop was already huge in Europe — particularly in France. By 2016, K-pop was suddenly everywhere. For the longest time Australia was known as the Narnia of K-pop — we were simply not on the map. But in 2015, Big Bang came to Australia — one of the largest and longest lived bands in a mercenary industry where you must always keep one eye on the up and comers. And despite charging upwards of $200 a ticket, they sold out Rod Laver Arena within minutes.
The room is swarming. It’s very dim, with only a few lamps and rainy daylight. Here and there, I hear screams as teenage girls lunge into a hug. You need elbows to push through the crowd. K-pop influences are everywhere — from dyed red hair and knee-high socks to sleek black jackets and honeycomb gel sneakers. A Bangladeshi mum with her tweens in tow bustle past an African girl in bleach blonde cornrows loading up on albums. I slip by a Hazara girl in a headscarf. Why is it so popular? The shop owners buy direct in Korean and ship the most-requested albums and merch to Australia. A $60 album bought online is $30 here.
And though it seems to be most popular amongst Asian-Australians, there are a surprising number of Anglos here — and an even more surprising number of Anglo boys. I track one down. Darby McEvoy, 17, is crouching under the bar, waiting for a K-pop dance crew to start. His bag is full of posters and wallet-sized photocards. He unfurls himself to speak. “I’m the only six foot person in the room,” he says, laughing.
Darby caught a train from his home in Geelong at 7am to get a sweet spot in the line. The queue was already enormous, but he was in luck. He’d requested a rare album from his idols, Mama Moo. “They’re a bit odd,” he confesses. Darby wears Americana given a Korean overdub: black trackies and an NBA jacket altered with a bandanna over a player’s mouth.
“This shop has really opened up the fandom,” he says. So why’s he into it? Darby shrugs. “The effort is way better than the West. You get a lot more when you buy a CD.” He opens his Mama Moo album to show me the photo shoots and photocards in the album insert. “I think the West could take a lot from this.” Australian music, he says, isn’t up to scratch.
Is he open about his fandom? He grins. “It’s a bit of a secret.” Darby was 15 when he first stumbled across Big Bang on YouTube. He was instantly hooked. The dancing, the styling, the choreography — it was like nothing else. He saw Big Bang when they came to our shores. His room is papered in posters of boy and girl groups. “K-pop deserves an international audience because they’ve put so much work into it,” he says.
A shout goes up and Darby and I turn to the stage. The A.O dance crew steps up and cracks off a solid dance cover. The bumbag-toting presenter bigs them up — “This is the smallest stage they’ve ever danced on,” he shouts. The moves are slick — popping, R&B shimmying, an MJ-style slide. Somehow they pull off their moves despite dancing in on-trend suede army boots with the tongue popped. Afterwards, the presenter hosts a giveaway — an EXO Jacket. “It’s been a tough journey for EXO — and we feel for the fans that still stay strong to the group,” he says. I raise an eyebrow. Darby smiles. “K-pop fans are extremely hardcore,” he says. “If you don’t like a group, it will be because of its fans.”
I learn later that it’s that — but much more. EXO are a huge boy band split into EXO-K and EXO-M, singing in Korean and Mandarin respectively. But in 2014, EXO-M leader Kris filed a lawsuit against his management agency SM Entertainment alleging abuses of his human rights. Two others followed suit. SM Entertainment launched counter-suits, and the issue bogged down in the courts. At stake: serious money. Since leaving, the trio have made money hand over fist. SM Entertainment argues that their training and promotion is the only reason they have their fame.
For all the glitz and glamour of K-pop, there’s a seamy side. Wannabe K-pop stars must go through one of the big three entertainment conglomerates — chaebols, as they’re known in Korea. You enter as a young tween or teen and spend four to six years undergoing intensive training in singing, dancing, choreography and languages (Chinese, Japanese and English are most common). But your training comes at a cost. If you are selected to be part of a new group, you can begin paying back what you owe. Hours are incredibly long, and holidays non-existent. Many stars complain privately — or, as EXO’s ex-members did, through the courts — of ‘slave contracts’. Huge expectations, long hours, no holidays — and surprisingly little pay. For the could-have-beens who didn’t make the K-pop cut, the world is even crueller — they’re released, blinking, back to the world with an enormous debt to pay.
Australian-Chinese Henry Prince Mak went to Korea in 2012 to join JJCC, a K-pop group owned by Jackie Chan. The next time he would see his mother was four years later, as he performed in Sydney. “I have never had more than two consecutive days of holiday and rest,” he told the Financial Times in 2016. “In K-pop fan eyes, their ‘idol’ has to be perfect. They’re not allowed to drink, they’re not allowed to smoke.”
Sitting nearby us and comparing their hauls are Vivian and Julie. They’re 14 and are in the same art class at the same school in Melbourne’s north. “I never talked to her until I knew she liked K-pop,” Vivian says, with a slight smile. Vivian — smiley ABC with glasses — and Julie, an open-faced Thai-Australian with a bob cut — seem quite different. Now they’re going to the next big K-pop act to hit our shores — Seventeen. “We talk about K-pop at school, but not many people understand,” Julie says. So why K-pop? “It’s the choreography, fashion sense, singing,” she says. Vivian nods. “Guys wear makeup without being embarrassed.”
Julie tells me it was her Thai side that got her involved. “It’s huge in Thailand. One band even has a Thai member,” she says. “I love K-pop.”
The intensity of the pop-up shop is dying away, as jubilant fans hasten home to pore over their purchases. I head downstairs, where I find the AO crew talking shop in the deserted pub. After a little ingratiation, they invite me to talk. Johnny Sevas — dark hair, mixed background — is the group’s founder. Cecilia, Shu and Tony are Asian-Australian. After coming across K-pop’s radical melange of choreography in 2010 on YouTube, Johnny had practiced by himself or with friends for years. It seemed to him that K-pop picked up where American boy bands of the 1990s — Backstreet Boys, Nsynch — had left off and not been replaced. “In America, it became more individual — but in Korea, each member contributes in their own little way,” he says. In 2013, inspired by dance cover groups in Korea, he put out a call for fellow K-pop dance enthusiasts, and from their bedrooms they came. Only months later, they would perform in South Korea at an outdoor festival in front of 15,000 fans on a rainy outdoor stage. That mix of terror and joy cemented their group, Johnny says. “We were walking past actual K-pop stars dressing rooms,” he says, eyes glinting. Now, their dance homages to the biggest Korean groups attract hundreds of thousands of views in their own right on YouTube.
AO’s rise has acted as proof of concept, drawing many more dance crews into the spotlight. Watching with keen interest were the staff of Korean Consulate, who have actively worked to promote the Hallyu wave of Korean pop culture in Australia.
Cecilia — a strong, forceful speaker — tells me that K-pop’s rise was slower here because of distance. “We’re so far away and we’ll never have as many fans as Japan,” she says. “But groups are now realising that there are a lot of fans, that the scene was dormant.” Would they ever want to go pro or try their hand in Korea? Johnny blanches. “Probably not,” he says, and the others laugh. Why not? Cecilia clears her throat.
The reason, she says, is that reality is nastier than the dream. Most K-pop fans don’t see how the industry really operates — they just idolise their chosen group. Performers are worked to the bone. Many have fainted on stage, or hospitalised because they’re not eating enough. Their schedules are almost inhuman. And then, there’s the four year curse. You have four years to make your name — and then the next group from your own company will compete with you. So you have to make as much as you can, while you can. “There’s a fresh model coming out, just like cars,” Johnny says. Cecilia smiles. “We don’t want to make it all-consuming. We want to have fun. We get the choice to do it. They don’t.”
Outside, I spot an Anglo teen geeking out over his haul. Carlisle Brent, 18, has long guitarist nails, a mop of brown hair and a precise, fussy way of moving. He rates himself around eight out of 10 on the fandom scale. Why not 10? “Money problems,” he says. “It’s expensive.” Carlisle studies biomed at Melbourne University. In his downtime, he moderates a fansite. “They’re the group that got me obsessed. They’re so fresh and different. Even if they don’t exist yet.” Sorry, what?
Because the conglomerates have a triumvirate lock on all K-pop, it’s easy to get into one group — and then come across others being cross-promoted. That’s how Carlisle found himself geeking out on trainees of Pledis Entertainment.
But how can you be a fan if there’s nothing to listen to, I ask in disbelief. Carlisle laughs. “It can be a religious devotion. You get very heavily devoted, just as you are for a TV character — a personality, a story. I’m not delusional — I know they live in another county, and I’m just a fan — but I feel I know them. I get invested in them — just like TV show characters.”
K-pop, Carlisle says, is bubbling up everywhere. Many of his classmates talk K-pop on their breaks. “We’re so close to Asia — it just has to filter down,” he says.
