SM Entertainment, the Most Powerful Star Maker

         S.M. Entertainment has been famous formore than 10 years for K-pop lovers. The company is well known for its K-popidol groups, boy bands, singers and actresses; it is one of the largest Koreanpop music record label, producer, publisher and talent agency. “SM” stands for Star Museum now, but it is also an abbreviation of the agency founder's name, Soo-Man Lee. S.M. Entertainment is thought as the creator of first generation of K-pop who started its noted pop music story since 1990s.

Back to 1995, after Soo Man Lee foundedS.M. Entertainment, he brought out H.O.T. (High-five Of Teenagers) as the first “idol group” to shock and surprise Korean pop music industry. The boy band was definitely the forerunners ofthe “idol group” trend in the Korean music industry, and they totally changed the Korean mainstream music at that time. The group H.O.T. contained five teenage members and it was formed to attract young generation fans. Their music style were considered “special” with mainstream Korean music and included rap,ballads, hip-hop, dance and rock. Most of their songs were sung for teenagers and youths; some of the songs expressed “voices of young generation.” H.O.T. also gave the Korean pop music industry and Korean youths a new fashion trend withtheir baggy pants and colorful outfits; they were thought as the “fashion icon”during the 1990s. In other words, H.O.T.’s born means they gave birth to K-pop.

Following by H.O.T.’s big success, S.M.Entertainment continuously formed more young idol groups such as S.E.S, ShinHwa,and Fly To The Sky. The company kept its high music quality as well as it brought more and more fabulous young idols to influence Korean music industry.

S.M. Entertainment is probably the talent agency with the largest number of trainees in Korea. It has notable auditions the best planned training system for young people who want to be singers, actors,models, and songwriters. Of course their auditions are not easy to go through,but they are still fascinated for many young boys and young girls. Currently,the company holds weekly audition in Korea and America, monthly audition in Japan and a annually global audition  across several different countries.

 (credit to S.M. Entertainment)

        All of artists from S.M. Entertainment are known as “SM Town” as a whole with their vacation compilation albums. “SM Town” also stands for the company's famous world tour concerts. Almost in every year, S.M. Entertainment organizes their artists to come together and perform on a four to six hours long concert that tours around the world. During the concert, their audiences and fans would also enjoy several different collaborations across groups and some special songs that were veiled before.

K-pop's Fan Culture and a Fan's Job

K-pop fans are all around the world now; these fans have their different methods to communicate, gather and share information especially through social media and the internet.

Usually, Korean pop singers will have one official fanclub and one official website include a fan forum (a.k.a personal fancafe) after they debut. However, for fans who are not Koreans or who don't speak Korean,it is hard for them to become a member of these official fancafes. And also, many fans are not just satisfied with such official websites. As a result, more and more K-pop fans choose to create websites or forums by themselves to support their favorite singers or celebrities.

I am one of these k-pop fans, too. Last year, I became a member of a Chinese fans website "Joon House"  and I joined its management team in February. It was my friend who created the website and also asked me to help her and other Chinese fans to manage this small fancafe for Joon Lee, a Korean pop music singer and a member from the boy band called MBLAQ.

For this kind of fancafe, it is very amazing because all the things are set up by the singer's fans. Normally, a fancafe will allow anyone to register with a few of basic requirements such as a general fan test for the singer. A typical website will provide information, news, videos, photo galleries, discussion board, and etc. And of course all of the contents relate to this singer.

The reasons why most K-pop fans built fancafes are because they like the singer or the band; they want to switch information with each other; they want to communicate with fans from other countries, and they want to do something to show their support. They are unpaid but they still enjoy such jobs with their passion.

I accepted the job from "Joon House" because I like Joon Lee and I was very curious that how a fancafe run.

My job is including several things to do. First, I need to catch news or information that posted or published in English about Joon Lee. I need to get the news or the information translated to Chinese. I will also help on translating Korean if it is needed. I'm not a good translator but it is a great chance for me to practice. I might also need to help on making some short video clips, too.

Below is a screenshot from the intro page of "Joon House", and of course it is designed by one member from the management team.

Additional information about the Korean singer, Joon Lee---- He was born on February 7, 1988. His real name is Chang Sun Lee, but now he is better known by his stage name Lee, Joon. He is an idol singer, dancer, actor, model and member of the Korean male group MBLAQ from Korea. The group is now very popular in many other countries include Peru, as they are the first K-pop singers who take over South America. Lee also participated in the Hollywoodmovie called "Ninja Assassin" in 2009, acted as Teenage "Raizo", one of the main casts.

ShinHwa, the Legendary Boy Band for 14 Years

This video clip is from the latest performance of Shinhwa, one of the most successful boy bands in Korea since the late 90s. As all the six members of Shinhwa had made a promise with their fans, the band just made its comeback to Korean pop music scene last month.

Venus, the song in his video, is also the lead track of Shinhwa’s comeback album The Return. Venus is a pop-electro song composed by Andrew Nelson and lyrics by Shinhwa’s member Min Woo.

The name Shinhwa was given by the company when the band was initially formed. The word Shinhwa means myth or legend in Korean; interestingly, the band also became the oldest boy band (or idol group) in Korea with its several remarkable contributions to k-pop.

As I mentioned before, I started to listen to K-pop when I was in junior high school; Shinhwa introduced me into the world of Korean pop music. I loved the title song T.O.P. of their second album so much that I even could not stop listening to it. The album was considered Shinhwa’s first milestone and it won the group’s first major music award, the "1998's Best Music Video from a new male pop group" award from M.Net. T.O.P. was absolutely a hit; it also helped them shape their band's image as well as their future positioning in Korean music industry.

Shinhwa is considered as the first generation of K-pop, and the only male group that lasts for 14 years in Korea. That is also the reason why people always mark “legendary” on Shinhwa.

Being significant among k-pop groups, Shinhwa was the first group that each of the members could pursue their own solo careers while keeping  Shinhwa as a whole.

After four years of hiatus, all the members finished serving mandatory military services; the legendary Shinhwa has just came back to us by bringing another excellent masterpiece. Yes, they kept the faith with all their fans and the media that they would not disband; they wanted to sing and dance for another 10 years, 20 years, or more.

Another legend created by Shinhwa was that they became the first K-pop group to have their own entertainment company. The “Shinhwa Company” was established as a joint venture agency for them to perform and to manage the group as a whole, at the same time all the members are still allowed to keep their individual activities under their respective agencies.

For their new album, I really love Venus, but I also highly recommend Hurts, a sad love song showing this experiential group their best art of singing.

Three Styles to become a Korean Trendy Girl

     Korean fashion style is gaining a lot of attention recently, and it even surpasses Japanese fashion. Korean fashion has been very popular among all the Asian countries include China and Japanese; some famous Japanese fashion magazine like ViVi, Sweet, and PopTeen, has also started to absorb Korean fashion style.

     Koreans, of course follow European and American fashion trend at first; however, Koreans always make some changes on the common vogue to create Koreans’ own style. Korean girl’s fashion style can be easily divided to three categories: chic and female, cute and sweet, casual and lady.

 

(Copyright of Tom & Rabbit)

Style 1: Chic and female
Make a simple look to show off young lady's feature

In this style, the model just simply dresses a black jacket, skinny jeans, and a pair of high heel wedge shoes. The highlights are the cream-colored sweater and the model's hairstyle. These two little things best show and ooze feminine charm and make this simple outfit to be unique. That is what we called Korean fashion; it always notices everywhere include many hidden details .for an outfit. 

(Copyright of Tom & Rabbit)

Style 2: cute and sweet

A warm color one-piece dress to create a sweety girl

This style will be better fitted a teenage girl, and it is filled with young girls’ cute character. To create a sweet and cute Korean style outfit, it is appropriate to select warm colors include light yellow, cream, light pink, and etc. As we see in this picture, the pearl necklace this model wears are perfectly ornamenting her cute girly style; pearls are always fit ladies as their best friends.

                         

(Copyright of Tom & Rabbit)

Style 3: Casual and lady

Casual without losing your distinguishing feature

This is a very symbolic Korean casual girl's style picture---- an oversized sweater with a little retro fashion which best shows casual, but still keeps fashion elements very well. And also, an oversized sweater or an oversized t-shirt is always essential to maintain a Korean casual fashion.

     After introducing the three major styles of Korean fashion, I also organized some tips for people to have the best K-style.

(Copyright of Ra Beauty Core)

-Hairstyle

Hairstyle is always an important element for fashion people, and I really agree with many people's thoughts that “a good hairstyle would be able to change a person totally.” Hairstyle holds a major position in Korean fashion and hairstyle is always how Korean girls make themselves to be attractive.

Try hairstyle in curly or straight, and then choose a little bow or a hair clip of your own style, then put it on one side of your hair.

-Colored contact lenses

Preparing one or more pairs of contact lenses! Choose the color as the day you want to fit your make-up. Colored contact lenses are so popular in Korea, and they have a lot of special colors and designs in contact lenses!

-Your eyeliners

 
Korean style makeup is highly paid attention on eye lines and Korean girls have many different kinds of methods to draw eye lines. Choose your favorite eyeliner today, and let’s learn how to create a Korean style makeup!

(Credit to http://blog.naver.com/jeaniusha)




     Korean girls’ fashion styles probably look more suitable for Asians, but I recommend everyone can try Korean fashion style no matter what ethnicity you are.

Raising K-pop and the Genius Singer G-Dragon

Many people are still unfamiliar with k-pop, The word “K-POP” stands for Korean popular music; it is a music genre consisting of pop, electro-pop, dance, hip-hop, R&B, rock, electronic music originating in South Korea.

We already have the biggest and the hottest pop music market in America, so adults must be wondering why so many teenagers and young people start to listen to Korean music recently. What is the fascination of "K-POP"? From now on, I will introduce you this developing Asian country with its famous music, movies, dramas, fashion trend and anything about pop culture.

Honestly, I was attracted by Korean pop music when I was about 13 years old. My first impression about Korean music was that they tried to learn and follow American music trend and fashion. However, they didn’t just copy from American pop music; they put Korean music factors and Korean style into music. I could still feel and hear the difference between K-pop and American pop music very clearly.

In recent years, G-Dragon has been my favorite singer from Korea. G-Dragon is now active as the young leader of the Korean boy band, “Big Bang”, one of the best hip-hop and pop group in Korea, Japan and many other Asian countries.

Aside from being a singer, he is also a famous songwriter and producer. His contribution to his own work also got him praise as one of the best composers in the year of 2008.

G-Dragon's interest in rapping and hip-hop music was first expressed at the age of 12, and he was inspired from music by Wu-Tang Clan, a famous American rap group.

G-Dragon had been trained under the record label YG Entertainment for six years. It is special and well-known that the whole Korean entertainment industry has a series of training programs for youths who want to be singers or actors in the future. YG Entertainment provided the best training programs for G-Dragon to become a good rapper, singer and dancer. During that time, He learned dancing, rap, beat box, song writing, singing, English, and Chinese to prepare for his debut. G-Dragon has excellent language skills because when he sings in English, his doesn't even have any accent; instead, he sounds like an native English speaker.

Before joining the group “Big Bang”, G-Dragon had also made some featured appearances on other artists’ albums. G-Dragon is a  genius at composing, writing, and producing music. He has written many songs for other singers and got favorable reception which won him the title of “the youngest and the most successful composer” of South Korea.

G-Dragon released his first solo album “Heartbreaker” on Aug.18 in 2009, his 21st birthday. I love every song of that album! The album truly demonstrated his artistic talent and became the most popular album of the year in Korea. After that, he also had a fabulous collaboration with a popular American rapper, Flo Rida.

Here is the remix version of G-Dragon’s “Heartbreaker” was featured by Flo Rida.

Last month, G-Dragon’s group, Big Bang, released their new mini album called “Alive”. It’s charted at number 150 of the U.S. Billboard 200 and the group also ranked at number 4 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. G-Dragon has participated in composing and producing all of the 7 songs. I believe it will be another hit by G-Dragon.

And a music video of Big Bang’s new song “Blue”,

Check this out and make it your today's K-pop song!