BTS, K-pop And the Gift of the South Koreans

      Yesterday, we were at the Mall of Asia when our vehicle was slowed down by the traffic and we stopped in front of a throng of people (mostly giddy-looking teenage girls and there’s more than a hundred of them) who suddenly screamed happily at the top of their lungs. We thought a celebrity was about to come out from a bus nearby, but it turned out that they were screaming at the giant screen in front of MOA Arena where a promotional video of a group was being shown. People screaming at a video clip? That’s something, I thought. I didn’t know if people then did that at the Beatles. 

      The group, it turned out, was BTS, a boy band from South Korea, which had a show that day at the MOA Arena. That’s the first time I heard about the group. (Okay, I am quite clueless when it comes to K-pop). I turned to my companions inside the vehicle, which included a nineteen year old girl, a fourteen year old boy and a twelve year old girl, all pop culture enthusiasts,  and asked them if they knew BTS. They weren’t aware of the group. What did BTS mean? Behind The Scene? Big Time Syndicate? Blue Turtle Soup? Blue Thong’s Sexy? They didn’t know either. They weren’t fans of Korean music (why would you be attracted to songs you don’t understand? they argued) but they loved their TV shows (thank God for subtitles). They mentioned Goblin, Legend of The Blue Sea, and Love In The Moonlight. I remembered trying to watch one Korean TV drama last year, Descendants of the Sun, at the behest of someone who swore that it was great—but I gave up after watching two episodes, thinking that I probably must transform first into a sixteen year old girl to enjoy it.

      I’m not planning to watch another Korean TV drama again and you have to tie me tightly first to a chair before you could persuade me to listen to a Korean song but I will wholeheartedly agree that when it comes to entertainment, the South Koreans are thoroughly gifted. Some of my favorite movies are Korean : Oldboy (2003), The Chaser (2008), Mother (2009), Save The Green Planet (2003), I Saw The Devil (2010) and The Man From Nowhere (2010). These are all great pieces of cinema. What’s “trust me” in Korean?

      So we went inside the mall, we ate, bought something and I thought about the people watching the BTS concert, who were, most likely, happily singing along to the words they could hardly pronounce, to the words they had to Google before they could understand.

      "Sarang haeyo," answered my 19-year old companion when our 12-year old companion asked her if she knew some Korean words.