My life as a 2nd Gen K-pop fan and how my perspective has changed over the years

When I think about being a second generation K-pop fan, I don't see any clear beginning. There wasn't a single moment where I sat down, decided, and thought: okay, this is it. It was slower and much more accidental, which I think is how it worked for most people who got into it the way I did. That is, back in a time when it wasn't everywhere and before anyone in your life had even properly heard of it. Back when you spent your evenings on YouTube, drifting from one random video to another, searching without really knowing what you were looking for, and staying there hours longer than you planned.

I know I was in contact with K-pop even before I truly fell down the rabbit hole. I just can't recall the exact year, but I remember random clips, random performances on YouTube that someone had uploaded without really explaining what it was all about. It’s been a long time. TVXQ were already somewhere in my head back then. Five guys with the kind of stage presence that made you stop clicking away, even if you had no context as to who they were or what you were actually watching. Kiss... Shinhwa... I wasn't following them properly yet. But I remembered the faces. Back then, it wasn't about the music first. It was fragments. Something you see, something you don’t forget, and then you move on, but it sits somewhere in the back of your mind and waits. So, I’ve been listening to K-pop for a very long time. However, upon reflection, I’d say I became a true lover of Korea with the arrival of K-dramas.

And so the real beginning, the moment it hit me incredibly hard and never let go, was 2010. That was the moment I found Playful Kiss. Kim Hyun-joong as Baek Seung-jo and Jung So-min as Oh Ha-ni. He was cold in that very specific dramatic way that shouldn't work, but always does! Just a genius who corrected her love letter for spelling mistakes before handing it back, and you still wanted them to end up together. She was clumsy, relentless, and honest in a way that made the whole thing feel warmer than it had any right to be. I remember sitting there thinking: this is total nonsense! And I meant it. The situations were completely absurd and totally over the top. Half the plot twists wouldn't survive a single moment of realistic scrutiny. And yet, I couldn't stop. Episode after episode, just like that, without planning, without wanting it to go that far. It was funny and frustrating and completely different from anything I’d watched before, and that was the whole point. That was the moment the door opened and never closed again. I think I found it back then on the now defunct Ulož.to with Czech subtitles, or was it Slovak? Well, I don’t remember anymore, but I was in seventh heaven. Plus, I found out it had special YouTube episodes! Even sillier than the core series. But I still needed to see them.

From there, everything started to connect in the way only this world does, where nothing stays separate for long and every new thing leads to three others. I realized Kim Hyun-joong wasn't just an actor. He was part of SS501, so I dove into their music. Concept wise it was good, but honestly, during live performances, I often thought to myself that not everyone in that group could actually sing. But I croak like a crow myself, so I accepted it for what it was. But Kim Hyun-joong stayed on my radar because of what he did on screen, and that pulled me toward Boys Over Flowers, which aired a year before Playful Kiss, in 2009. Lee Min-ho as Gu Jun-pyo, who was arrogant and dramatic and the type of character you shouldn't root for, but you absolutely do anyway, and again Kim Hyun-joong as Ji-hoo, the quiet one, the one sitting by the window while everyone else is making noise, and somehow this one always gets to you more. To be honest, both then and now, I think those weird curls on the main lead's head were atrocious. Poor Lee Min-ho. On the other hand, my beloved, musically gifted Ji-hoo was the embodiment of my dreams. Otherwise, the whole F4 premise, four rich guys ruling the school as if it were their private territory, was again objectively ridiculous and, again, impossible to stop watching.

Also in the same period of 2010, before I even had time to properly process Playful Kiss, came Secret Garden. Hyun Bin as Kim Joo-won, a department store CEO with a very specific set of neuroses and surprisingly good comic timing, and Ha Ji-won as Gil Ra-im, a stuntwoman who was strong in a way that felt real and unacted. The body-swapping thing just destroyed me, and you could say it was The show that hit me even harder than Playful Kiss. Albeit a bit differently. Probably more emotionally, with more layers, less comedy, and more like something that wants you to actually feel something. It went so far that I cut my long hair short, exactly like Ha Ji-won’s character. I just looked at her on the screen and at the next opportunity, I got the haircut. Everyone around me was annoyed. My dad didn't speak to me for 14 days back then. But I was happy. That’s just how it goes sometimes. It’s not something you can explain to someone who didn't grow up in it the same way. Those short locks stayed with me for the next 10 years. Except for the color. I’ve always been like a chameleon in that regard.

2010 also brought My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho with Lee Seung-gi as Cha Dae-woong and Shin Min-a as a nine-tailed fox who had been cursed inside a painting for five hundred years. She gets into modern Seoul when a clumsy college student accidentally releases her. It was lighter, funnier, and had that blend of mythology and everyday chaos that Korean dramas do better than anyone else. Lee Seung-gi himself had this quality of being completely likable even when his character acted selfishly—which I think is a very specific skill in K-dramas—and Shin Min-a proved that a Gumiho could feel like a real person. And well, that was also the moment the OST floored me. That music from this series stayed with me. To this day, I sing it in the car on my way home from work. Among other things, of course.

The physical experience of all this was very different from anything that exists now. Spotify didn't exist. If I wanted a song, I downloaded it—manually, found it somewhere, and then dragged it into my phone myself. YouTube was still the main thing, and YouTube was inconsistent. Fan-uploaded videos that got deleted, official videos blocked in your region, episodes uploaded in five parts where part three was always the one missing. Subtitles were another drama. There were, and still are, translators who create subtitles. Gradually, I preferred to just learn English. But simply put: if you found a drama with subtitles, you were lucky. If the subtitles were good, you were very lucky. Most of the time, you pieced things together from context, and sometimes you read subtitles that had clearly been translated through at least two other languages before they reached you. I don't mean our local translators—as I wrote above, if it could be found on Ulož.to or their personal websites, it was luxury! But the subs in YouTube videos were a tragedy. Otherwise, you weren't alone in it, even though you were alone in your room at two in the morning. Other people writing about the same experience described watching episodes in five-part YouTube uploads. I still remember that when you found out part three was missing, you went to another channel, found a version in much worse quality, and watched it anyway because you needed to know what happened. That was it. That was the price that made you feel like it was yours.

Wired headphones deserve their own mention because they were an entire chapter of this era. No Bluetooth. Just wired headphones that were always on the verge of their end. One side stops playing, the sound cuts out if you move the cable by just a millimeter, and I was repairing mine with tape just to make them last a few more weeks. Sometimes I had to hold the cable at a precise angle just to hear from both sides at once. It was annoying, and at the same time, it meant that when you finally managed to tune the sound, there was a satisfaction in it that nothing can replace. I look back on it with nostalgia.

In January 2011, Dream High began airing, and from the start, it was quite different for me. Six students at Kirin High School of Art, all trying to become K-pop stars, and the cast consisted of actual idols playing versions of the world they actually lived in (take that with a grain of salt). Suzy from Miss A as Go Hye-mi, a classical musician who must sacrifice everything to pay off her father's debts. Kim Soo-hyun as Song Sam-dong, a country boy who turns out to be the most talented person in the room and also the one who loves her most. Taecyeon from 2PM as Jin-guk. IU as Pil-suk, a character so genuinely warm that the subplot about her dreams hit harder than it probably should have. Yes. She was the most prominent for me and, at the same time, she literally tied me to her. The songs from that drama, Dream High itself and especially Someday by IU, have stayed with me to this day. It was a show about the system, the training, and the cost of it all.

And then there was Heartstrings, and this is where CNBLUE became something real for me, rather than just a band I sort of knew about. Jung Yong-hwa from CNBLUE as Lee Shin and Park Shin-hye as Lee Gyu-won, a traditional music student who falls for a guy in a band. By the way, I love traditional Korean music and instruments. What got me, though, was the song "I Will Forget You" sung by Park Shin-hye and "You've Fallen for Me" by Jung Yong-hwa. They are one of those OST moments that just attach themselves to a specific feeling and stay there. And so, I didn't come to CNBLUE through music first. But my interest in their music unfortunately didn't survive Heartstrings otherwise.

You're Beautiful aired back in 2009, but since I haven't remembered what I saw when for a long time and I've picked only a measly fraction of what I watched, it doesn't matter much. It's more just for your mental picture. Jang Geun-suk as Hwang Tae-kyung, the type of male lead who is insufferable in a way the show is fully aware of. Park Shin-hye as Go Mi-nam, who pretends to be her twin brother to fill in as a new member of the idol group A.N.JELL. Jung Yong-hwa as the gentle one. And then there was Lee Hong-ki, the lead vocalist of FTISLAND, as Jeremy, the drummer—the loud one, the one with the most open heart and most readable feelings, the one who literally called himself an angel and meant it without a hint of irony. Lee Hong-ki’s actual voice was already something that made you stop in your tracks, and in this role, he got a character that fit him perfectly: a big, noisy, emotionally honest person who was the funniest on screen and, at the same time, the one who made you feel the most when things didn't go his way. And it was because of him that I watched the show. What I didn't know then and found out only later was that he and Jonghyun from SHINee were close friends who debuted around the same time. The connection between these two people from that era, people I followed separately through different doors, became another thread in something already deeply woven. As for the OST, specifically the song "Without Words" by Park Shin-hye stayed with me long after the drama ended.

After that, it was no longer possible to separate the world of dramas from the world of music. To me, they weren't separate worlds. Rooftop Prince began airing in March of that year, and Park Yoochun was in it. That same face I had registered years ago in those fragments from when I was first testing the K-pop waters. In this series, which thrilled me, he played Crown Prince Lee Gak, traveling through time to modern Seoul with his three loyal followers. Those three in matching tracksuits, completely lost, trying to figure out how refrigerators, supermarkets, and smartphones work—that was the kind of comedy this format does better than almost anything else because the confusion is completely sincere within the logic of the story. Park Yoochun is a very specific character. I can't say he was a TOP actor for me, but here he played it with enough emotional weight beneath all that chaos. And so, when the serious parts came, they actually landed instead of feeling separate from everything else. Han Ji-min as Park Ha was the person who grounded the whole thing and made you care about the outcome. I loved it so much that I memorized those "poems" the main characters exchanged.

Also in 2012 came Queen In-Hyun’s Man with Ji Hyun-woo as Kim Boong-do, a Joseon scholar who is constantly pulled into the present through a talisman and tries to make sense of it using the same meticulous logic he would apply to anything else, and Yoo In-na as Choi Hee-jin, an actress working on a historical drama about Queen In-Hyun. It was a quieter, more romantic, more grounded drama, even with the time-travel element. The truth is, I have to honestly say again that Yoo In-na isn't a TOP actress. But I like her in practically anything I've seen her in. Otherwise, it’s a drama where, for me, there is less chaos and more feeling. The kind you watched when you wanted to slowly sink into something and experience it emotionally.

Master’s Sun arrived in 2013 with So Ji-sub as Joo Joong-won and Gong Hyo-jin as Tae Gong-shil, a woman who sees ghosts and can only make them go away by physically touching him. The "arrogant CEO meets unusual woman" premise is certainly not new in this world, but So Ji-sub and Gong Hyo-jin made their version feel specific and alive rather than a repetition of something you’d seen before. For that reason, I mention it here because it left a big mark on me. And the "ghost of the week" structure gave the show a different rhythm than most dramas—more episodic, more atmospheric, darker around the edges. I was absolutely obsessed with it.

Well, and then we have Gu Family Book, where Lee Seung-gi returned, this time as Choi Kang-chi, half-human and half-gumiho, trying to find a mythical book that would make him fully human, and Suzy as Dam Yeo-wool. A warrior who fights as well as anyone in the story and doesn't wait for permission. The mythology was specific and detailed, and the emotional core of someone who doesn't fully belong to either world cut to the quick. I must admit I was charmed by the supporting characters, specifically Choi Jin-hyuk as Gu Wol-ryung and the character of his love, Seo Hwa. It wasn't even about the actress as much as the story itself. And that's where my very first pseudonym comes from, which isn't even searchable today: Kim Seo Hwa. I can still sing the entire OST from this drama years later.

But let's move on to K-pop. My core is and forever will be BIGBANG. G-Dragon, Taeyang, Daesung, T.O.P, and Seungri. This group never sounded like anyone else and never even tried to. From the very beginning, it was clear to me that I wasn't just someone who occasionally listens to their music. I am truly a V.I.P (short for Very Important People). I watched every interview, every piece of news, and checked on them even when nothing was happening just to know they were still there. I don't want the whole article to turn into an ode to BigBang, so I tried to trim this part a bit, but... how do I perceive them? G-Dragon, who produced and wrote his own material at a level no one else in this world had back then. Taeyang’s voice as something much warmer and more direct than what was happening around him, and his incredible dedication, which you noticed even on a small phone screen in crappy resolution. Daesung, who carried the emotional weight of everything without ever pushing himself to the front. And T.O.P with his stage presence, which was absolutely unique. Together they created "Haru Haru" in 2008, which was a thing as devastating as only top-tier K-pop can be. Then came "Fantastic Baby" in 2012... maximalist, visual, and utterly confident. And in the same year, "Blue"—quiet and aching. A track I went back to every time things got hard. And then came the years when everything started to fall apart piece by piece. Enlistment. Scandals. Years of silence that stretched so long that one stopped expecting anything and just started protecting what they already had.

Despite everything that happened and that endless hiatus that looked like a definitive end, November 2024 and MAMA came. When GD, Taeyang, and Daesung officially appeared on one stage again after all those years, I cried like a baby. They delivered a powerhouse set like "Power," "Untitled, 2014," or "Fantastic Baby," and when they added the new song "Home Sweet Home," it had that specific weight that only years of waiting can give to things. It wasn't because it was the best thing they’d ever done, but simply because they were back, and that something I’d carried inside me for years finally had a place to go. Watching GD stand there after seven years out of the game, after the military, after those insane false accusations and years of public silence... it was like seeing someone who survived their own death in an industry that often eats people alive.

Then in April 2025, Daesung held his first solo Korean tour D’s Wave at Olympic Hall. On the second night, both Taeyang and GD appeared, and together they blasted "Home Sweet Home" and "Sober." Three out of five. The ones who are still here and still standing. Daesung admitted in a handwritten letter back then that he had dreamed of this moment. Those people just know what they are to each other and to us, and they don't pretend otherwise. In 2025, T.O.P also returned with his first solo in twelve years since "Doom Dada." After everything he went through... from the incident in the army to years of complete withdrawal from public life... he is simply BACK!

And now it’s April 2026 and Coachella. GD, Taeyang, and Daesung... The song "Bae Bae," which we hadn't heard live in almost ten years. Daesung brought his trot there without apology (I love it!) and at the end of the second weekend, GD announced a 20th-anniversary world tour! Just a dream! Daesung called it a "reset." And the fact that T.O.P follows their new Instagram bigbang_2xx6? That speaks for itself. My Spotify Wrapped will be BIGBANG from top to bottom this year, and I’m not the least bit embarrassed about it.

2NE1 were practically on the same level as BIGBANG for me, though I’m disappointed by what has happened recently. CL, Minzy, Park Bom, and Sandara Park. Four completely different people in one group, making the group stronger because of it. "I Am The Best" from 2011 was a statement that still holds true. When they officially disbanded in 2016 without a proper goodbye, it left something open inside that never fully closed. Just like with BIGBANG.

And now everything regarding Park Bom—and this is harder to talk about because honestly, I don’t know what to call it. To me, she always seemed like the most fragile of the group. Not in her voice, because her voice was one of the most characteristic things of the entire second generation, something you recognized immediately and never mistook for anyone else. But in everything around it. The plastic surgeries, which became increasingly hard to ignore as the years went by. That situation with Lee Min-ho in early 2025, where she posted about him and his agency had to issue a statement that the actor doesn't know her personally. And then in March 2026, a handwritten letter she posted and then deleted, in which she accused Sandara of being caught with drugs in 2010 and letting Park Bom take the fall. I understand why Sandara decided to cut her off. I probably understand why CL did too. And now suddenly another letter, and this time a 360-degree turn? She called CL a performance goddess, Minzy insanely talented, and described Sandara as someone she admired even before they debuted together... I don’t know what’s happening inside that group right now, and I think no one fully does. Hopefully, Park Bom gets herself together and everything turns out for the best.

Another group that has accompanied me all these years is SHINee. Onew, Jonghyun, Key, Minho, and Taemin. From "Replay" in 2008 through "Lucifer" in 2010 to "Sherlock" in 2012. I loved them deeply. And then in December 2017, Kim Jonghyun passed away. He was 27. It completely devastated me. I won't dissect it here, but for a long time afterward, I couldn't listen to SHINee. I had his photo in my office. Most visible now is Taemin, who over the years has become technically the most exceptional performer of his generation. By the way, I absolutely adore him.

I have a great experience with the group MBLAQ, when I happily headed to work on my bike for a night shift. Headphones in my ears, listening to "Señorita" and boom... One second I’m riding, the next my pedals jammed, the bike stopped, and I flew over the handlebars like a plum from a tree right in front of the factory entrance. It wasn't a small fall. It was the kind where you feel it immediately—sharp, embarrassing—and you know people saw it. And of course, they did. My coworkers were there, they ran to me, tried to pick me up, asked if I was okay, and I’m just lying there, half in pain and half wanting to disappear. The bike didn't survive, and neither did my hands. My palms and chin were totally scraped, and I felt like my organs were inside out. But I somehow got the bike home in the morning, and now every time I hear that song, I remember it vividly.

If there is one group that didn't speak to me, it's Super Junior. Back then, they were everywhere, and YouTube kept pushing them to the front. There was no escaping them, especially with that song "Sorry, Sorry." That song was in every video, every playlist, every random compilation, and instead of pulling me in, it had the opposite effect. I was honestly allergic to it, and I remain allergic to it to this day. The more I heard it, the more I wanted to skip it immediately, and that somehow defined my relationship with them. It’s not that I completely ignored them or didn't try.... They just didn't catch me. But I do like one song by them, and that’s the cover "Ahora Te Puedes Marchar."

What else to say? BEAST with "Fiction," Infinite with "Be Mine," B.A.P with "Warrior." Block B with that deep-voice energy. 4Minute with Hyuna and "Hot Issue"... Miss A through Suzy and "Bad Girl Good Girl"...

But wait! One more significant thing I remembered! And that is K.Will and "Please Don’t!" That song came out in October 2012, and the music video featured Seo In-guk, Ahn Jae-hyun, and Dasom from SISTAR. For years—and I mean honestly years—I watched that video and understood it the way most people initially did... A story about a man in love with a woman who is marrying his best friend. I was never satisfied with the ending. I couldn't get closure. Something in that story always felt like it had something else inside that hadn't come out yet, and I carried that nameless feeling for more than ten years. Then last year, TikTok threw the sequel at me without warning, and I went to find it immediately. "No Sad Song For My Broken Heart" was released in June 2024, twelve years after the original. The same two actors. Seo In-guk and Ahn Jae-hyun, both older, both carrying twelve years in their faces, and yet the story picked up right where it left off! And world, yes! A perfect ending. I'm sure everyone knows what I’m talking about. What amused me when I read more about it was that neither of the actors knew about the twist when they were filming the original in 2012... I was a bit surprised the actors went for it... Because I have a feeling (or rather, I know) that Asia is still not friendly toward this topic—toward gay stories, toward queer love shown openly. I’ve followed K-pop for fifteen years and watched the industry treat any hint of queer identity as something to be tamed rather than expressed. As something that appears on the edges and is pulled back before it becomes too readable. Actually, it’s a thing that has always made my life as a fan of gay romances a bit difficult. This is quite an interesting topic to dissect sometime in the future, but only if there’s interest. I can talk about it for hours.

And then somewhere around 2020, I stopped looking for new things. At a certain point, I realized I was no longer searching, and when I tried to listen to what was coming out, it all felt like it had gone through a photocopier. All the shapes were there, but the essence was gone. Everything looked polished and everything sounded produced and everything was choreographically precise to the millimeter, and I understand that these things require skill and I’m not putting down the work behind it, but something was missing underneath it all. That rawness that made me fall for it in the beginning. With most of what comes out now, I don't get that feeling. The genre learned how to be globally understandable, and by doing so, it stopped being original in the way that made me love it. It became a product in the full sense of the word, whereas before, while it was also always a product, it was somehow something more. I still watch things when something catches my eye. BlackPink have a ferocity that most things around them lack. Stray Kids have a grittiness that doesn't quite fit into that clean box modern K-pop has built for itself. But besides these two, I have no new groups I’d call my own the way I called BIGBANG mine.

The most globally loved group is probably BTS, but I don't count myself among the fans. "Dope" came out in 2015 and really appealed to me. Up to a certain point, I listened to them and even read some fanfiction... If I like any member, it’s Jin. It also seems like a specific thing for me because I feel that Jin seemed to be a bit apart from the narrative built around the group. Hm, and now they are a truly big hit. But when something you found before it was everywhere becomes everyone's thing, something in your relationship to it shifts. So, no. I haven't really noticed them for a long time. There is one song, "Blood, Sweat & Tears," which I still listen to often, but my relationship with them ends there.

When I look at K-pop now at 35, what I feel is complicated. I’m proud to be a 2nd Gen K-pop fan. It means I was part of something that was being built. Something that was hard to find and cost a lot of energy when you had to explain it to everyone around you who didn't understand and often didn't even want to. Many people didn't go far for insults. To me, it means that the groups that defined this era for me are groups that earned their place through hard work and originality. Through what they created—not overnight, not through algorithms and viral moments. I’m proud of that. And I’m also disappointed by what the genre has become. For me, it lost its essence somewhere on the road to becoming globally successful. But of course, it's progress. You can't stay raw and weird and specific and at the same time become a billion-dollar industry and a phenomenon understood by everyone on the planet at once.

My grandmother had her song. "In the Mood" by Glenn Miller—big band swing from the era she grew up in. When I played it for her once, she didn't listen to it as music. She was somewhere else entirely, at a ball. At the "tea parties," as they called them. Young again, in a beautiful dress and in my grandfather's arms. In a feeling that belonged to that song and only that song. And that is exactly how I feel when I hear my old K-pop songs. That is exactly what happens when I hear "Haru Haru." When I hear "Replay." When the first note of "Please Don’t" comes out of the speakers. When "Bang Bang Bang" starts and I’m suddenly watching three people on a Coachella stage in 2026, twenty years after they started, doing the thing they always did, and I, at 35, am crying with my phone in my hand in whatever room I happen to be in. And it’s still mine; it’s still completely mine in a way that nothing newer has been able to reach. That music carries that year within it. That is what it means to me to be a 2nd Gen K-pop fan.

So, that is my confession. It’s hard to write this down because after all these years, one almost doesn't remember how it was. I had to look a lot of things up, and I hope I haven't made a mistake anywhere in the dates. If I have, I apologize in advance. I also hope that my confession and how I feel today hasn't offended anyone. I believe there are many K-pop fans who see it differently today and many newcomers who would sharply object to my conclusions. On the other hand, maybe there are those who feel the same way and perhaps find themselves in this. I will be happy for any feedback.

Yours, Mimosa