Korean wave first touches the shore around South East Asia almost a decade ago, and in Malaysia, it got to be the successful airing of Winter Sonata. Winter Sonata was the first or should I rephrase, the first very well known Korean drama shown on Malaysian TV channel. It was starred by the hunky Bae Yong Joon and the pretty Choi Ji-woo as the main characters in this drama.
I remembered the drama quite clearly because even at a very young age then, I love snow. Winter Sonata was filmed during winter (the title of the drama is “winter”!) and one can easily see snow most of the time in this drama. The drama started with an introvert young man (the main character) falling in love with his classmate during his formative high school years.
Fate or not, they were separated by a cruel accident when he lost his memory of her due to it. After many years, they met again but he still could not remember his former sweetheart. Fast forward, he finally remembers her but when they were reunited, he was already sick. With such a good screenplay and drama full with interesting plots, Korean dramas have gradually become part of everyday TV channel.
This is how I think it started.
These days, there are more Korean movies, songs and dramas churning out at an amazing rate. Recently, my favourite Korean group – The Big Bang releases their brand new single, “Alive” after a hiatus of almost a year. Big Bang is one of the main catalysts in the K-pop scene and their commanding presence on stage means expensive concert for most audience who wish to attend their concert.
Luckily, we can buy the CDs.
What is Big Bang? Is it a theory about the development of universe? Nope and yes if you are referring it scientific-wise but to K-pop fans out there, you are lucky to come across this piece of article. This group consists of T.O.P. (Choi Seung-hyun), G-Dragon (Kwon Ji Yong), Taeyang (Dong Young Bae), Daesung (Kang Daesung) and Seungri (Lee Seung-hyun).
They first started out in 2006 with little success but in 2007, they struck their first success and until today, the lead single remains a hit. The rest is history and with their seniority and experience in the K-pop industry, they remain the number one most successful Korean pop group in history. In my country (Malaysia) as with almost everywhere, this means the emergence of K-pop supporter clubs, forums and even dancing groups.
There are plenty of forums about the SHINee (Google SHINee World Malaysia and you will be surprised with more than 286,000 results!), Big Bang (of course!) and so forth. Not to be left out, there’s a dance cover group called Epsilon dancing to the tune of Miss A, 2NE1 and other exciting Korean pop groups.
The arrival of Hallyu or Korean wave means more choices for the audiences. Instead of listening to the same song or watching the same dramas over and over again, why not we have a change in preferences, to see which is better? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to watch this Korean TV series called Running Man now..
(This article was written by me as an ASEAN-Korea Weblog Correspondent. You can find various interesting articles on various countries in ASEAN and Korea in this link.)
2 comments:
Attending Bigbang's Bigshow concert was one of the best thing happened in my life. Btw, nice article. :)
Thanks Fiqah. FYI, the first Korean song I listened to was unmistakably by Big Bang~!!
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