K-Pop Reality

Watching K-Pop Star and Super Star K, Korea’s versions of American Idol, can literally bring tears to my eyes.  There is something about young Korean kids striving so hard to attain their dream of K-Pop stardom that gets me everytime.  And the judges, particularly Park Jin Young on K Pop Star, are so much better than those on American Idol.  All admit that they are all a bit too obsessed with the “gam dong-ness” (감동) (roughly translates as “touching-ness) of each performance, but damn it, I do feel touched most of the time.

So I was really annoyed to read an interview of Brad Moore, the drummer for Busker Busker, which is currently the biggest band in Korea, in which he slams the producers of Super Star K for treating its contestants like prisoners and basically faking the whole show.

Now of course I was naïve.  This is not the first time the K-Pop industry has been criticized.  But still it makes me sad. On the other hand I often wonder who is more unreasonable, the consumer for stubbornly desiring to believe in the realness of “reality tv” or the producers for stubbornly refusing to deliver it.   And the more I think about it the more I blame myself “the consumer.”  We all construct our “realities” through a variety of means, facebook, fashion, blogs, etc.  So why should we demand, or even think possible, anything else from TV producers?