Why START a k-pop blog?

For as long as I can remember, I have always adored writing.

As such, throughout the course of my life, I've found ways to express my passion for writing through a variety of different mediums. So whether that be writing poems, blogging, participating in online forum discussions, writing for my school newspaper, being editor of the yearbook, or even being a copywriter and copyeditor, I've just about tried them all.

Besides these things, however, writing in personal journals is my absolute favorite writing medium. I am a bit ashamed to say that I've probably accumulated way more writing journals than I can ever hope to fill the pages of. But that's beside the point, or maybe it isn't?

K-Pop Journals

Being in the k-pop fan community, one popular form of fan engagement with the music is actually k-pop journaling. One search on YouTube or Pinterest and you'll definitely know what I'm talking about.

(Credit: Pinterest)

That said, as someone who has been in the k-pop fan community for a good number of years, it probably wouldn't surprise you that I have a few k-pop journals myself.

(Note: I was going to include photos of pages from my own k-pop journals, but I've decided that I wanted to keep my entries personal in lieu of being more selective about what I'm posting on this dedicated blog site.)

The premise of these journals is pretty straightforward.

You make fun pages or spreads related to anything k-pop. These can be collages, journal entries, a checklist of your favorite group or songs, literally anything creative to express your thoughts. What's great about k-pop journals is that there are no guidelines, and you can even share your finished page spreads on platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube to get feedback and/or comments from the fan community. It's great because you can bounce ideas and get inspired by each other, and also just feel like you're really engaged with your fan community.

Over the years, I've written so much content in those k-pop journals that it sometimes feels like the personal pages of my journal aren't enough to capture everything I want to say about the topic.

With that in mind, as someone who already does personal blogging as a hobby, the idea of starting a dedicated k-pop blog is something that has passed my mind a great number of times.

(Credit: soompi.com)

Being especially active on stan Twitter — the k-pop fan community on the platform — I encounter so many blog posts on the daily, either from well-known news sources, like Soompi and Koreaboo, or from my friends' own personal fan blogs.

Needless to say, the motivation to start such a blog myself has always been there.

Present-Day Realities

Fast forward to the present day where I'm in my senior year of college and I'm doing the most writing I've probably ever done in my life.

Not that I'm really complaining because, besides the overload on essays I have, a lot of this writing is actually doing blog posts as class assignments. If I do say so myself, it's actually a revolutionary way to engage with the class material and a great way to genuinely feel accomplished with your writing — it being published and all.

(Credit: Wix.com)

That said, this period in my life is probably the most I've ever felt passionate about blogging.

Not too long ago, I started a collaborative blog with my significant other focusing on our passions — which actually includes our shared love of k-pop and audio live-streaming about music. That, in combination with all these other signs in my life — from my love for k-pop journaling to my daily interactions with personal k-blog sites to just wanting to get some published writing that I'm passionate about out there — all seem to point in the direction of me FINALLY starting my own k-pop blog.

So there you have it.

That is how this personal blog site was born, [K] pop culture.

And why the site name?

"[K] pop culture" is pretty self-explanatory, but the separation of the bracketed "k" is just to get readers to understand that though this is a wholly k-pop dedicated website — yes it's about the "culture of k-pop" — it's also about mass media and pop culture itself.

It's a fan's perspective of consuming k-media and k-music, and this blog site focuses on how the k-industry influences its audience, but also vice versa, how an audience is capable of shaping the industry and culture surrounding k-pop.