* It doesn’t say much about the boys though but it’s nice to share anything related to them right
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Mon, 11/16/2009 11:19 AM | City
What would a group of 20-30-something women be talking and giggling about while they share a table? Work? Shoes? Gossip?
When five women gathered in a food court of a mall in Central Jakarta recently, a large portion of their conversation was taken up with names and abbreviations that could strike most Jakartans as peculiar or alien.
“Supernova and T-ara are debuted by MM, right?” one of them asked.
“DBSK is one of the more senior ones,” another said.
“SuJu came out earlier than Big Bang I think,” said another.
The acronyms might remind some people of astronomical theories or beverages, but they are actually stars of Korean popular music, also known as K-pop.
Heppy, an IT worker in her late 20s, said the women’s friendship had begun in 2002 with an internet mailing list that focused on Johnny’s — a Japanese boy-band agency.
“The Japanese boy-band scene had not been very lively, so our interest shifted to K-Pop,” said Dian, an accountant in her early 30s, sitting opposite Heppy.
The mailing list is no longer active, but the women still meet once a week to trade information about boy bands, as well as information on merchandise or “goodies”, and, of course, music.
Heppy, for example, had brought a stack of blank compact discs with her. She took a few out and gave them to Dian, who will use them to burn a few of her latest K-pop albums from to give to Heppy.
At times, it goes beyond that.
“This is a costly hobby. Sometimes we buy goodies and merchandise through the Internet or through someone who went to [Korea]” Heppy said. Ming, now in her 40s, is the member the other girls jokingly claim “poisoned them with K-pop”, who one day brought with her a DVD and a CD of music of a K-Pop star.
Heppy and the other women gathered that day were just a few of the many local fans of Korean pop culture.
For example, there are those who are members of the Indo-Dynamic Korea (IDK) group — an online community of Korean pop culture fans.
Sari Burgess, one of the founders of IDK, said the community had been involved with several Korean-related events.
“We helped the Korean Embassy when they held the 2006 Korean Traditional Dance Festival, and we were the fans organizers when Jang Dong Gun [a Korean drama actor] visited Indonesia,” Sari said.
The IDK, formed in early 2006, now has around seven administrators, 700 members, and is an active online community.
IDK was behind the “From Indonesia with Love” movement, which was triggered by the cancellation of a concert and fashion show from Korea because of the July bombings that shattered the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott Hotels in Kuningan, South Jakarta.
“We wanted to show [Korea] that Indonesia is a safe place,” Sari said.
In 2007, 14 members of the IDK, including Sari, toured Korea with sponsorship from the Korean Tourism Organization. Their trip was documented and aired on the Korean TV channel KBS world.
For Sari, the IDK community, as well as Heppy and her friends at the mall, Korean drama and popular music have their own traits that make them attractive.
“While Western music is often monotonous, and J-Pop has strong Japanese elements, K-pop is a balance between Asian and Western,” Sari said.
“In the drama [soaps] you can see [Koreans] have a high respect for the elderly, and there’s a deep sense of family ties,” she said.
Sari works as a freelancer for an entertainment company and is currently in a production team that is managing an upcoming concert of famed Korean artist Rain.
“I hope I can go to Korea again with the money from this job,” Sari said happily. (dis)
Source: The Jakarta Post
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