My KCON Paris 2016 Experience

One of the better events that has come out of the K-pop realm the last five years or so is KCON, a music festival and convention about everything and anything Korean. For the first years it took place only in the US but it has later expanded to other Asian countries like Japan and most recently also Abu Dhabi. It was therefore really surprising that suddenly a KCON in Paris was announced, and with probably one of the best line-ups of groups as well (that and the coming one in LA). My two french friends (whom I met in Korea) and I quickly decided we had to go, and we managed to buy standing tickets to the show, and although it felt like a long wait at the time suddenly it was time for me to fly to France and witness I.O.I, Block B, f(x), F.T Island, BTS and SHINee live in person.

I'm Back!

Guess who's back? Yes, after almost two and a half months I am making a comeback on this blog, as I've now returned from Korea and settled back here in Sweden. There are many things that can be said about my eight week trip to Korea, way too many to summarize here, but it has been two of the best months of my life and it is a memory I will never forget. I got a chance to learn the language (and my skills have improved a lot although I'm still very much a beginner), meet new friends and experience a completely new culture. I had a blast in Seoul and can't wait to come back. Of course going to South Korea I had some expectations of becoming closer to the K-pop-sphere, and although it wasn't a huge part of my daily life there were some instances.

Hearing K-pop songs in cafés, malls and shops for example was very interesting, as I got to know which songs were the most popular in Korea (as it's not always the same ones that are popular internationally). I heard a lot of GFriend, Twice, Mamamoo, iKon, AOA and Big Bang which isn't surprising since those groups have done great on the charts, but overall I heard a lot more girl groups than boy groups. Additionally I have to confess that unlike my initial plans I have become a big fan of Produce 101 and I.O.I, simply because they are so huge in Korea. I couldn't go anywhere without hearing "Pick Me", "At The Same Place" or "24 Hours" and thus I became a fan unknowingly. I realized that I actually hadn't written anything about Produce 101 on this blog at all, and that's because I was firmly against the idea and the entire concept (and I hate these kind of reality shows because I always get too emotionally involved), so I was stubbornly going to boycott it. However these days I'm a big fan and "At The Same Place" is without hesitation one of my favorite songs so far this year.

Apart from hearing songs I never actually got to see any idols up close except for one time. Near where my school was located I heard that Twice was going to have an event at a Dunkin' Donuts, so I went to have a look and I did actually see the girls in person. Well, it was from a distance and through a window but nonetheless I SAW THEM. They were all much shorter than I expected but of course super pretty, almost to the point of not seeming like real people but rather like dolls. Anyhow I thought that was pretty cool, but generally the closest I got to seeing idols was watching dance groups perform covers of K-pop songs in Hongdae.

Moving on; Since I have been inactive on this blog for such a long amount of time I thought I would try to do a recap of what I've been missing which is a lot. This means that there's not going to be any long reviews but more so just some quick thoughts about the different releases. Upon writing this I realized that there were some reviews I didn't get the chance to finish back in February so I'm also going to lightly touch on those as well. I can't promise that I'm going to be extremely active here but I'm going to do my best to try and get back into the flow and write here and there, so keep an eye open for some new posts! :)

Upcoming Hiatus & Announcement

I've been deciding for a few days now whether or not a hiatus would be appropriate for my current situation, but finally I've made the decision that it is. What's happening right now is that in a couple of days I am flying to South Korea and Seoul to stay there for two months. Yeah, it's pretty crazy and I still haven't quite wrapped my head around it (not to mention my lack of packing), but I'm sure it's going to an exciting experience and a memory for the rest of my life.

However I'm confident that it's going to be much harder to keep up with this blog and I don't want to write posts unless I can commit myself to it 100%. Additionally I want to enjoy my stay as much as I can and not feel like I have to write reviews and SNS Friday's and so on, as it may disrupt my visit and schedule. I hope you can all understand where I'm coming from, and I promise that once I'm back home this blog will be up and running again. In the meantime I've created a blog simply for my trip (in Swedish though, because of my friends and family), but feel free to check it out instead.

Goodbye for now, and I'll see you in two months!

Quick Update: Hiatus Ahead!

Hi Guys!
I thought I'd just quickly update you on my whereabouts this coming week, since I probably won't be posting as much as I'd like to. The reason for that is: I'M GOING TO CRETE!
Yes, you heard me correctly. Early next morning me and a couple of friends are flying out to Crete for a short holiday before we graduate in early June. As you may or may not know I'm currently a senior at my school so in a month I'll be graduating, and we thought that a final trip together would be perfect to get in the right mood as well as getting a tan right in time for prom.

Basically I just wanted to quickly announce my week-long absence from running this blog, but fear no more because I do have a couple of scheduled posts. What I'm most angry about is actually that I'm going to be missing SHINee's comeback, but there's isn't much to but to wait until I get home.

I hope you're all having a great Friday and will continue having a wonderful weekend!
Jess

Quick Update

Hello everyone!

As you've probably noticed; my blog has been kind of dead this past week. The reason it has been so is because I've been away skiing in the Alps, and thus haven't had time to post anything. Usually when I go away I want to prepare and schedule posts in advance, but I didn't have the time to do so this time around since school has literally devoured all my free time.

Anyhow, I'm back now and will make sure to get this thing running again as soon as I can,
Cheers!

And Thus Begins The Year of 2015

Photo Credit: Me

Hello everyone! I know I'm a bit late with my New Year's greetings, but in my defense I was barely home at all yesterday and unlike my Christmas post I forgot to schedule it beforehand. Anyhow, I hope you all had a wonderful evening together with friends, family and other close ones, and I sincerely wish you all a happy 2015.

This year has been quite a whirlwind, but for me personally and most certainly in the K-pop industry, but not everything has been bad. Although there have been ups and downs I think for everybody, there have been moments here and there were you felt like it wasn't so terrible after all. I wish for myself that this new year will bring more of those moments, and I wish that everyone I know will feel the same way.

I hope you all will be safe, healthy and happy.
Jess

I'm Back.....Kinda

After what feels like forever, I have made the decision to slowly start up my blog again with a fresh sense and direction. I's been almost a month since I jumped ship and although it isn't an extremely long period of time it still served its purpose as I hoped it would. Things have just been crazy in my life the last couple of weeks and now when I'm finally getting my one week break for fall, it seems like a good place to start up this blog again.

I kid you not when I tell you how stressed I've been over school, work and my other activities lately, so much that I actually thought about quitting pretty much everything I was doing,  but eventually I pulled through. Oh, and I also recently got my much awaited driver's license, so that's really exciting for me although it was a hugely stressful procedure to accomplish. I've also dyed the ends of my hair turquoise and suffered from two colds within this four week period. So not only have I been stressed, I've been sick too. As you probably can tell I'm not entirely relaxed yet and considering I have a report due this Sunday I do have some work to do, but now I have the days free to do so. Isn't it ironic how you'd want to skip school just so you could stay home and study...for school? Yeah, it's kind of messed up.

Anyway, the whole K-pop thing probably should be discussed shortly too. Seriously guys, this year has been screwing us all over time after time again and I don't think we've seen the last of it yet either. It's funny how Jessica's departure from her beloved group really affected me in a way that I wasn't the slightest prepared for. Since I know the industry as well as I do and I am aware of all the faults and ugly sides of things, I shouldn't have been so emotionally shocked, but that break-up in particular was a real wake-up call for me. It appeared even the seemingly strongest bonds aren't unbreakable and it showed me just how much of it is actually a business, more than I think I knew before.

This time now, I feel like I'm coming back with a much realistic outlook on things, or at least I hope so. I've been slightly damaged yes, but hopefully it won't distract me too much from things. I am now much more mentally prepared for any additional contract terminations or such, and with that in mind I'm also awoken from my more naive way of viewing the industry. It's all just a question of money, management and personal health and no matter how you put things, everyone's in it for themselves despite how well most group members seem to get along.

On that note, I welcome you all back to this blog and hope you'll stay with me as I continue to pray about SHINee, so far the only SM group intact and scandal-free.

Blog Update

As of recent events, I've decided to go on an indefinite hiatus and stay away from blogging activities for a while. I won't shut the blog down, but I'm going to take a break to focus on other parts of my daily life. I know I'm not the most frequent blogger but I always feel this pressure on my shoulders that I should post this and post that, and recently I've really haven't had either the time or motivation. Since school started I feel like all my spare time has gone lost, and as well as working 2-3 times a week it's been hard to do anything blog-related. It had gotten to the point where I saw the blog more a duty than something I did for fun, and I don't want it that way at all. I figured the best decision was to back off for a while so that I could rediscover the joy I first had when starting this blog.

Secondly, I will not only lay off blogging, but I've decided to take a break on K-pop entirely. As any fan knows, following this huge whirlwind of an industry is extremely time consuming and at times even exhausting. This year has been one of the messiest ever on top of that, and the recent SNSD scandal was really the deciding factor. There's so much, pardon my language, stupid shit going on that I don't feel like keeping up with anymore, and no matter how much I love all bias groups I'm at the same time way too attached to them to ever even imagine on the members getting kicked out as with Jessica. No one is safe, as recently proven, and although I didn't think I would be that affected it hurt deep down in my heart when I found out what was actually happening.

There's just so many other parts of my life that I would like to do more of, such as reading, playing guitar, singing, spending time with friends and family, watching movies and series and doing all those things without checking K-pop news' sites every 10 minutes. I also am very busy both with school and work and I don't want to run a half-dead blog just barely keeping it alive by posting mediocre posts every once in a while. I hope you all understand where I'm coming from and I promise I will be back soon, I just don't know quite when yet.

Stay awesome,
Jess

Glad Midsommar!

Hello friends! If you're Swedish or have perhaps visited Sweden during summertime, you are aware of the Swedish summer holiday Midsommar (directly translated as "Mid Summer"), and today it is Mid Summer's Eve! Because this holiday is a very big one where I come from I'm going to be a bit patriotic today and celebrate with my friends and family. But before that I'll just update you on tomorrow because I probably won't be posting anything then (thus no weekly Kpop song) or even the day after that. It's my 18th birthday tomorrow so I'm going to take a break from the blog to just relax and enjoy my new found freedom. I'm soon going to be off camping on an island just nearby from where I live with a bunch of friends, and I'm not sure how everything's going to work out in terms of putting up tents and cooking food and so on, but I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun.

I don't know how many readers there are that celebrate Midsommar, but if you do (or even if you don't), I hope you have a wonderful day!