You won me over, Kim Hyun Joong.

Although, admittedly, it wasn't that hard.

It takes a pretty catch beat to make me pay attention, though. Said catchy beat has been the go-to on my ipod for the last week:

And then tonight (in avoidance of homework), I invested a little more time. All it took was one smiley adorable song and I'm a bonified Kim Hyun Joong fangirl. (It also has a catchy beat.)

I didn't take too much notice before, because the other video I had seen of his was Breakdown, which just frustrated me since the entire thing seemed to be leading up to a dance fight (Pop! Hit it! Cool! Yeah!), but the dance fight never appeared. I left the video disgruntled and angry, forgetting about him until Lucky Guy got stuck in my head. He's in SS501 as well - apparently all their members get to go out and do solo stuff, which is neat - but I haven't taken the time yet to really suss out all the different members of that group, although I did know he was one of the more prominent(ly pretty) members.

Kim Hyun Joong is borderline too-perfect looking. He's got the Siwon-esque asian-ken-doll thing going on a bit, but somehow his silly hair and grin makes me not discredit his perfection the way I do for Siwon. He is just crazy-gorgeous, though. An almost unbelievable blend of pretty-boy kpop idol and some actual masculinity. See example here (start at 4:00 for the extra hotness):

The top comments on this video are pretty indicative of his vast appeal (the second one being my favorite):

"When he ripped that shirt open I think he ripped open my heart as well! I mean WOW! O.O"

"Very nicely done, the work is amazing. He must have to hide out from all his fans trying to rape/marry him. The poor dear."

And all this Kim Hyun Joong love is probably going to spurn me into actually watching the entirety of Boys Over Flowers. I started it once, but got bored/annoyed with it quickly (I hadn't learned to appreciate Lee Min Ho the way I do now (I know, I know.... how can anyone NOT appreciate Lee Min Ho - but I was really distracted/un-attracted to the perm)), but now that I have TWO lovely korean idols to swoon at.... Yeah. I think I'll be able to stick it out this time until the romantic plot finally takes hold. Hurrah for the imminent arrival of Christmas break!

Long story short - this Thanksgiving day, one of the MANY things I'm thankful for?

Kim Hyun Joong. And his sassy smiley ways. :D

P.S. Oh, what's that? You (I) want a couple more pictures of him? Preferably with your (my) favorite korean actress? DONE.

New K-Pops

Once upon a time, I was very adamant about trying to limit my Kpop groups. I was only going to add one at a time, if at all. Because I knew how easily I became obsessed and was afraid I would spend literally ALL of my time researching their names and watching their entire back-catalog of videos.

Yeah, well, that rule kind of fell by the wayside pretty hard.

BUT, I haven't gotten crazy-obsessed with any of the newer groups yet. I like them and am watching the videos, but for the most part I don't know their names (yet). To this day there are only a few groups that I can name all the members of (Super Junior, Big Bang, Shinee, 2NE1, Fx).

But, there are some new videos and songs that I'm pretty into. I was always aware of but hadn't really invested much time into: Beast/B2st, TVXQ/JYJ/DBSK (they've got name issues), U-KISS, B1A4 , Boyfriend, ZE:A, CN Blue, FT Island. More time has been invested, but mostly just in a song or two.

And my new favorite favorites (as far as listening to these songs on repeat for the last 3 weeks) come from Teen Top, SS501, and Infinite.

Teen Top! Seriously, it stands for "Teenz on Top" or something equally horrible. Sigh. Korean band names are SO BAAAAD. I'm pretty sure they're all jail bait (one would assume, with a name like that, right?), but they've got this cool fucking clapping song:

AND then there's this masterpiece - SO catchily titled "No More Perfume On You". (Double sigh.)

But it IS hella catchy and fun, and there's an amazing amount of guyliner going on. I'm also in love with the dance. Just never never ever go find the English translation - it will ruin the song for you. That's why I didn't even post the real video here. You can tell just from the real video story line that its a pretty douchey song. So I'm ignoring that, because I can't speak Korean and thusly I can choose to ignore it. Also, I almost always like the dance version music video better.

As to why Wide-Eyes sings pretty much the whole fucking song, I have no idea. But he looks like a barbie doll, and I'm cool with watching him. And I LOVE watching little red-hair's smug little snarky face in the background the whole time.

I've been listening to this A LOT. I'm considering learning the dance and doing it in-place-of or in-addition-to a Zefron drag act at my choir's Talent-No-Talent show this year.

SS501. I have no clue what that stands name for. Probably something about how many members are in their band, their initials, their blood type, what kind of girl they want - who knows. I'm sure it stands for something both meaningful and idiotic. I don't care what they call themselves, because they have one of THE best k-pop songs of the year, hands down, in my opinion.

I realized one of the reasons this song is awesome is that you can tell they're saying "Love" - with a real English "L" sound! (I understand that this is difficult for most Asians, but when it's the main line of your chorus it's especially important to try extra hard. I'm looking at you, ShinEE. Stop "Ling Dinging" around your stages and take some time to learn how to say "Rrrrrr".)

Hold the phone, yall. Wikipedia has informed me, over the course of writing this post, on the intensely special meaning behind SS501's name:

"The name of the band is a combination of letters and numbers that have special meaning. The first “S” stands for “Superstar". The second “S” is an abbreviation for "Singer". The combination of 5, 0, and 1 symbolizes "five members united as one forever".^[1]SS501's official fan club name is Triple S (means SSS : Super Star Supporters)."

I feel my point has been proven.

Infinite. A band name that is almost normal. Well done, boys. I like Infinite because of this song, which is awesome and catchy (Oh!) enough to outweigh my dislike for the way it just kind of... ends. It doesn't fade out, it doesn't do one last chorus - they're just rapping, and then it's over. Whenever it comes on my ipod I'm really happy and then it's just GONE and I'm so confused. I had to listen to it multiple times on multiple formats before I actually believed that was the ending.

Infinite has some other good songs out there, too, but mostly I'm impressed with Sungjong, their little maknae (youngest in the group). He's easy to spot in the video because he's the one with the blue color pop (I fucking LOVE the video production/post-processing they did on that video. I know it's kind of cliche and not new in any way, shape, or form, but I love it anyway). He's the ladydancer of Infinite (I'm convinced that almost every boy band in Korea has at least one ladydancer (e.g. Heechul in Super Junior, Key in Shinee)), and the first time I saw the video below, I had no idea who it was.

I REALLY was hoping it was a girl and I was so prepared to be head-over-heels in love. Like, finally a rival to GD perhaps. And not that he's not awesome, because he so obviously is, but I just can't get that fired up about boys that are never going to be into girls... ... .. #sometimesgayboysmakemesad.

There are some solo acts that I've liked a lot recently, too, for either sound (and NOT dancing), or sound AND AWESOME DANCING. (HyunA and Jang Woo Hyuk, respectively.) But I'll spare you, as I think I'm done expanding on Kpop for the day.