omonatheydid | B.E.A.S.T: Well-groomed and well-behaved

goshipgurl.livejournal.com posting in

B.E.A.S.T.

Well-groomed and well-behaved

By Andrè Tucic

Cute Beasts: Yoon Doo Joon, Son Dong Woon, Yang Yoseob, Lee Kikwang, Jang Hyun Seung and Yong Jun Hyung (from the left) are B.E.A.S.T. Photo by Cube Entertainment

BERLIN- On Sunday, the Boygroup B.E.A.S.T. is going to perform at the Columbia Hall. It will be a feast day for Korean people in Berlin - but not only for them.

South Korea's export hits in the past were cars and electronic stuff. Now, korean pop music, also known as K-Pop, is also one of them. The so called "korean wave" first took over Asia and has now reached India, the Middle East, North Africa, North- and South America and Europe. The music is a mix between traditional asian sounds and western pop music, the groups are singing in korean, japanese, mandarin and english. Most of the time their songs are about family, love and morals. "But even the bad boys of the scene are innocent and well-behaved.", says Esther Klung.

Checkpoint of Berlin's scene (idk how to translate that i dont even understand the meaning of the sentence)

The Berlin inhabitant has been a K-Pop fan for 4 years now. "I found these groups on youtube, fell in love with them and started to create fanpages with a friend.", she says.

The key element of the Berlin K-Pop scene

K-Pop Fan: Esther Klung looks after korean culture. Photo by Christian Schulz

Now she's like the key element of the Berlin K-pop scene, which, she guesses, has around 150 active members. That's not bad compared to the 3000 registered South Korean's who live in Berlin, and the number of fans is counting, according to Klung. The 31-year old woman is fascinated of the Korean culture. She volunteers at the center of culture of the Korean embassy, organizes and hosts fanclub meetings. She also works for the online-magazine www.k-magazin.com, where she writes about culture, music, movies and literature. Last August she organized the first german K-Pop night and in November a K-Pop contest, both at the center of culture at the Leipziger Platz. "The 23-year old contest winner from Trier went to Korea as a background dancer and performed at the K-Pop World Festival", says Esther Klung.

Nowadays she also works outside of Germany. Together with a friend from Switzerland she opened the K-Pop forum www.so-loved.net, which hosted the "So Loved Awards" last year. The most popular K-Pop Groups were determined by internet votes. "We had 500,000 visitors in one month on our site, and 75,000 votes."

Names like 2NE1, SNSD, JYJ or B.E.A.S.T. were mentioned - not really well-known names over here. On Sunday, B.E.A.S.T. ("Boys of East Standing Tall"), six guys between the age of 18 and 20, are going to perform at the Columbia Hall. A good opportunity to research the hype of K-Pop. The first 600 tickets were sold out within a few hours. Not bad, considering the price of around 60 Euro. There are still left-over tickets at the box office.

B.E.A.S.T.'s looks are flawless, they have extravagant hairstyles, wear bling-bling earrings, glamorous outfits and appear like Bill Kaulitz from Tokio Hotel. (LOL WUT) Their music is a mix of techno-sounds, R&B- and Rap-elements, as well as virtuosi (god what kind of word is this) dance breaks. We're talking about the "Hallyu Wave". Their videos got 60 million views on youtube. Their first album was released in 2009 and since then they are the favorites of the Asian fashion- and ad industry: Their CDs were awarded with many awards, the singer have appeared in tv-dramas. Korean teens around the world are copying their style or singing their songs at karaoke places. The requests for dance groups in Berlin where you can learn to dance like your role models is high.

The Beauty and the Beast

On Sunday, B.E.A.S.T. will introduce their third album at their first concert in Germany. Fans from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France are expected. It was the same when the Group JYJ performed at the Tempodrom back in November. "Back then not only Asian but also lots of European people were present.", says Klung.

The fans of B.E.A.S.T. call themselves B2uties, like: Beautys. Like the Beauty and the Beast. Most K-Pop fans are very young and well organized. They have organized meetings in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Berlin with the help of Facebook. Last summer there was a flashmob with girls dancing at the Potsdamer Platz, Alexanderplatz and the Brandenburger Tor. The Korean government supports the Hallyu Wave cause they want to make their own culture to a global brand. They have even founded their own department for the pop-culture-industry. At a young age musicians get scouted at talent competitions and are trained at academies. Besides vocal- and dancepractice they also learn foreign languages.

Esther Klung is also studying a foreign language right now, Korean of course.

sources:
Berliner Zeitung.de
translation by omona's one and only

goshipgurl

this article is a mess imo. i hard a hard time translating it because i felt like reading the essay of a middle school student. the writer should go back to university and study journalism again tbh. as for the article itself, its okay. most of it is about this woman and not batoost. and last but not least, yeah i know my grammar sucks but its late at night and im not really good at translating from german to english.
special shoutout to my gurl xkeirafanx whos at the batoost concert at the moment. my other friend told me they were pushing and pulling like crazy before the entrance, i hope everyone there is safe.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

breakinglocks.livejournal.com

German K-Pop Fans are so young and beautiful.

From:

like-a-melodie.livejournal.com

..and i was like: YES! someones older! strike! you've shattered my whole 5 minutes of glory with your sarcasm :P

no, really aside from that lady -i've always thought the average german k pop fan is between 13 and 20 and an ex j-pop/rock fan. so i was kinda happy to see that i'm not THAT old..or basically not alone in my age group 20 something with some friends of mine.
about the looks: not everyone can afford plastic surgery so i don't care if she's not your basic b2utie..ehrm i mean beauty. at least she does something for the german fans instead of complaining how dumb and childish all the german fans are and how much she hates them. it's quite common among german fans. haters gonna hate.

endless charms, endless possibilities

B.E.A.S.T: Well-groomed and well-behaved

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags