MOMtheK is a journey through all things K-pop from one mom’s perspective: ramblings, rants, and random thoughts.
About the author: Married mom of two, residing in the U.S., yet dreaming daily about the K.
About the blog: I decided to write about K-pop about 9 months after falling into the rabbit hole of it. My journal would have remained private if it weren’t for my family’s encouragement that I share it with others. I realize blogging about K-pop isn’t unique, but hopefully I bring a unique perspective. I fell in love with K-pop in November 2017, and it’s become not just a huge joy in my life, but a catalyst for my personal growth and discovery in ways I never could have predicted.
Even though I’m a relative newbie to K-pop, I’ve gained a good amount of knowledge about it in a condensed window of time. I can wax poetic about the Korean Wave and its various generations as though I was there for them, when in actuality, up until 2017 the only K-pop on my iPod was 2NE1’s “I am the Best” and Psy’s “Gangnam Style.” I feel like I’ve been into K-pop forever. It’s brought such color and flavor to my life that it’s hard to imagine a time before I was into it. K-pop is joyful, sincere, complex, and most of all captivating. There aren’t many people that only like K-pop a little bit. People seem to either love it or hate it, or they’ve never really heard it.
A term I’ve heard in the K-pop world is 입덕 (ip-deok), a slang for ‘the moment one enters into a fandom’. For me personally, BTS on the American Music Awards in 2017 was ipdeok. I was hooked in that moment, and MOMtheK is the result of my brain swimming in a K-pop ocean ever since.