The ways to be fangirl or a fanboy of k-pop idols (by Jonghyuk)

<Twice: K-Pop Group>

Nowadays, there are a lot of k-pop idols that many people from all over the world love. From globally well-known singers like Big bang or EXO to idols that are not known to many people, Korea is a heaven for idol fans. People usually become fans of a singer or an idol because watching the idol they like makes them feel happy. In fact, as young people become busier and busier, there is a trend in which people relieve stress by watching their favorite idols. This became a trend because fans of idols could relieve their stress more easily than other activities by acting as a fanboy or girl. So, to help people become a professional fangirl or boy, I will talk about the specific ways to be them. Then more people may be able to get rid of their stress more easily.

<Exo: K-pop group>

The first step is to know the basic information of the idol. Many idol fans require specific information about their favorite idol. They think knowing those specific things is the start of fandom. Some of the things that a fan has to memorize are the debut date of the idol, the company they belong to, the real names of the idol, the individual birthday, where they are from, and many other things. You can look for this information on google, but because we are looking for the way to be a k-pop idol fan, a suggestion would be to use www.naver.com or www.daum.net for specific information. However, most of the information isn’t in English, so it isn’t easy to understand for foreigners. I also suggest using Youtube to find information of your idol. By searching key words like “Twice profiles” for example you will find results that you like.

The second thing fans want to know are the current situations of the idols. Well, people can look for newly uploaded videos of their idols but new videos are usually slowly uploaded and limited due to the copyright problems. Because of these problems, fans use the vlive (www.vlive.tv) app. Fans can communicate directly with idols through this app. In the app, you can watch live videos of the idol you select. Also by writing real time comments, the idol can directly respond to your comments if you are lucky.

There are also more advanced ways to communicate with your idol. You could join some internet fan cafés to support your favorite idol. These internet cafés are based in Korean portal sites like www.naver.com or www.daum.net as a mentioned above. Most of these cafés do not support other languages you should know Korean to participate. You could find the fan pages from here https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%8C%AC%ED%81%B4%EB%9F%BD

The last step is to act as a fan in real life. This means that instead of being a fan online, you should participate in real life activities like concerts, fan meetings, and other events that idols come to. For the concerts, I already showed the steps in a previous article at https://myhubs.org/2017/05/17/book-tickets-online-in-korea/, so refer to this when you get tickets. To participate in fan meeting, you need to buy albums from particular record shops. The most well know record shop is Hottracks. There are many shops in Korea, and it is also easy for foreigners to access these shops. After you buy albums from these record shops, you can get a chance to participate the fan meeting. Some fans buy several albums to go to the fan meeting. The last step requires money unlike the previous steps, so you should be aware not to use too much money for acting as a fan girl or boy.