Behind-the-Scenes of K-POP: The Odyssey, the Guide to K-Pop Written by a Law Student
While the world of law is vast, it is frequently stereotyped and reduced to courtroom drama and legal troubles. One of the less highlighted facets is at its intersection with the world of entertainment, which Wooseok Ki aims to pursue.
Freshly finished with law school and currently studying for the bar exam, Ki hopes to become involved in entertainment law once he passes. But even before then, he’s already dipped into this endeavor by writing a book. Published in December 2020, the book fits snugly within what Ki hopes to pursue in the future, bridging the gap between both South Korea and America. As an example, he discussed the lawyers that would handle the contracts between BTS and brand deals like their recent McDonald’s collaboration.
“I would love to be doing something that’s helping Asian talent prosper through these kinds of deals. That’s where I see my career going. I used to think that I had a clear picture of what I wanted to do, but now I’m being a bit more open-minded,” Ki said. “I want to do the kind of work that the K-Pop community, or the K-Pop fans, can see me and think ‘wow that guy does some cool stuff’ and my lawyer friends can be like ‘what is that guy doing?’” Ki said.
Ki’s book, K-POP: The Odyssey: Your Gateway to the Global K-Pop Phenomenon, is a foundation to this path. The book serves as a comprehensive guide to the world of K-Pop for the curious onlookers and is full of fun facts and interviews that more informed fans will also enjoy. Ironically, it was never something he planned to write.
Eric Koester, a professor at Georgetown, first contacted Ki on LinkedIn about entering the Creator Institute program which teaches participants how to write, alongside a curriculum that informs them about the inner workings of the publishing industry from process to publication.
Initially brushing it off, Ki began to consider what topic he would choose if he actually wrote a book. Knowing that 2020 would be the year he could pursue leisurely projects outside of school and work, he settled on K-Pop. Through the program, he was able to experiment with different writing styles and admitted that both the journalism and publishing industries can be hard for established writers.
“I was in a very privileged position where I didn’t have to worry about making a living off my book. I thought about it for a week and just said let’s do this. Let’s see where this goes,” Ki said.
Setting out to tackle the topic of K-Pop for an English speaking audience became his focus. While there are books written in Korean by journalists and professors broaching the topic, translations are seldom available due to lack of demand and awareness. As a fan, Ki leaned into his background to tackle his project from a new perspective for this audience.
“I’m just someone who has a passion for this topic and relevant fan experience to bring this together. So I think maintaining that as a fan myself, researching various artists and most importantly the culture, there was a lot for me to learn,” Ki said. “Because fans invest a lot more time and effort than I did, so I had to respect the work other fans have been doing. That was a fun challenge in itself to connect with other fans, see how they gather, see how they react, and in the end it was a very rewarding experience.”
As a fan, Ki’s background played a role in the narrative used to explain K-Pop to an unfamiliar audience. Born in Seoul, Ki moved to the United States when he was eight. There, while in middle school, is when YouTube first became popular and Ki ultimately found theories of K-Pop music videos.
“I was just a little kid growing up in Korea in Kindergarten and first grade so I only had a vague idea of the K-Pop I saw on TV. Then fast forward, on YouTube I saw these videos of K-Pop boy groups and girl groups and thought, ‘wow this is pretty cool. Where has this been all my life?’” Ki said.
Coincidentally, his family moved back to Korea shortly after and Ki was able to witness the culture firsthand, enrolling in K-Pop dance classes and attending concerts. K-Pop began to become an international term while he was in high school as groups like Wonder Girls toured with the Jonas Brothers and Girls’ Generation appeared on David letterman.
“I remember watching Korean TV reporting on international fans and shows. Not everyone in Korea is interested in K-Pop, it’s just one part of Korean culture, but there were people out there that loved it. I thought ‘wow, this is amazing. Look at how passionate they are and the light in their eyes.’” Ki said.
Heading back to the United States in 2012 for college, Ki witnessed Gangnam Style become an international sensation and the rise of BTS around the globe. During this time, he joined his college dance team and considers it one of the best times of his life and college, “I got to explore myself as a creative individual. Nowadays the dance life is on pause, but I was able to translate that creative energy into trying to reflect my experiences in the K-Pop culture and as a fan,” Ki said.
His appreciation for K-Pop formed while performing for people who were unfamiliar with the music. His team, primarily Korean, performed at a K-Pop convention in 2014 when K-Pop was still a subculture.
“Every other team was mostly Asian, but they were other ethnicities [and not Korean]. So we performed and we heard everyone else in the audience chanting the lyrics to the song,” Ki said. “So we were wondering how they knew them when the song wasn’t mainstream in Korea as well. Only K-Pop fans would know it. I think that really shocked not just me, but the other Koreans on my team as well.”
“I think if I had been living back in Korea I wouldn’t have felt it as much. I think the challenge for a lot of Koreans living in America, especially myself, is reflecting on how I first saw K-Pop in 2010,” Ki said. “It’s hard to imagine and fathom how popular and how big K-Pop has gotten if you’re not outside the country. So for me, I think it’s a very serendipitous turn of events because of how my life has progressed.”
Taking all of this into account, the biggest challenge remained trying to effectively portray a mostly visual form of entertainment in the written word.
“The mentality of assuming that the reader had background knowledge would mean I could afford to be less descriptive and so on. That kind of mentality would be best slated for people who are already passionate about it,” Ki said. “But my goal was to say that there’s something I’m very excited about and I want you to check this out. It might not be for you, but I want to break down why people are excited about it. That’s why I took a very colloquial tone where it was like explaining it to a friend. “
Ki began with what he described as the trifecta: artist, industry, and fandom. From there, he expanded on the three with history, data, and interviews. Beginning the process, Ki worked his way from mutual friends and academic contacts to cold emailing industry professionals and eventually interviewing CEO and founder of DIVE STUDIOS Brian Nam, former YG Entertainment director Peter Chun, multi-platinum record producer Hyuk Shin, and K-Pop idol and actor Henry Lau.
Now available in both paperback and hardcover, K-Pop: The Odyssey: Your Gateway to the Global K-Pop Phenomenon, will also be available in audiobook format in October. The title developed after Ki had reached the midpoint of the book and realized it’s impossible to include everything into one.
“I would have to write five more books and that would have to be continuously updated as we go along. I think this shows that maybe if we wrote a book like this in 2010, it could have been very condensed because we didn’t know where it was going. We still don’t know where it’s going, but so much has happened that I wanted to say through this book. I want you to be wondering what’s going on and understanding K-Pop as a whole. This book was published in December 2020 and in the first half of 2021, we’ve seen so many events happen already which I think is crazy and amazing…This is getting bigger and bigger as a snowball effect and maybe this is the time to hop on it.”
One of the chapters “K-Pop as a Music Genre” attempts to break down the meaning of K-Pop, which Ki described as one of the most difficult ones that was confusing to write about.
“I think the title ‘K-Pop as a Genre’ is supposed to provoke the question: is it a genre? Should it be a genre? People seem to have so many different opinions and I think this diversity of opinions is because nobody really defined what K-Pop was from the onset. It continues to expand,” Ki said. “I never really thought about it until I started writing this book. As a Korean person, K-Pop was K-Pop and generally I would equate it with idol music. I didn’t even think to really correct people who didn’t know what K-Pop was and called other musicians it. I think now that I realized the power dynamics, I realized that K-Pop is a label. It’s a social phenomena, but at the same time how we use the word K-Pop is important and also how much attention we pay to the artist is more important than the label itself.”
He concludes the chapter with the points regarding artists themselves who differ on the meaning of K-Pop, not just the fans. It leads to the question whether critics’ opinions should be taken as the official word.
“There’s so many differences in opinions and that means at the end of the day, let’s just enjoy the music. Let’s just celebrate the artists instead of trying to restrict them by saying ‘he’s K-Pop, he’s not,’ when we could have these debates for hours and hours and not agree,” Ki said.
