I'LL LOVE YOU FOREVER

A front-seat look at K-pop fandom.

The surfboard on top of the Korean wave that has swept the world in the past two decades has been K-pop, a mix of sugary tunes, precise choreography, handsome boys, and impossibly pretty girls. Kwon, an American-born Korean who was listening to it before it went global, provides an account of her relationship with K-pop, delving into its cultural roots and artistic development. For Kwon, as a teenager, the music was a way to escape the oppressive discipline of her family and to bond with her friends. But the intensity of K-pop fandom could be almost frightening. One Korean boy-band idol’s fans broke into his house to steal his underwear. Kwon never went that far, but she admits that dedication could easily turn into obsession. Behind the scenes, it was a grueling life for the entertainers, with management companies ruthlessly controlling every aspect of their lives, including savage diets and cosmetic surgery. Exploitation, especially of young women desperate for a shot at stardom, was rife. Kwon, who often felt caught between cultures, went through a series of battles with depression and believes that K-pop helped her cope. By the time BTS—the boy band known in Korea as Bantang (which translates to “bulletproof”)—became a worldwide craze, Kwon was no longer obsessive, although she found she could enjoy the music for its own sake. She sometimes loses the narrative thread in the second half of the book, but there’s still a lot—including Kwon’s willingness to laugh at herself—that makes it an enjoyable read.

A fun, colorful memoir of a global phenomenon.