Facebook Fan Pages

I’m sure most of you are fans of various pages on Facebook based on your hobbies and interests. Fan pages are great to network and connect with people depending on your interests.

I’ve liked so many pages that I don’t even know when and why I liked them in the first place. This post is a little bit of a personal experience with fan pages. One page that I did like and was able to win something from it was Community Korea, a page dedicated to creating events for foreigners living in Korea to help them adjust to Korean culture. This page not only offers meet ups and language exchange, but it offers free tickets to concerts and festivals. I clicked the page not expecting to win anything, but to my surprise, I had won a ticket to see an awards show featuring all the Korean Pop stars.

I also attended some of the social events to meet other foreigners or Korean people interested in culture exchange. There I was able to meet the organizers of the group and listen to their culture shock stories. I also learned about the Korean customs and norms from the Korean people and I was able to make friends with them.

If you are studying or living abroad in a different country and would like to learn more about it’s culture and meet other foreigners, I really recommend searching for pages on Facebook for pages like Community Korea. Social media is a great tool to use to overcome culture shock much faster by meeting people that already went through it and can give you advice. Who knows, you might even end up enjoying a concert for free!

 

Gentleman

From the last post, there was a bit of worry about the whole North Korea issue.

Instead about worrying about the North, let’s shift a bit to the South and celebrate Psy’s new single “Gentleman.”

 

Through Twitter, Psy’s fan club “PSY-cho” was able to be updated on how the new single was coming along. They were also the first to find out when and where the single would be released. With only about 72 hours of the music video being out, it already has 50 million views and it keeps growing every second.This video now has the record for most watched video in a day in Youtube history!

Psy considered releasing the single in Korea first and then spread it to the rest of the world a day later.

Fans suggested to Psy through Twitter to release the single at the same time in Korea. Psy listened and released the single on Itunes in more than 100 countries when it was released in Korea.

And what to say about the catchy tune, dance, and guest appearance from Brown Eyed Girl’s Ga In.

 

Fans are anxiously awaiting a Psy world tour that he will probably announce over Twitter in the next few months!

Calming My Nerves

As most of you have heard, there is some tension going on with North Korea. As a Korean culture lover, I worry for my English teaching friends in South Korea. I was able to experience living in South Korea while there was threats and a satellite launch from North Korea in 2012, so the news wasn’t alarming until North Korea actually announced it was preparing for a nuclear test.

My first instincts in the morning is going to CNN to see any updates on North Korea, but I found myself reading confusing information that sometimes might be exaggerated. Until tonight I was thinking of other sites I can get real time updates that would get to the main news. As soon as I figured it out, I thought I was pretty dumb in not thinking about going to Twitter earlier. As soon as I logged on to Twitter, I searched for North Korea. The top tweets were live updates from News sources in the 140 character sentences.

Come to my surprise, it turns out North Korea even has it’s own twitter account. (Which at the moment is hacked by anonymous.)

I’ve been checking Twitter frequently and have started following people who live in Korea to see their opinions on this whole issue.

I’m hoping everything calms down soon as I will be going to South Korea in a few months and I would like to visit North Korea in the future.

Feeling lonely? Try Tumblr!

When living in a new country, you are overwhelmed by so many cultural differences that you start feeling alone despite other exchange students nearby. When I lived in Korea, I felt alone because there weren’t many people I could relate to being Mexican-American. I missed Mexican food, my parents, and Mexican telenovelas!

I used a blogging site called Tumblr to let out all my troubles not expecting anyone to care. Within a few weeks, I developed over 200 followers. My followers were from all over the world! Soon enough, I was contacted by other foreigners in Seoul going through the same culture shock I was going through. We arranged to meet up and I knew I met life long friends. We were able to let out our frustration through traditional Korean meals that we ended up burning on accident and had a good laugh at all the embarrassing moments we had in that country. Ironically, I made a friend in Austin who was also on Tumblr and also happened to have met the friends I made in Korea when she traveled to Korea. It is such a small world! Other followers on Tumblr would ask me questions about my experiences and I was happy to answer. Months later after leaving Korea, I still gain followers and receive messages of people who are “fans” of my blog. It’s such a really happy feeling knowing other students learn through my experience of culture shock through a blog.

Before I started blogging on Tumblr, I would see other people blog and wonder why anyone would bother to write and read blogs. I’m glad I decided to give it a try because I have people that will listen when I have a problem. Even though I haven’t met many of them yet, we will be meeting very soon in Korea thanks to Tumblr.

 

Our first Tumblr meet-up!We burnt our food not knowing how to cook it!

I was there! Not really.

SXSW officially ends today. This week was very hectic yet fun here in Austin,Texas.

There were many celebrities in Austin this week including running into Nick Cannon at Barton Creek Mall this weekend.

The celebrities I thought I would get to see perform was f(x), a pop group from South Korea. To all the kpop fan’s surprise, the venue where f(x) was performing only allowed people 21 and over to watch the show despite the groups actual target audience is teenagers. Not many Korean pop stars come to Texas and fans were disappointed to not be able to see them if the fans age was under 21. The last Korean pop group that visited Texas was Wonder Girls in 2010.

Thanks to our fellow Kpop fans who are 21 and over, we were at least able to see live updates and pictures from the performance through Twitter. When searching f(x) sxsw, fans were able to see tweets from other fans about the great performance f(x) was giving. Minutes after the performance, fans were able to upload videos so all the other fans could see. It’s hard to believe a few years ago, this was not possible. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, I was able to see what other Korean groups were in Austin from friends who got to meet and take pictures with them. I can’t wait until I’m twenty one when I can be the one giving the live updates.

The Consequences: Idol Edition

Have you ever posted something on Facebook that you regret?

Using social media has some consequences  even to celebrities.

Jay Park, a famous Korean-American pop star moved to Korea at the young age of 16 to pursue his singing career. During his stay in Korea, he was culture shocked and used social media to express his frustration to his friends. In those comments, he mentioned he hated Korea and Korean people. A few years later, Jay successfully became a part of Korea’s top idol group, 2PM.

Those comments on Myspace were forgotten until Korean netizens found them and took a screenshot to be shown to Korean citizens. This instantly brought some backlash as the group lost fans, anti-groups were started, and threatening messages were sent.

Unfortunately, the backlash was so big that Jay had to withdraw from the group and go back to Seattle for some months to reflect on his actions.

Jay instantly regretted the comments towards Korea and slowly gained forgiveness from some people as he is back in the industry as a solo singer.

Many Korean idols are careful when posting things through social media sites because fans are very sensitive.

Often times, they will remove the comments and apologized to their fans.

Jay is just one example of the celebrities that have gotten a lot of hate for comments like the ones mentioned above.

It is definitely a good idea to go back to the old social media sites no longer used and remove inappropriate comments or even delete the whole account especially if you are going to have a career in television. You become a public figure and an influence to other people!

Making Friends Through Social Media

How many of us have talked to someone online and met them afterwards in real life?

If you are an expat in Korea, there is a great website that connects you to thousands of other expats looking to make friends and connections.

This website is called Meetup.com.

I’m sure many of us belong to one of many groups here in Austin.

Meetup has given expats the opportunity to learn about the Korean culture through meeting other people who already went through culture shock.

Expats can go hiking together, belong to a book club, check out restaurants together, go dancing together, and even join speed dating events.

Every weekend there are meet ups for both Korean and foreigners from all over the world to meet and share their cultures with each other.

One of the groups with the most members is The Seoul English Party with more than 1,000 members from all over the world. This group sets up salsa lessons, speed dating, dancing events, and language exchange.Their website Friends in Korea has a calendar with all the events going on that month.

Another organization that is on Facebook is Community Korea with 16,000 members.This organization makes events every week and give out information that can be useful for foreigners in Korea. For example, if a foreigner was looking for an English

speaking dentist, Community Korea will be able to provide that information with discounts for foreigners.

Social Media has given us the opportunity to meet people with the same interests. Meetup and Facebook made it very easy for me to make friends in Korea and find the best places to dine and dance. I’ve met friends that helped me get through culture shock and I hope to do the same when returning to Korea.

Daegu, South Korea

Abroad

Have you ever wanted to work or study abroad, but were too scared because you knew nothing about that country?
Recently, it has been getting easier for people to get to learn about other countries through watching vlogs. Vlogs, or video blogging are very common within Youtube and other video sites. They give one the opportunity to share a piece of their life with other people. In this case, many American teachers make daily or weekly vlogs about their life in Korea and adjusting to a complete different culture. The most successful blog from foreigners in Korea are Simon and Martina’s called Eat Your Kimchi website. In this website, a married Canadian couple video blogs about their experience in Korea. Their videos date back to 2008 when they barely moved to Korea and were culture shocked. With their videos, students and future teachers can virtually travel with Simon and Martina and learn about new trends in Korea.

Simon and Martina not only review Korean businesses and Korean music videos, but in a way advertise them through social media. The more than 200,000 followers read these reviews and watch the videos and end up visiting the places Simon and Martina recommended.

From personal experience, I watched Simon and Martina’s videos to get an idea on what great places to check out in Korea. After watching the videos, I visited many great restaurants, shopping places, and even got to see live performances of Korean Pop Idols.

This couple is such a big influence to Korean Pop Idol fans, that even Korean Pop Idols know who Simon and Martina are.

The video blogging has gotten so much attention from the Korean Media, that Simon and Martina now dedicate themselves to video blogging as a full time job and make money off of it.

It’s definitely interesting to see the fast growing pace of video blogging.

For those interested in checking out what Korea is all about visit the Eat Your Kimchi website!

The Hallyu Wave K-Fashion Edition

Three years ago, there was no way for American consumers to purchase Korean cosmetics online. All the cosmetic websites were in Korean and they only shipped in Korea.

With the Hallyu wave expanding all over the world, Korean companies realized it was time to expand. What better way than to create an all English website and use Korean idols to endorse it.

The first faces you see on Gmarket are all celebrities endorsing the website. The Korean company made this website in English. They got G Dragon, famous member of the Korean Boy Band Big Bang to endorse it. If you visit the website, most of the bigger pictures are G Dragon.He also has a music video endorsing the website which has become very popular. Now in 2013, there are celebrities faces everywhere in the website.

Because millions of fans follow these celebrities on twitter, they were able to end up at the Gmarket website and buy the Korean products they always wanted.

America now has a product called BB Cream which helps brighten up the face and hide blemishes.

This product was mostly used in Korea, but once celebrities and beauty gurus started raving about it in social media sites, everyone went crazy for it.

Sooner or later, America came up with it’s own BB creams.

It is definitely easier now to buy cosmetics from all over the world.

Thanks to celebrity endorsements and their use of social media to do so, fans can now have access to the products they use.

The Spread of Korean Pop Culture

I’m guessing everyone has heard Gangnam Style and are probably either creeped out by it or addicted to it.

Park Jae-Sang, also known as Psy, is a song  writer, rapper, dancer, and an actor who has been in the entertainment  business for ten years.

How exactly did a song in a completely different language become so famous?

Thank YouTube for that.

Five years ago, Korean pop music was not available on YouTube.  The music videos were posted on Naver and Nate, Korean search engines.

With the spread of the Hallyu Wave,or Korean Wave, countries like Japan,Vietnam,Thailand, and China became fans of Korean Pop.

Entertainment companies realized they could make more profit if they made the music available on YouTube. YG,SM and JYP, the “big three” entertainment companies of Korea started a YouTube Page for each of their artists.

A YouTube page was not enough exposure for Korean idols, so the companies made Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for their artists. That way, fans could communicate with Korean Idols.

If that wasn’t enough, the companies announced on their social media pages that they would hold auditions in America and all over Asia to find foreigners who wanted to be part of the Korean Pop Culture industry.  Ailee, an American fan used YouTube to post covers of her favorite songs. Soon enough, she was recruited by a Korean entertainment company and is one of Korea’s best rookie singers at the moment. Other fans like Henry Lau, auditioned after he saw a video of audition announcements. He now is part of  a sub-unit of Korea’s most famous group, Super Junior.

YouTube has to be the website who is most responsible for the spread of Korean Pop.  As a fan of Korean Pop Culture for six years, I’ve seen so many advancements in the Korean Wave. Because of the exposure of the Pop Culture through social media, I was influenced to study abroad in Korea and made the decision to move to Korea in 2013.

I definitely recommend Korean Pop if you want to listen to something different and catchy!

 

 

 

   
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