From fan to student

It has been 5 years, but I'm still as much of a fan as I was before. However, besides being a fan, I'm now also a Korean studies student. BTS and K-pop as a whole did not just give me a connection to other people, they also made me very interested in Korea as a whole. At first when I started listening to BTS, I didn’t feel the need to understand the lyrics, but the more I listened to the music, the more curious I became. I then started looking up English translations of the lyrics, but those didn’t always help. Often there were references to things I didn’t understand. The same happened when watching the BTS videos: they often did things that I had never seen before or didn’t understand. Slowly, through the lyrics, videos and my own research, I started to learn more and more about Korean culture. The more I learned, the more interested I became. My interest was no longer just K-pop, but the whole of Korea and Korean culture.

Of course with Korean studies we also learn about K-pop and the dark side of it, but this has never stopped me from being a fan. It did make me more critical of K-pop and made me consider my spending habits a bit more. I think it’s good to be critical about things you like. For me being a K-pop fan and a Korean academic can go hand in hand.

The only thing that can stop me from being a fan is myself, when I no longer enjoy being a fan. But outside pressure shouldn’t stop us from having hobbies because they are considered to be childish. Being an adult is hard enough as it is; why make it harder on ourselves by giving up the things we like because society says we are too old for them?