QRIMOLE – June 2025

It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!

I’ve now seen Rolling Quartz live for both of their US tours (I’m sure this will inspire envious rage in some readers but hey we gotta enjoy our last few concerts before Trump literally bans all South Koreans from entering or some shit) and can you explain to me why their live shows are hearing-loss inducing (in a good way) but when I listen to their recordings I have to turn up my volume and the guitars just don’t seem that heavy by comparison?

Watching a group at a live venue is generally the “ideal” format for listening to rock music. There’s a very different quality to hearing a group perform live on a stage where every signal is its own separate sound source, going into speakers which are large, rather than listening to it on your home stereo or in your car or earbuds or whatever. It allows everything to be louder with more clarity. Rock music tends to sound better when it’s louder and there’s a scientific reason for this, it’s called the equal-loudness contour, which is expressed by the Fletcher-Munson curves. The ear doesn’t hear sound “neutrally” across all frequencies (pitches) in the sound spectrum. When listening to low volumes there’s a bias toward frequencies above the 500Hz range, up to about 7000Hz, which means that those “high” and “midrange” frequencies will sound louder than “low” frequencies at lower volume. As the volume is turned up, those differences start to even out a little. That’s why you have to crank your car stereo really high to hear a decent amount of bass response. The bass is still there, your ears just aren’t very good at picking it up at lower volumes. This gets into the realm of psychoacoustics, which I’ll probably do a future music theory post about.

Why is everybody getting worked up about the jacket Karina wore during her trip to Japan? It’s just a black and red jacket with the number two on it! It’s not affiliated with Kim Moon Soo at all! Why are people overthinking a simple jacket?

and

how we feeling about Karina and ablume being the new right-wing mascots?

I don’t know, just whatever I guess. It’s not like these people are actually allowed any opinions anyway, so you can chalk up whom or whatever more or less to a happy accident. If BTS can get a free pass for wearing swastikas and doing aegyo photoshoots at the Holocaust museum, I think it’s only fair that everyone else gets the same treatment.

I just looked at ablume’s TikTok stories and saw this being reposted…

[link removed]

And I bursted into tears man. I don’t know man. It’s just so sad seeing this group (og FIFTY FIFTY) I once loved now being torn like this.

I was in denial whenever Keena said she’s glad FIFTY FIFTY is now 5 or ablume said they’re glad they’re just 3. Of course they’d say that. It’s because they’re better off not thinking about what could’ve been. If ATTRAKT in that moment decided to terminate Keena’s contract peacefully for some reason Keena would definitely go back and they’d be very happy as four, I thought.

Then I was angry when it came out that ablume wanted to work with SIAHN, the producer that seemingly has problems with Keena. I liked all the tweets from fans demanding an explanation on what’s going on.

Then I was bargaining when ATTRAKT lost the copyrights to Cupid and ablume posted their monthly flower posts with Cupid colors as the background. They’re not shading Keena or any FIFTY FIFTY members, they’re just celebrating their win!

And now I’m… depressed. But also angry. And also in denial. And also bargaining with myself. God I’m grieving a relationship that I only knew through carefully selected contents. Is this normal?

And Keena… she’s had a rough month. From going on hiatus due to PTSD, to her company revealing the reasons basically only to boost the CEO’s image, to her case against SIAHN being dismissed, to her former members reposting a TikTok that implies she wasn’t needed for them to be the “real” FIFTY FIFTY. I probably broke down because of her.

But now I don’t even know if it’s something worth breaking down over. I saw a lot of my Directioners friends broke down when ZAYN left One Direction around 10 years ago and I thought that was stupid because that’s not something worth crying over. Am I stupid? Is this also not something worth crying over?

Yeah, it’s really not. The story of Fifty Fifty and the story of Abume isn’t that different to many similar stories in Korea and elsewhere where there are disputes between different creators, producers and artists. These situations can get very messy and there often aren’t easy answers. K-pop’s usual “system” of course then adds another weird diemsion to it where the truth gets even more obfuscated than it usually does in things like this. But don’t worry too much. Just listen to Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night”, it might make you feel better.

Oh, and the asker wanted me specifically to attach an image from Tumblr rather than just link there, but I can’t even access it without signing up to Tumblr and I sure as fuck am not signing up to that shit, sorry. For future questions like this if you’d rather not link the source, your best bet is to screencap what you want me to see and then share the screencap to somewhere like Imgur or another image-hosting site. In fact, I’d strongly recommend doing this anyway when sharing social media and any other weird dicey k-pop related content in my direction even if it IS something where you’re happy sharing the link, because there is a rule that “anything even remotely interesting in fan spaces is ALWAYS taken down due to sheer shame before Kpopalypse even gets to see it”. I can’t count the amount of questions I’ve had along the lines of “wow have you seen this, omg, my mind is blown you just have to check this out” and I click the link and whatever it is has already been deleted. This is why we don’t have Seoheechopath episode 2 and many other interesting artifacts preserved on this site, so we’ll call this rule “Seohee’s Razor”. Therefore, if you see something wild, and it’s relevant, save it quickly, ladies and gentlemen.

Have you heard about the thebiaslist.com? You and him are the only kpop writers I actively read because you guys are witty and engaging without being sensationalist or cringe. Nick (the writer behind it) and you have preeetty similar music tastes, aka fast tempos, catchy hooks and dense production. Maybe he could change your mind on songs you dislike?

Yes I’m very well aware of The Bias List. I do check out his site from time to time and I do also agree with him on a fair bit of stuff, even if I think his rating system is a bit silly (on a scale of ten very little ever ends up below a 5 for him which seems unrealistic to me). We’re also both quite opinionated, although he’s much nicer about it. I always find it funny when people get upset by what he writes if he criticises something because him at his hardest is honestly very mild compared to the type of things that I tend to say, he’ll try to soften the blow whereas I don’t really give much of a fuck about upsetting people and tend to go for the throat a lot more. At heart I support what he’s doing, k-pop needs people who are unafraid to state their opinions plainly.

A few weeks ago this fancam of Katseye’s Daniela went viral and I became interested in the discourse because it was all about how she had ‘real’ stage presence in comparison to basically every kpop idol has which you know it’s always nice to see kpop fans admitting to that fact. I can’t put my finger on what makes her different though. I don’t know that much about her but i know she trained extensively in dance since early childhood so is it something to do with how the outer dance community(?) trains its dancers or is that just that she makes the right facial expressions and doesn’t look like she’s able to keel over at any moment?

Good dancer, yes, I guess so, probably? (I don’t know shit about dancing, that’s one music-adjacent field I’m not an expert in.) Stage presence, definitely not. I’d say she looks good just becase she’s really getting into the routine she has to do with her whole face and body (think Tsuki in GingaMingaYo days) which definitely makes a big difference for TV presentation so perhaps you could call that “camera presence”? But it’s not the same thing as stage presence, projecting your presence to the audience actually in the room with you. It could well be argued that camera presence is more important these days, and that could in fact be correct… but it’s still not the same thing as stage presence.

i feel like this is the perfect encapsulation on why evaluating a ‘rapper’ based on how well they ‘perform’ someone else’s lyrics is a really bad idea, the song is just too specific to doechii and her feelings at that point in time that it sounds so completely stupid and off coming out of a random 15 year old’s mouth. i really don’t get why yg (and most companies) just dont have their rappers write an entirely new verse to an existing instrumental especially if they’re going to use it as internet content.

Rap covers, in general, are pointless. Period. It’s worth looking at Adam Neely’s video on “the ethics of fake guitar”. The entire thing is great and definitely worth a watch even if you don’t care about guitar because it’s really more of a conversation about ehtical constraints and policing in music. At about 30 minutes in he starts talking about values within genre communities, and then segues into hip-hop specifically.

[youtube-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1QEV9euGAg]

He makes similar points that I made in my own hip-hop post a long time ago. But in summary, as soon as you start covering other people’s rap songs, you’re actually operating completely outside of the realm of hip-hop. These kids in the YG dungeon are learning how to pose and sound like rappers but they’re not learning any actual real rap craft by copying Doechii (as good as she is)… because that’s simply not how you learn rap craft. YG probably knows this, but he probably doesn’t care, the superficial appearance of a rapper is all that he really asks of his artists, because that’s enough to get over the line with k-pop fans (who have different community standards to actual hip-hop).

It’s almost Pride Month, Kpopalypse. Did you know that BIBI the soloist uploaded a song on her official SoundCloud whose genre tag is just #lesbian?

Like me she’s making creative art about lesbians. Doesn’t mean that she is one (last I checked, I’m also not) but this should still be encouraged anyway because why not.

Have you ever made a post dedicated to all of the “for no reason” links? I swear I remember seeing one but I looked through all of the January/December posts for recent years and I can’t find one.

Go to the search bar on my website (which is very powerful) and type “sidebar”. You will be presented with all the yearly summary sidebar posts. They always come out in October of each year.

Thoughts on Daft Punk?

Boring as fuck. Absolute garbage. Some of the worst music humanity has ever created. Maybe it sounds permissible on the dancefloor at 3am when you’re high as shit on Es and your critical faculties are zero but it works in no other context.

Have u seen the new thing on kpop tiktok where they make tiers to rank idols (e.g through vocal tiers or whatever) and if so do u have any opinions on it?

Haven’t seen. Probably all made by know-nothings who have no idea how much their faves’ voices are electronically altered. “Vocal appreciation” has no place in k-pop, in fact k-pop out of all current popular music styles is probably the one where vocal performance matters least of all becase you hear a real unaltered k-pop vocal performance almost never (“Killing Voice”, “It’s Live” and all those shows, all heavily edited in post). Due to all the correction that’s applied, it’s possible to coast through an entire career as a k-pop idol with a strictly below-average, barely-functional voice. If it was opera or gospel or blues or even heavy metal fans making a vocal tier list I’d definitely understand it, but k-pop? Get the fuck outta here.

Oppar I’m in a bit of a dilemma. I recently just started university and it was chill, made a few “coworker”-type friends from lectures, in general my social life was alright (excluding mental health issues). My long-time friend who also goes to the same uni invited me to a party and TL;DR I got drunk and said some really fucking embarrassing things that unfortunately people I thought were awesome were present to listen… I honestly feel like I fucked my whole university experience up before it even started. Is it worth it to mald over my mistake over and over until I go insane or should I just accept the failure and move on?? Mostly I’m scared of people turning away from me and me not being able to form any relationships as a result. I’m prepared for middle school-level bullying as I’ve dealt with it before but I’m scared it could be something more. Will people just forget I was a giant moron over time and move to the next cringiest thing to make fun of? Do I need to close myself off permanently as I’m now a social pariah? This is the first time I really felt like I could have a good time (my other school experiences were total shit) and this dumbass slip is making me reconsider existence as a whole tbh. Sorry for shitty English I’m not a native speaker and also I’m drunk. This is unrelated but i really appreciate the non-kpop features in the weekly reviews, made me discover a lot of new music and as an aspiring music historian it gives me a lot of research ideas. thx bye Love u

1. stop drinking
2. see 1
3. all of the above
4. just carry on as normal, your friends will probably just chalk it up to you “just being a drunk piece of shit waste of space that one time” as long as you never do it again – if you do it more times they will definitely start to judge you HARD and so they should
5. stop drinking for the love of god
6. stop fucking drinking and ruining your life seriously
7. stop drinking
8. I know you’re still fucking drinking, you’re probably drinking right now while reading this, your friends might not be judging you that harshly yet but I sure am, fucking STOP DRINKING BEFORE YOU FUCK YOUR ENTIRE FUTURE omg

My youngest cousin sat me down to watch this Fiestar version of the Miraculous Ladybug theme — for the uninitiated, a French kids TV show partially based on anime, it can be a real headache to sit through. Description says its from 2016, I loved Fiestar that year they had some fucking great songs. I’ll leave it up to Kpopalypse and others to decide if this sounds like a legitimate kpop comeback or not

Fiestar had better songs… and also worse songs. It’s not awful but it’s also awfully hard to give a shit about.

I’ve been listening to Heung! a lot after your recommendation, and it struck me that it has one of the few rap breaks in a non-rap song that I actually look forward to. I usually find rap breaks tolerable at best and song-ruining at worst- and I like rap! I know you’re also generally a rap break hater, and I’m not sure if you agree with me on this particular song. But I’m curious if there are any kpop songs that you think are genuinely enhanced by their rap breaks?

Generally speaking I don’t see the need for “rap breaks” at all and would rather prefer either an entire rap song, or a song with no rap in it at all. It does work for me sometimes however, usually when they use the opportunity of the rap break to do something very different. Example:

Did you hear about Lisa wearing panties with Rosa Park’s face on them to the Met Gala? I’m of the mind that she absolutely knew what she was doing and thought it was some funny iconic shit, even if it’s more just a wtf thing. What are your thoughts on that? Koreans (and other Asians) don’t live in some solitary internet-free bubble, it takes just one google search to learn who Rosa Parks was and what she did for African-American rights.

No idea personally. But maybe she thought it was a compliment? Maybe it was her way of saying Rosa Parks was “cunty” (in the good sense). I don’t know why k-pop fans automatically assume malicious intent for all these things. Hanlon’s Razor is worth remembering here. Couldn’t give a crap what anyone wears for panties personally unless they’re in my bedroom or in a JAV or something (in which case plain white underwear outranks other types, including silly g-string ones that disappear up girls’ asscracks).

what do you think of slime videos? things like this

I only care about slime videos if IU is doing them. She’s the slime queen of k-pop.

I just read your Kiss of Life post, and learned that the idiotic “KIOF” acronym is due to it being something something Korean translation something. Breaking news: Korean and English are different language, and different languages be different. Just because the Hangul translation of “K.O.I.F.” is more memorable than the Hangul translation of “K.O.L.” doesn’t mean that they have to use either one or the other in both languages. They could use K.O.L. in English, and whatever makes sense in Korean. Forcing them both to be the same, at the expense of either a less memorable Korean acronym or a nonsensical English acronym is the tail wagging the dog. Am I missing the point of translating language? Or more specifically, of transliteration? The name of the Bangkok airport in Thai language is “สุวรรณภูมิ“ The last pair of characters (มิ) is a consonant (ม) that makes the “m” sound, while the semi-circle above it is a vowel that makes the long “ee” sound. Thus in isolation, the pair of characters มิ sounds like the English pronoun “me”. However, at the end of some Thai words, much like English, the “ee” is silent. The last sound in the airport’s name is the “m”. Now, isn’t the whole point of a transliteration to enable someone to pronounce a word in a foreign language by sounding it out using their native language’s characters? So if there is a silent letter in the foreign word, WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE INCLUDE IT IN THE TRANSLITERATION? So the Bangkok airport’s name in Thai is pronounced “Soo-vah-nah-boom”, but the official English name is “Suvarnabhumi”, so everyone goes around like idiots saying “Su-varn-a-boom-ee”. Same with the beer: Singha is pronounced “sing”, not “sing-ha”, with silent “ha” characters in Thai. They included the “ha” in English, and now we all mispronounce it. If you were trying to get a non-English speaker to pronounce a word in English by using their native language’s characters, this would be a failure. Take a word like “believe”: the last sound you’d have them pronounce would be the “v”; otherwise they wind up saying “bee-lee-vee”. Oppar, we’ve had millennia to figure this out. It’s not a hard thing to solve, like global warming or something. Give folks what they need in their own language. This is low hanging fruit. Why are we still fucking this up?

Actually global warming is easy to solve. Chuu’s TV series and Dreamcatcher’s NFTs will be enough to fix it. Give them time, they’ll sort it out. K-pop groups love to have their dumb-ass acronyms. Let’s all remember the atrocity that was Fin.K.L, or better yet, don’t.

Hey, caonima. I’m the one who sent a qrimole about doing a kpop training camp a while back. I feel like talking about it but might remove details which seem particularly identifiable. Just updating to say I decided to do it, it’s my first day in Seoul (ever) and I was introduced to my dorm (quite nice actually.) There are some strict rules for hostel style living but nothing out of the ordinary. Most people part of the camp speak [non-English or Korean language redacted] so I’ll be sharpening that. I think I’m expected to have brought more styling gear and accessories than I have, but well, shopping is always an option. Most people in this program take it quite seriously and really want to be idols (no shame in that.) But I feel lucky I have a day job. It’s not even my backup – I’m here “for the experience” essentially. But I will try to take it seriously enough not to offend anybody. I worry about being too old or talentless. Not to be an idol but just not to embarrass myself. I suppose I would not have come if I didn’t think I had any potential – I already consider myself better at singing than like at least 75% of idols including some “main vocal types.” But in the face of actually believing in myself to try hard at performance, well idk if my confidence will hold up enough to demonstrate that. I’ve always been pretty shy even in activities I succeeded in. I was informed the company training (a Korean one) might be “quite difficult” in similar ways to real trainee life, but not exactly how. I asked a bit about how much they want to influence life outside of class and the organizer seemed offended about some outside assumptions about trainee life (like that they have limited freedom to choose how to spend their time or eat etc.) These are stereotypes according to her. Probably depends how deep in it you are. At this level I don’t think either of us are. The program is a bit scrappier than expected – a level above moving to a foreign country completely on your own into a hostel, and several below classic sleepaway camp. I appreciate it though. The organizers seem genuinely hard working and interested in involving themselves in the process, and don’t seem to be giving you shitty training in exchange for shit-tons of money. The small scale so far also means that there’s more independence and “idle time,” which is scary but neat, I lost quite a bit of weight prior, not because of my own desires but because if they weee going to demand that I didn’t want to crash diet. So in 3 months I lost around 20 lbs. currently I’m about 5lbs above medically underweight, and they said ideally to be 1lb below that (which I set a boundary for myself that I wouldn’t actually become underweight or “float around it.”) Let it not be said I didn’t prepare. It’s fucked up quite a bit about how I think about food lately – I’m not disordered but I feel I treat food with a sort of ruthless efficiency a drill sergeant may have, and veer automatically away from certain kinds of foods (like fried things, sodas/juice, sweets, some carbs.) weird experience overall. The weight came off quite quickly though, which I suppose I should be grateful for but honestly I found a bit disturbing. Either I ate less than I thought I did or I’ve ruined my muscles somehow – I hope the latter isn’t the case. I can still do push-ups. I should ask a question to avoid a porn response though. As an idol-in-training-in-training I can’t be endorsing that. My next question is well, anything you think I should do, see, try? How should I keep my confidence up especially if others are clearly better than me? (By the time you receive this it’ll have been 2 weeks.)

Yes, it should be noted that k-pop training camps are a somewhat different (i.e better) experience from being a signed trainee of an actual agency. When it gets really hard is when you’re signed by a company as a trainee and competing directly with others for that debut space. Independent training camps are different and much more benign, yes they do train you hard (which is the point) but there’s still freedom and it’s not the really ludicrous shit that you might read in my books etc.

I’m not much of a tourist mentality kind of person, so do/see/try I have no idea, try to eat good cuisine is all I’d say. Confidence – just measure yourself by your own progress. Don’t look at others. I go to the gym and I’m not “strong” by any means, my gym is a place where tons of firefighters, sportball players, security types etc go to train, but even if it wasn’t I’m still pretty “weak” compared just to people my age that I know who have played the sport thing and put the ball between the sticks their entire life. I’m frequently the most unfit person in the gym. I don’t try to compete on the level of others, I just try to do a little better myself each day. If you’re going for the experience then all the more reason to just focus on your own personal development. Making it more of an exercise in personal achievement and self-care can negate some of the more toxic aspects if/when you get deeper into it and discover those.

how do you feel about this song?  I feel like you might like it

I didn’t mind it. Shame about the pissweak vocal production, they needed to make those sassy voices pop out in the mix a bit more. As it is the singing gets a bit lost. Fine apart from that.

thanks to you, i discovered the song “knee” from lee ye ryoung, and it’s become a serious favourite. could you recommend any similar songs? thanks and send my regards to stiglitz!

I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that sounds quite like it, with the juxtaposition of the piano and the fast beat. There’s probably something that I’m forgetting. But the vibe to me is like Dreamcatcher but with zero guitar instead of a tiny piddling bit.

Which do you think will come first: Kpopalypse learning the names of all 24 members of tripleS, or one of the 24 members leaving tripleS?

Good question! I expect sales of my old books might spike a little when the new book comes out, thereby getting “Love Carousel” over the 100-sale threshold upon where I will have to fulfil my promise to learn all the members. So I’m really taking my time writing the new book, this’ll give maximum time for some tripleS girls to leave the group thus making my task easier. Here’s hope the company doesn’t just replace them with even more girls…

Is it weird that I find cleavage, sideboob, and especially underboob far more attractive than uncovered breasts? Some women I’ve seen naked before I find so much more attractive partially covered up. It’s not even that their breasts have particular flaws or anything, as together, those covering positions basically show their entire breasts.

I don’t think that’s weird at all. I actually feel similar, a bit of mystery is nice. That’s probably the entire reason why clothes were invented, people worked out that completely naked bodies actually don’t look all that great and a few clothes here and there actually make things look better. (It was certainly this reason, not boring reasons like “gosh it’s cold without clothes on”.) Even in the JAVs nothing is more boring to me than a film where the people in it are completely naked, all the time. Or when there’s no disrobing and the sex scenes start with people already disrobed and there’s no scene-setting or build-up – yawn.

The disappointing part of Dreamcatcher is that they were so consistently above average with occasional good hits that their inability to hit greatness was so painful. What other groups have there been that were often above average but never reached their full potential?

T-ara never releasing “Absolute Second Album” has to be a crime against humanity. Their old CEO Kim Kwang Soo deserves hate for this reason and this reason only. Overall the story of following k-pop is the story of seeing nobody ever reach full potential because the entire system operates in a way that cuts any worthwhile creativity off at the knees. It’s a shame that NewJeans’ music was mostly not to my taste because that was a very rare example of a creative director actually getting a chance to (for a short time) creatively direct. They were well on their way to being BTS-tier huge before Bang-Si Flab and Minor Hee Jin started fighting over who gets the corner office with the nice view.

Did you see the fancam of Jeewon pouring water on her rack at her solo debut?

Well, I did now. Just letting readers who are a bit shy or conservative know that from 2:43 is the part to avoid, definitely don’t watch that bit, you’re welcome. I wonder if there are still any people out there who still believe the “evil edits” that gave people the false idea that Jeewon wasn’t cool with her presentation and needed “protection” from the sexy concepts. Isn’t it funny how Kpopalypse is always right and k-pop fans are always wrong about this sort of thing. It’s almost as if I’ve worked in the music industry for a while and actually have dealt with performers and their mismanagement in the media before. Imagine that.

Why do kpop companies force idols to starve themselves and develop eating disorders? i am aware that eating disorders are also a major issue in the western industry (even though the media doesn’t talk about it until singers themselves come forward with their experience) but the pressure to be unrealistically thin seems to be much more extreme in east asia than in the west and i don’t know why. Also, how do idols manage to stay awake during their promotions and do their complex choreographies if they’re not eating? do they do a Nari and eat protein secretly or is there any “enhancing” substances involved? and in that case, why do they never mess up in the way people who are obviously high do? i think of this whenever I see idols going on world tours putting on 3 hour shows

Eating disorders is due to the heightened beauty standards in South Korea which is a cultural phenomenon. It’s also repeated in other East Asian countries, although one could argue not to the same extent, it would take someone more culturally expert than me to tell you which countries are worse than others, but I only really focus on Korea and yes it’s bad there. The industry then exacerbates it, of course, because there’s immense pressure to look perfect and so on. Not all of that pressure is external – for instance Korean pop singers don’t usually get flatly told to do plastic surgery, rather it’s just “suggested” to them as “advice” and then they just do it anyway because they feel like if they want to make it to the top they need every “advantage” they can possibly get. The fact is that k-pop idols often take drugs, and yes they do mess up quite a bit, the amount of video out there of idols collapsing on stage, falling asleep during public appearances or otherwise fucking up is large.

Drugs do work and they’ll keep you going for a while, but it’ll catch up to most people eventually.

how do u fucking deal with life when u feel like u wanna do sm meaningful, but dont know what meaningful is? how do i get the fuck up and study so im not a disappointment to my parents even though i keep getting burnt out?? like is anything worth living for?? why does life have to be so hard?? its almost as if u keep thinking it gets better but it only gets worse.

I just do meaningless stuff that I enjoy. That’s how I got into this whole k-pop writing back in the day. Then I discovered meaning through it anyway and was like “damnit”…

Since you like esports, who are your top three favorite players (you can include coaches too)?

I don’t really follow individual players, teams or coaches etc, I’m not into it that deeply. I just enjoy watching the games sometimes, it gives me pleasure to see a hobby that I actually like being treated like a “serious sport” instead of the various annoying sports that I was forced to play while growing up, that I was terrible at, frequently got bullied while playing, and that trumatised me so much as a youth that they eventually made me swear off all physical activity for decades, fucking my health in the process, something I’ve only clawed back fairly recently. I’ve always felt that traditional sports occupies a cultural pedestal that is unfairly high. Therefore I really enjoy watching anything that isn’t a traditional sport being treated like a sport. So maybe the closest thing I have to a “non-traditional” sport person that I follow might be… Nemo?

She’s very entertaining (and mrs) and I enjoy the baiting that she does. Yes it’s all for clicks, but they are quality clicks.

hi, kpopalypse. big fan, i’ve started following you when you started writing on antikpopfangirl (old kpop stan here, yeah 💀) and you pretty much help me stay updated when it comes to kpop. anyway, you always seem to offer pretty useful advice so… my parents are entering a new chapter of their lives and struggling. tbh it’s mostly my dad. basically they can no longer afford to pay for their place and also my sister’s room at university so they’re looking at other options (getting a new place closer to my sister’s university and she moves back in with them so they only pay for one place). also my dad is now retired and my mom will retire in less than two years and my dad just… feels like a failure of a person right now. it doesn’t matter how much i tell him life is hard for everyone and i can barely afford stuff as it is, even while living with my girlfriend. he thinks this reflects badly on him and his ability to provide for his daughter. is there anything i could say or help him with? it’s killing me to see him like it. and it’s affecting my mom and my sister too which i hate. i’m the oldest daughter and i’ve always helped my parents and my sister as much as i could, but i’m at a loss here. i started working as soon as i could, cover some of my sister’s expenses, stuff like that. i’ve always been able to help them somehow, but not with this 😦 it’s making me anxious and making me lose sleep. so sorry about the wall of text but i can’t really vent about this to most people, i just felt like you’d understand

There’s a lot of societal expectation for men to be providers, especially older men for whom the pressure was greater, so when they can’t do that, often it really hits home for them. Witness the “jobless” insults k-pop fans throw around at anyone and everyone and multiply that by whatever you like. While I can’t perceive a practical solution from where I’m standing because I don’t have your vantage point, I think that any solution which will make your dad feel better has to be something that doesn’t make him feel emasculated. You want to avoid like the plague anything that looks like you’re (visibly) “taking care” of him because as far as he’s concerned that’s breaking the code which is that he should be the one taking care of others, it’ll just make him feel more useless if you do things for him. You want to try and find opportunities for him to do stuff which can put him back in that “providing” kind of role, but don’t outright suggest anything (because that’ll again look like mothering or whatever) but just try to subtly present the piececs and then kind of let him come to his own conclusion about what he should do. It doesn’t have to be a money thing (and it might not be able to be anyway), he just needs some way that he can feel “in charge” and “useful” and “contributing” (but without feeling like he’s being pushed into it, crucially, he has to feel like it’s his idea), I think that’s what he lacks at the moment. Hope that helps, good luck and thanks for sticking with me through the years!

Hello Jpopalypse! Have you been listening to anything from F5ve’s new album? If so, what do you think?

I asked Jpopalypse this question but he was too busy listening to Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night” to even listen to me. Have you heard that song, it’s not bad actually.

I know you’re a music guy, but do you have any favourite kpop outfits? I’m quite partial to Twice’s Jihyo in that green dress (“twice jihyo green dress” into google images and it’s the first thing to pop up). Mostly for the boobs.

You should do a search for “fashion” on my site. You will find lots of opinions about fashion that you will probably quickly wish you never read.

this is going to sound extremely silly and/or idiotic, but hear me out

For groundwork, my friend and I are in our early 20s, he’s a man and I’m a woman, we’re very close but definitely not dating, etc. Anyway, recently I had a party at my place and he stripped down for some inane reason (some sort of game I think) and so we were sat there, him essentially in the nude. I didn’t terribly mind or care at the time, but he was quite insistent on showing off his junk to me and then stayed over long past when all the other guests left, where we just sat in a room eating snacks and chatting. He only left after the last straggler kicked him out to help with getting someone home, but he probably would’ve stayed over if not, which isn’t unusual. He posed a lot for me to get a good angle, and his penis was incredibly close to my face at times.

But the more I think about it, it is a bit odd that he directed so much attention to… well, cock and balls. It looked normal, I suppose. And every now and then we hang out and cuddle but it doesn’t seem to be affecting him other than typical weird man things like just being hot and sweaty all the time, so he’s not a dearth of suspicious behaviours.

But then I thought about it some more, and he has always made wonderful compliments about my body and face, but he’s reiterated quite a lot that I’m not his type in women at all. But one can only endure so many (positive) comments on how cute and petite one is in contrast to his larger, muscular frame, before it gets all a bit suspect.

So Mr. Kpopalyse, what are your clever thoughts on the state of affairs between this friend and I? I don’t think he has a crush, but listing it all out like this does make him seem odd indeed.

In the words of my Among Us teammates before that game was ruined by too much chat moderation and not enough botting moderation – “seems sus”. Maybe I’m going out on the craziest of limbs here, but I think there’s a pretty good chance this guy is into you in some manner. Men don’t cuddle and get sweaty and profusely compliment and also randomly produce their genitals in front of women that they don’t like, as a general rule.

Now, where he ideally sees you in his life, that I have no fucking idea. I mean no I don’t think he wants to get serious, given that he’s straight up saying he’s “not” into you suggests to me he’s avoiding anything deep, and honestly he doesn’t seem like an ideal prospect for anything much anyway given his rather eccentric behaviour, I’d be approaching with caution, at least until you find out more. This is all assuming you actually want anything to happen, of course. Maybe he likes the ego boost, or maybe there’s something weirder going on, I don’t know. Maybe he just likes playing around with you a bit. Could even be gay perhaps. Or maybe he just really is a friend only but has some fucking strange boundaries. Given that you seem to get along quite well, it wouldn’t hurt to just ask him directly, and bring up all the stuff you’ve mentioned here. If he can produce his cock right in front of your face like it’s no big deal (pun intended), he should at least be able to answer a few simple questions in a similar manner. I’d love to know what he says.

Hey, one of your OG readers here. For all the time I’ve spent skipping work to read Qrimole, you owe it to me review two songs lol. Well- part of them, anyway. I’m usually not into ballads in general, but there’s a few korean ballads that really tug at the feely feely parts of my stone cold heart. There’s two I want to mention here- Moonlight by EXO, and more recently, Praying by Seulgi. Both excellent songs in my opinion, but what really shines for me are the instrumentals. I noticed that they share something in common, which just happens to be my favorite part of both songs – a subdued, pitched up, somewhat floaty electric guitar (I guess?) sound that starts around 3:40 in Moonlight, and 2:32 in Praying until the end of the song (feel free to only listen to those parts if you’re too lazy to hear the whole song). My question is: what the hell is this effect called? Why does it evoke such a visceral emotional reaction no matter how many times I hear it? Why does it tickle my brain in such a good but sad way? Why does it make me wanna go cry in the rain even though I practically live in the desert? Between Moonlight and Praying, which instrumental sounded better to you? Are there any other songs you know that sound similar and use the same effect?

Also, unrelated but any chance you’d be interested in reading homosexual kpop fanfiction for your book reviews? Asking for a friend, of course…

You have stumbled upon one of the rarest sounds in k-pop – the “electric guitar solo” and while I don’t like either song I do agree that this sound makes the songs better than they otherwise would be. What these two solos have in common is a similar guitar tone – saturated distortion of the bridge pickup, which is pretty much heavy metal guitar solo tone 101. The Seulgi song also has quite a lot of reverb on the guitar, the EXO song not so much, that’s the main difference between them, but it’s pretty much the same thing.

For non k-pop examples try this from 4:12 (over two billion views omg, those fans sure are streaming)

Or this from 3:40 (one for Jpopalypse):

Guitar soloists in this sort of context are trying to mimic the type of melodies that a vocalist would perform, which is one reason why saturated distortion is applied to get similar sustain levels to a vocal line. This mimicry includes things like pitch bending and so on.

Gay fanfiction, bring it on! Just be warned that I make no guarantee of approval, and once you submit the material you cannot undo this request. Proceed at your own risk!

thoughts on this? xxx

It was a mashup so I deleted it. Kpopalypse is a mashup-free zone.

Do you think it is really possible for 2NE1, Blackpink and Babymonster to coexist? Each group was clearly created to replace the other and now they’ll (reportedly) promote at the same time under the same agency aiming at pretty much the same public.
I always remember of KARA/Rainbow in this kind of situation, Rainbow debuted so soon after Kara and – unlike f(x) to SNSD – had a very similar concept to its sister group, so it was obvious both groups were fighting for the same demos and, even after Rainbow’s “A” hit big, DSP was always favoring the more popular KARA.
YG’s management is pretty messy, so I predict this will be a tough year for Babymonster music-wise. Or maybe they’ll go through a concept change? What do you think?

I think that Babymonster have been such a fizzer so far compared to expectations that YG are just going to try anything this year. It’s no secret that the buzz for Babymonster has really faded, even me who doesn’t even follow or care about things like group popularity can tell. Mind you Blackpink took quite a while to really have an impact too, so I guess we’re in a transitional period where YG are still working out what the hell they are going to do, but I’m thinking maybe leaning on the old guard might be a strategy to solidify the new group until they can fly a bit better on their own perhaps. Guess we’ll see… I don’t really care anyway, nobody’s paying me to care about some group’s chart performance. K-pop fans in general care way too much about this stuff. Worry about the money you make in your own life, not the money some CEO who doesn’t give a fuck about you makes.

Not going into too much detail with this but I recently made a bad call in posting something political on Reddit. I can’t even use the excuse of “oh I was delirious at 4am” because I’m fairly certain this was in the evening.

Anyway, a certain controversial talk show host recently endorsed Trump, and then backed out AGAIN the last I’ve heard. I believe he has always held bigoted and also centre-right views but has been sorta hush hush about it, checks out, as talk show hosts, being connected to the Hollywood framework, are generally very left wing.

I posted with only a very short caption and the account I used was completely barren, there weren’t any other posts to it. Within 12 hours, it had over 600k views and hundreds of comments, and probably right wing grifter garbage buried in there somewhere, if there was any, I couldn’t find it amongst the shitload of notifications I received. I ended up deleting the post not long after this.

1. Is posting anything even remotely divisive on Reddit a complete fuck up on my part?
2. Unrelated but what would you say your last viral blog post was?

Post what you want, I think it’s fine. Such forums are there to be used. Just be aware that going viral can be really overwhelming. Having thousands of people on your ass is definitely a weird experience and it cam mess with people’s heads. Most people who go very viral tend to instantly regret it, that’s a very normal feeling.

Every few months something goes mini-viral on my site, I can’t remember what the last thing was, it might’ve been a Sorn review that Sorn herself shared on socials, or maybe someone else, I can’t recall, but most stuff goes viral via TikTok now when it happens. When I was active on Twitter I’d go viral there every few months when some new fandom would discover my shit and become horrified. However the most viral post on Kpopalypse.com is actually Why It’s Not Okay To Wear Frenchface (ever) which went nuclear for a while… and then was promptly forgotten a few days later when the news cycle moved on. Virality is like this – if it bothers you, all you have to do is keep calm, ignore it and wait two weeks, it’ll have blown over by then. I doubt anyone outside my circle of readers remembers that post now.

Thanks for putting Caitlin’s explanation of bisexuality in the Hana books, it helped me finally make sense of generally liking tteokbokki but occasionally getting my head turned by patbingsu. I’ve lived for quite a few years happily being single after a long-term relationship. I don’t know whether to try and actively pursue relationships now or just leave it up to chance, since I’m pretty content as I am, and pursuing via dating apps is a pain. I’ve got quite a few hobbies but the only person who’s caught my eye from any of these hobbies is in a relationship lol. I guess even though I’m generally content, the ‘grass is always greener’ thing is true. I’m also at the time where it seems like a lot of my friends are getting married – I don’t feel jealous but it sometimes feels strange that our lifestages seem far apart. To be honest I feel like I’d rather have my plushie in bed with me, but then I found my sexuality to be more responsive to my partner rather than generally active, so maybe it’s just a case of that’s how I feel because no one I like is there. Do you think I should start looking more actively or continue leaving things up to chance? Oppar’s wisdom is always appreciated.

I think going with the flow seems wise. If you’re happy and single there’s no harm in staying that way, why complicate your life for no reason. Honestly if my current relationship ever ends for whatever reason I’d probably stay single too, or at least adopt a “come what may” attitude and make zero actual proactive effort to find someone. I’m too old and I give far too few fucks to be bothered with going through all the “relationship” stuff again from scratch, it helps that my current partner is fantastic and I’ve never had any genuine interest in anyone else since I met her.

who’s your bias in Hanabie

I asked Jpopalypse this but he’s not returning my calls, I think he’s too busy listening to Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night” to pick up the phone. Have you heard that song, it’s actually alright.

hey kpopalypse. just found out my father cheated on my mum. he’s had the audacity to defend himself and say other disgusting things. i don’t know how to move past this, he’s dead to me, but it hurts. I feel stupid for having had a relationship with him.

I assume you don’t mean that kind of relationship, but you just mean the relationship of being his son or daughter, in which case, you didn’t really have a choice if he’s family, right? I can’t really comment on the rest as I have no idea exactly how things played out or what he said about it, but sorry to hear, it must be awkward. Your question isn’t really a question but I don’t really feel right about putting a JAV recommendation next to this one like I usually do for non-questions so let’s just move onto…

QUESTIONS THAT AREN’T SECTION

I’ve been eyeing at your dismal at the lack of fast and catchy music in K-Pop (and in general pop really) so I introduce you to Susumu Hirasawa!

Oh no, not a j-shit. But go on.

The man who was making some of the most catchiest and artistic Electropop in the ’90s! Noted his Electropop is more like Electronic Art Pop, he basically appropriates the buzzing synthesizers and dense production of Electropop and adds more unorthodox touches of Post-Industrial, IDM and underground Dance. He also has some ballads here and there which I totally adore and I think you will too (please try to think of the slower Björk songs) however most people know him for his extensive soundtracking in film and animation like Satoshi Kon’s Paprika and ’90s Berserk. Most of his music can be a bit repetitive and sample-heavy (in the way post-rock is) and he’s actually doing some post-rock these days too! Anyways… Let the song recommending commence!

Oh boy.

It’s like the musical equivalent of pure electricity.

This song made me want to stick my dick inside a tree with funnel-web spiders in it.

Ambient-Drone pop perfection (with an ethereal techno closer)

Better but took far too long to get going. So much for “fast and catchy”. It’s like someone listened to This Mortal Coil and thought “how can I make this even slower moving and have even more annoying vocal sections”.

Has to be his best song, there’s no other way. It’s an actual anthem.

Absolute ass. Just the same hideous melody over and over.

Soothing Downtempo ballad, like spa music in the best way.

I don’t mind the ambience here, not much of an actual song though.

Like marching into battle knowing you’re gonna sweep with the opponents. (also this was the peak of his musical infatuation with South East Asia, you can look into that further I guess.) 💟Happy Listening! – A.C💟

Sounds a bit like an early 90s Laibach experiment, but I don’t know, it doesn’t hit for me even though again I like the sounds. All of these songs to me have the same basic problem, which is the very dated, pentatonic style melody writing that was typical of a lot of Asian pop music before global markets forced a region-wide modernisation. In a lot of the songs the sounds themselves are excellent, and the production style is generally really good here across the board, but if the melodic writing isn’t interesting to me it doesn’t matter. Also this wasn’t a question so JAV of the Month is EBWH-078 (no trees or spiders were harmed).

Rosé on Kelly Clarkson and MBTI “just for fun” reminded me of something. For the past 4 years or so I’ve had MBTI and enneagram as major hobbies of mine, though I don’t use it to make hardline decisions or assumptions about people which I couldn’t already tell by looking at them. (The tools are made for the man and not man for the tools.) I also do what I consider the “dense version” (Jung and some Russian socionists for MBTI, Gurdjieff/Naranjo/Ichazo and other OG philosophers/psychoanalysts for enneagram.) All Jungian cognitive function stuff gets grouped under “Myers Briggs” because they’re the ones who made it famous under a pretty watered down incoherent version aimed at the workplace. So MBTI is the umbrella term even if you disagree with the corporate version, since it’s more recognizable, and the subject in general has broadened beyond what’s explicitly Jungian.

So I think I’m pretty good at “whatever it is” this hobby involves, which usually just means observing people and analyzing their perspectives. I’ve gotten enough attention through participation in forums and stuff that sometimes online people in the communities ask me for tips.

Recently someone I haven’t talked to in ages or ever really been close with sent me two videos and asked me to evaluate the “types” of the people in them. They were in Arabic which I don’t speak. I asked for more context and said I might have a hard time with people who speak a language I don’t. He said I don’t need to give a ton of details, just to determine one very specific category. I was like okay, happy to try, but why? How do you know these people? He said he’s part of HR and these are both hiring candidates and nobody else will see the videos. But he needs somebody with “1 or 8” in the gut space (as opposed to 9) as it’s a high-pressure job and the person needs to be good under pressure. I was like wtf, that is terrible reasoning to type someone. I wouldn’t even be thinking about that in a hiring environment unless something jumped out and I was like “okay well seems like an obvious introvert, cool.” But it wouldn’t affect my decision, unless I’d already decided that for some reason it’s a job this person can’t do because being withdrawn/shy seems to affect their performance at the tasks at hand.

So I basically tried to convince him that it doesn’t matter and not to use his intuitions about the types for the job: that “awareness-blocking” in the gut space (delegated to 9) is ultimately the center of ALL problems in that particular space and this is part of the theory, and also that ignoring one’s own psychologically pressing issues doesn’t mean you can or can’t do a good job at work. TON of CEOs, presidents/world leaders, highly successful and prolific musicians/authors, doctors, etc, with this type, who I gave examples of. Also plenty of successful people in my own personal life, one of whom was one of the 100 best people at math in my country and was on the training process for competing in the math olympiad, another who was nominated for an award/top 10% in their world class university, a third who works extraordinarily demanding job on top of multiple side gigs & community involvement, etc.

I was like obviously I don’t know the exact demands, but I highly doubt if people can do those jobs, that your electrical engineering role or whatever is impossible based on someone’s psychodynamics. Also, tools for man and not man for tools. If I tell you this person’s type and you think that means something you couldn’t already figure out about them, that’s a skill issue on your end for not being able to tease out enough information to make a decision. All the information you need about them is already there, and I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. (Even if I did, it’d also feel unethical because I’m *not on the hiring team* and don’t even speak the language, so my opinion should hold 0 weight.) Anyway I said if you’re really curious for psychological reasons I can tell you once the person is already hired and it doesn’t matter. He said well by then I’ll already know their type. I said not necessarily, and also you’re not even hiring both of them? You’ll never see them again. And he was like lol good point. As far as I know once I refused to type them he lost all interest in the subject and the hiring process went on as normal.

But anyway this was very shocking to me that somebody would both value my expertise enough for a decision like this, AND consider this to be a valid use of it. It’s never happened before and the gall of it was incredible to me, that someone could be studying the topic on this level and still stereotyping to a degree that concrete decisions are made by it. I had to basically hold myself back from going “this is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard” since I thought being insulting or alienating might drive him further into doing it more, rather than addressing calmly why it wouldn’t matter even if you’re knowledgable in the subject. People lack nuance everywhere I guess.

I obviously think making hiring decisions based on these systems is immoral (or just any decision based on personality factors you couldn’t already observe, including dating,) though I’ve also found different personality quizzes to be standard for some jobs already (such as me taking an online one for a friend applying to work at a grocery store because he… failed somehow, lol. Every question I was like “what did you answer for this?” and he was like “xyz” and I was like “seems reasonable, idk what the problem is.”)

Anyway sorry for the word dump. I guess this is just my PSA that if anybody is interested in these systems or personality as a whole, don’t use it this way. It might feel essential at first in order to learn the system to use certain “crutches” or assumptions, but don’t lean on them forever. Also, stay in your lane. I study psychology and cognitive science on a graduate level already so can determine what I find valuable about the theories based on other factors, rather than needing to accept them at face value. I’ve met other people in this area who are lawyers, scientists, counselors, artists, etc. and there’s something to contribute to understanding of humans in any of those areas. Anybody can be insightful about others (or not! psychology study doesn’t guarantee that.) A particular artist I know has a serious flair for describing people’s experiences in vivid emotional colors. But don’t have this take over your life, or try to become an “expert of all” based on something highly subjective and personal.

This is one of the main reasons I’m so strongly against MBTI – as soon as MBTI gets any cultural currency whatsoever, even as “just a game/a hobby/harmless fun”, unscrupulous employers IMMEDIATELY latch onto it (and other things that resemble it) and use it in hiring decisions. Hiring someone based off of their supposed personality type or personality test results is highly immoral and even illegal in some countries (and should be illegal in even more of them)… plus it doesn’t even give you the best candidates anyway. Learning to do a job (or any other task) and then doing it is the same as learning any other activity – it’s all about learning and then applying skills, it’s not about your personality type, just your skills and aptitude for absorbing and then applying information, and your attitude towards those things. Applying MBTI to hiring is like saying “only ENFPs can be good at guitar”. It’s as bigoted as racism or sexism or ageism, except instead of using race or sex or age to be bigots we’re using personality type – but it’s the same rodeo. When will humanity learn that discrimating people based on factors that they can’t change about themselves isn’t cool. This shouldn’t be a hot take in 2025. I’m sure none of the above is news to you, it’s just a companion rant to your rant. This also wasn’t a question, so JAV of the Month is also GMJK-023.

Not a question but an answer for the people interested in kpop/western pop soundalikes. There is a spotify playlist named Kpop Copycat that compares Kpop songs with the western songs that probably inspired them. I believe I found it because someone linked it in Qrimole a few years ago. It even goes a bit nugu because the Kpop Beatles group is here too. Also I know what is coming next so my Jav of the month is START-309. I also now dread the fact that I can be exposed to a Kpopalypse comment on Jav.guru at any moment

The playlist didn’t work for me because it was “protected content” or some bullshit, I have no idea what that means. But if it’s anything like the “kpop copycat” YouTube channel then it stinks. K-pop fans seem to have zero capacity to tell the difference between genre similarity, plagiarism, and just two things that sound literally totally different. Mind you we are talking about pop music and all pop music sounds alike at least to somewhat of a degree. I can’t recommend START-309 because I do not bias Honjo Suzu, I don’t mind the film concept but she is definitely not my type. For films with a similar concept and feel but also with main actresses who MRS for Kpopalypse I’d go for START-112 with Momona Koibuchi or STARS-751 with Minamo. I think my comments are by far some of the most benign on that site, the random racism on jav.guru is really a trip.

BEST QUESTION

Pride month starts tomorrow, and my therapist has been leaning pretty heavily on me to go to our local Pride parade. Thing is, I just don’t want to go. I don’t do well in crowds, and I have some medical issues that mean I need to have easy access to a restroom. I am out and proud, but I prefer to show my pride by donating to causes, and actively working against the orange Bigot in Chief. I’ve never been to a pride parade. I get the community aspect of it, but it’s just not something I’ve ever been interested in. Am I somehow less LGBTQ if I don’t go?

PS say what you will about UAU’s new music, but they sure are nice to look at.

Geez, not much of a fucking therapist if they can’t understand that some people are just introverted. I get the dilemma though… recently I discovered that one of my new jobs has some sort of voluntary organisation to advocate for people of a certain marginalised group (I’ll keep the group nameless to prevent bias), and I was like “cool, I wouldn’t mind showing support for that” but then I found out all their events involve lots of going to places and talking to people and getting to know them and doing accursed group activities together and there wasn’t anything I could do to just show support “quietly” and my introvert soul was traumatised by the thought of having conversations with more people than absolutely necessary in order to live my life so I decided I wouldn’t sign up. I’m not a fan of using guilt tactics to get people to participate in or support a thing. That’s why my email form on my site has “sign up… or don’t” and other optional things on this website like books, Ko-fi etc are always described as strictly optional and I never try to make people feel pressured, or shitty if they can’t or don’t want to do those things. Obviously I appreciate all support, but frankly if you’re reading this, you’re already supporting what I do massively just by reading at all, and that’s enough for me to feel very grateful. I’m truly blessed if anyone considers anything extra.

Gosh they sure styled them well, didn’t they… and these aren’t even the girls I like in Dreamcatcher. I’m here for Gothgfriend entering their Viviz era, even if the music is balls.

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That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month! Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE? If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage! Kpopalypse will return!