Supportive
K-Poppers support their favourite stars buying their CDs, concert tickets, attending fan-meetings and following them online and in person. For this reason, supportive fans are often very poor!
InformedK-Poppers support their favourite stars buying their CDs, concert tickets, attending fan-meetings and following them online and in person. For this reason, supportive fans are often very poor!
Some K-Poppers have their own following in cyberspace, being veritable treasure chests of information and statistics about their favourites stars, from the readily available to the smallest hard-to-find details.
Patient
K-Poppers so devoted, they wait for hours in all elements just to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars for a few seconds. These fans are usually have unparalleled ability to secure the hardest-to-get seats at concerts!
International
Wealthy K-Poppers often fly to Korea just to see their favourite stars in concert or attend a local fan meeting, and are known collectively as the International-Fan-Club.
Sasaeng
Some K-Poppers follow their favourite stars everywhere. Known in Korea as sasaeng and translated as “private-life stalkers”, some go so far as to chase these stars in taxis, hack their mobile phones, even breaking into their dormitories. Such fans are often denounced by ordinary fans and the stars themselves regularly speak out publicly against them. Reportedly, the sasaeng fans are a bigger problem for boy bands, often seen waiting outside their homes or their management companies’ office buildings.
Project Managers
K-Poppers of this type are often both rich and powerful, personally developing and implementing “projects” for their favourite stars to get up-close-and-personal, including humanitarian programmes and special private concerts.
Pseudo-Press
Some K-Poppers pretend to be a member of the press to get one-on-one access to their favourite stars, leveraging connections or forging press passes and therefore access to media areas at concerts or other public gatherings.
Trendies
K-Poppers with no attraction to any particular star but follow the latest trends and most popular acts du jour. Even though these fans lose in the loyalty stakes, they are often as equally invested in the scene as other K-Poppers, spending on fashion, merchandise, accessories and jewellery.
Secret
This surreptitious type of K-Popper often maintain a low profile by refraining from registering on web boards or posting comments on blogs or news sites. In secret however, they often have extensive memorabilia and music collections, “coming out” only to attend concerts and occasionally other fan-based activities.
Anti-Fans
The most bizarre K-Popper is the anti-fan, who verbally and sometimes physically, attack celebrities they hate, other fans, or anyone with negative or even different opinions about their favourite stars. One blogger reports that the intensity of anti-fans in Korea dates back to the genesis of the corporate-produced boy and girl bands of the late 1990s. Perhaps the most infamous case involving anti-fans involves Gan Mi-yeon, a member of the girl group, Baby VOX. “She was targeted with extra intensity because she was rumoured to be dating a rather popular member of a boy band. In a recent interview, Gan said throughout 1999 she received scores of ‘fan mail’ filled with razor blades, apparently in the hope she would cut herself opening them, along with pictures of her with her eyes taken out or letters written in blood.”
The blog reported that physical attacks against celebrities, while rare, do happen, but distinguished them from the more common forms of violence against celebrities, such as stalking or kidnapping for money. “In 2000, Yoon Gye-sang, a member of a boy band called G.O.D received a soda injected with bleach. Yoon’s mother drank it was hospitalised. Similarly in 2006, U-know of Dongbangshinki received a soda injected with industrial glue and was also hospitalised,” the Ask A Korean blogger reported.
Sometimes anti-fans attack fans of the celebrities they hate, the blog explains. In one notorious incident from the late 1990s, the H.O.T. fan club and that of Sechs Kies engaged in a huge public brawl. Smaller insults continue today. During a concert in 2008 involving a collection of bands, the fans of Super Junior and SS501 intentionally went silent when Girls’ Generation took to the stage, the report says.
But me, I belong to the supportive type of k-pop fan (~_^)
