After the bemused indifference to raging success of the first edition of “Kpopalypse dreams“, Kpopalypse now returns with a second series of bite-sized fanfictions for you to grudgingly tolerate while waiting for better posts enjoy and cherish!  Too boring and self-indulgent esoteric and deep for any other websites, this series is exclusive to Kpopalypse blog!

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In a rural area of Australia I dig into a large hill of dirt and carve out a large aircraft-hangar sized section, as part of a construction job for someone else.  I then hear through the person who ordered the job that there’s already another similar hole somewhere else that they’re going to rent out so they now don’t need the one that I’ve made.  I wonder what to do with the new space, given that technically nobody owns it and I can now have it and do with it what I want.  It occurs to me that I could turn it into a house and live in it, but instead I turn the top part into a band rehearsal space, and under it I dig further and make a 300-seat live performance venue, a theatre with big comfortable red chairs.

I book So Ji Sub to play at the venue.  He arrives and there’s a big concert.  He hasn’t played Australia or anywhere in concert in a while, so the first thing he does when he gets on stage is to leave the stage, jump down into the audience and immediately sprint up one aisle of the diagonally-sloped audience area, across the back of the venue and down the other aisle back to the stage, both arms in the air making a V sign the whole time, then he returns to the stage and starts singing his first song.  Seeing him so excited to be there is infectious to the audience and gets the fairly sedate crowd really excited!  One of So Ji Sub’s relatives is so keen to be close to the action that he dives from the back of the stage, coasts gently on the diagonal sea of heads of other seated audience members  and lands somewhere near the front, unharmed.  The concert is a great success.

Later I’m watching So Ji Sub on YouTube, he’s giving an interview about the concert, he’s smiling and happy.

How did you feel about doing a concert in Australia?

At first I really didn’t want to do the concert because it’s such a long way, but by the time I got to [an Australian country town with an unspecified name] I was really excited because I was nearly there and after that the trip was easy and I was looking forward to it.

Did the promotions go smoothly?

In the press release I made them put “So Ji Sub will play Australia – or cancel!”  I intended to play the concert all along, I just made them throw the “cancel” bit in there for fun.  Why not make things interesting?

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I’m living in a large and extremely run-down student accommodation apartment block in Argentina.  Out the front of the building there’s a large car park, with a broken concrete footpath.  Several of the block’s students (all male and in their teens and 20s) are gathered along the footpath, waiting to see Hyomin who is visiting to do some meet-and-greet to promote T-ara’s latest activities in China.  I stand around with them as they talk to each other, most of them are complaining about how the TV reception is shitty where they live and they won’t get to see themselves on TV later.

A black sedan with tinted windows rolls up and Hyomin gets out of the back seat, with an entourage in tow (a cameraman, a couple security guards in black suits).  Hyomin is wearing very typical Hyomin-style stage wear – short-shorts and a cut-off midriff-exposing top, with a beauty pageant style sash.  She smiles and waves to the gathered people who are all really happy to see her.  It’s clear that some of them are dedicated T-ara fans and others are just young men from the building who heard that an attractive female was visiting and wanted to know what the fuss is all about and check her out.  Hyomin starts walking along the broken footpath, meeting and talking to different people, everyone is in awe of how attractive she is and it’s commented a lot that she looks exactly like she does in the “So Crazy” video.  One adoring fan notices the footpath she’s walking on and wants to give Hyomin the “red carpet treatment”, but nobody has a red carpet for her so he places a red bath towel onto the footpath instead for Hyomin to walk on.  Hyomin tells him it’s a sweet gesture but she doesn’t want to walk on it, because she’s worried about getting his towel dirty.  The guy doesn’t mind, he’s just happy that Hyomin is talking to him, he smiles but leaves the towel there anyway, just in case she chooses to walk on it later.

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I’m playing guitar in my band.  We’re in the practice room, playing a song with a riff that sounds similar to ZZ Top’s “La Grange“.  A guy comes in and stops us playing mid-song, he’s very excitable and says that this song is going to be used by SM Entertainment for the new f(x) comeback.  Everybody including me is okay with this, and the whole band reacts pleasantly but calmly like it’s a nice score but no big deal really.

I go over into another area of the building where the music video for the song is being filmed.  Amber and Sulli are standing in a hallway being filmed, Sulli is up against the wall and Amber is grinding her pelvis into Sulli’s ass.  At first it just looks like a sexy dance routine but then I look further and I see that Amber has a dildo strapped to her.  Then I think that Amber is fucking Sulli up the ass with the dildo, but appearances deceive again – a closer inspection reveals that when Amber thrusts forward the head of the dildo isn’t actually going into Sulli, but into a carefully designed aperture in the fabric of her miniskirt designed to make it looks like Amber is fucking Sulli up the ass when she isn’t really.  I look at the camera filming the situation, and I can see that with the angle they are using it would indeed look just like anal sex from that vantage point.  I ponder for a moment about how clever SM’s cinematographic team are to think of this.

I watch Amber and Sulli for a while longer.  As Amber thrusts into Sulli’s clothing, Sulli grinds her ass into Amber’s dildo as she looks over her shoulder, back at Amber.  Sulli appears to be enjoying the physical sensation, but it’s impossible to tell how much is just playing up to the cameras.  Sulli then looks directly at me, and without a word being said between us, we both arrive at a mutual understanding that I will fap later to the memory of this moment.

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I’m watching a teaser for an as-yet-unreleased new Girl’s Day song.  The teaser is about a minute long, it contains the chorus and the bridge leading up to the chorus.  The sound of both the bridge and chorus is a bit like the keyboard stabs in the breakdowns of Apink’s “Luv“, but more haphazard and random, it’s really not a good song at all.  The video is mainly just shots of Girl’s Day dancing and singing in a pastel-coloured indoor-recreated street scene (similar to the one in 5Dolls’ “Like This, Like That“).  Yura looks best in the group with a crop top that fits tightly around her boobs as they bounce around, the other girls don’t really stand out.  I remind myself about how teasers are stupid and that I am an idiot for watching this when I just could have waited for the full video and been bored/annoyed by the poor song once rather than twice.

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I’m watching TV, the Australian children’s program Hi-5 is on.  The Korean member of the group Dayen is standing in front of a classroom of young schoolkids, who are all members of EXO-L.  Most of the classroom are wearing EXO merchandise – backpacks, t-shirts, etc. and they are all sitting on the floor cross-legged, looking up at Dayen.  Dayen tells the class that they’re going to learn a new devotional poem, called “Here Today, Here Tomorrow”.  She starts reciting the words, and the classroom reading from the blackboard recite them with her:

We are here today and here tomorrow
As the sun rises we think of Xiumin
As the sun sets we think of Chanyeol
Look at the alpaca grazing in the field
Content in its peaceful existience
It does not care of yesterday or tomorrow
Discard that which is not necessary
Our minds are clear and absolute
Existing forever in the moment
Loving EXO with all our heart

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I decide to go shopping for k-pop in Rundle Mall, Adelaide’s main shopping strip.  I hadn’t been the full length of the mall for shopping purposes in a while so I thought I’d investigate and see if there are any new stores that stock k-pop or k-pop merchandise.  I’m eating something called “medium jaffas”, a new type of Jaffa that has a thinner candy shell than regular Jaffas so it’s not so hard on your teeth when you bite into it.  I pass a blonde lady wearing pink office clothing and a glittering pink designer handbag with the Death In June logo on it, I start thinking about how Death In June are always coming up with innovative new physical product and that they’re probably the only western act who have kept pace with k-pop in this regard.  She gives me brief eye contact and then walks on in the opposite direction, ignoring me.

Eventually I find a store called “HULK”, that looks like it might deal in music.  The outside is made of square pink, purple and white rectangles embedded into the wall along an entrance and the word “HULK” over the top in bold white capital letters.  I walk in and it’s a store featuring DVDs most prominently but also other media.  At this point I think to myself that this is definitely a dream and not reality, because existing stores featuring DVDs are having enough trouble staying open and attracting customers in today’s download-happy age, so a new one opening is unlikely in reality.  Oddly, I don’t wake up upon this realisation, but stay in the dream, scanning the store shelves.  I see quite a few horror films, both editions of Necro’s “Gory Days” DVD, and eventually I find a very slim k-pop section at the end of one of the shelves.  I decide to take my time and explore the section in detail.

The top shelf is labelled “T-ARA JIYEON” with a small purple label that matches the store decor, in Comic Sans font.  There are two small rows, one of them is all photocards.  I don’t look at the photocards closely, they’re so small, it seems like a waste of money to bother with them.  The other shelf has some stuff attached to small fabric ribbons, but I can’t see what they are without pulling on the ribbon wrapped around some cardboard, breaking the packaging.  I decide to pull because this looks weird and whatever it is I’m probably going to want to buy it anyway.  I pull out a ribbon and a bronze military style medal is hanging on the end.  I look at it very closely.  The medal is in a multi-pointed star shape, in the centre of it is a crown.  Circling around the edges of the crown is an inscription.  I look closely at it, “JIYEON CYCLOPEAM REGINA”.  The medal looks totally awesome and I become sad because I know this is a dream and I’ll wake up soon and won’t be able to buy this.

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I’m thinking about whether it’s worth seeing the Big Day Out (a fairly shit Australian music festival), so I look up their advert in my local paper to check the group line-up and if it’s worth bothering with.  In amongst all of the other usual boring acts that the Big Day Out seemingly recycle every year are Korean rap nugus Nutaz.  I figure that it’s probably not worth the ticket price for them alone, so I figure that rather than pay the (high) price for one group plus a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t care about, I’ll try to sneak around the venue somehow, maybe there’s a way I can get a good look at Nutaz from outside the venue given that most stages are outdoors.

I turn up to the side of the cordoned-off area where the event is being held.  There’s a gently sloping grass hill with the stage where Nutaz is playing at the top of it behind a fence.  I can’t get a good look at them so I bring out a remote-controlled camera drone and I use my remote control to try to fly the drone into the venue to get a good look.  Unfortunately I’m really shit at flying the drone with the remote control and it starts wobbling around and then going off in the wrong direction.  Also I’m not the only person with this idea, there are several other camera drones in the area focused on the stage, seemingly piloted by much more competent people as these drones are much steadier.  My drone eventually collides with one of the other drones, then starts spinning around randomly and blowing grey smoke everywhere.  I watch my drone fall down in a pile of smoke and bent robot parts, and decide to give up on trying to see Nutaz.

Later on I’m at home and I notice another advert in the same paper, Nine Muses are playing somewhere, a venue called The Mermaid.  I think to myself that this might be worth going to instead and actually paying for, but I’ve never heard of The Mermaid and have no idea where it is.  I don’t even know if it’s in my city.

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I’m watching behind the scenes footage of the new CNBlue song.  CNBlue have been expanded to a seven piece group, and are dancing in a block formation, with the singer in the middle flanked by men on either side playing guitars.  One of the guys playing guitar is an older man, he looks about 50 years old and he’s wearing a black suit, and holding a black Stratocaster with a white scratch plate.  It’s obvious when watching him that he has no idea how to play guitar, he looks lost with the instrument in his hands, his features are frozen.  The director yells at him to move his hands a bit so at least it looks a little bit convincing like he’s actually playing the guitar, but he just stands there, bopping from side to side awkwardly and looking confused.

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In the near future, carrying of k-pop across Australian state lines is banned.  I’m filming three other people who are k-pop contraband smugglers, we are all travelling in an old rusty ute (“pickup truck” for you Americans) and they all are muscly buff guys wearing singlets, they all look a bit like a cross between Hulk Hogan and Billy Ray Cyrus.  They have a stash of k-pop CDs, in the back of the ute.  The driver addresses my camera: “I’m going to get this k-pop across the border, even if it kills me.  In fact I hope they kill me, because I don’t give a fuck, fuck ’em”, he says, referring to the border guards up ahead, who are heavily armed with assault rifles and searching a long line-up of cars for contraband k-pop.

We drive up slowly to the border checkpoint and everyone gets out except the driver.  The driver then screams out the window “GIRL’S DAY EVERY DAY, YOU CUNTS!”, does a massive burnout and drives straight through the checkpoint.   The border guards immediately give chase in police vehicles.  I watch as the driver of the ute vanishes into the distance, then doubles back on himself towards the checkpoint again, screaming “GIRL’S DAY EVERY DAY, FUCKHEADS!”.  It becomes clear to me that he’s not interested in getting away or even successfully smuggling the goods, he’s more interested in provoking the guards and dying in spectacular fashion.  As he returns to the checkpoint the guards open fire on his vehicle and the run-down ute falls apart and crumbles beneath him.  The lower half of the driver’s body is ripped completely off by the cascading sheets of metal, and his head, arms and torso slide forwards along the tarmac, the driver dead but the ute’s steering wheel still firmly in his hands.  One of the other passengers tells me that the ute is designed to detonate if captured by anti k-pop forces.  We all run down the road to get far away from the explosion.  After we get about fifty metres away the vehicle explodes into fragments at the checkpoint, the roof of the vehicle flies high up into the air and lands only a few feet away from us.  We look at each other, knowing we’re lucky to have survived.

Later I go back to the checkpoint and film the aftermath.  I notice that there are several shotguns lined up on the side of the road that are connected to sensors embedded in the road, the shotguns are triggered to fire buckshot into the road if a car drives over the sensors.  It becomes clear that the k-pop smuggler would have seen these and been acutely aware that he was not going to survive if he doubled back on the checkpoint, he had every intention of dying for the cause.

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I’m watching Sunny give a live spoken-word performance in a small classroom-type indoor space.  She’s dressed in a jacket and a white t-shirt which gives excellent boob profile.  Sunny starts doing acapella rapping, mostly about what a cunt Lee Soo Man is and how everyone else in Girls’ Generation are all bitches.  She raps about each member of Girls’ Generation in turn and how shitty they’ve all been to her.  The small gathered crowd watch in stunned silent admiration.

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I’m in a local shopping mall, looking for a guitar store.  I’ve heard that T-ara are endorsing a guitar, so as a guitar-playing T-ara fan I’m here to find the music store and buy it.  I look at various shops but I can’t see anywhere that stocks musical instruments.  A department store looks promising but only stocks phones and electronic gadgets.  In the main body of the mall is a large Hello Kitty section which includes a 1970s style Hello Kitty telephone that is as big as a car… but no guitars.

I come across an information terminal, and take a look hoping to find a store directory that can lead me to the T-ara guitar.  Instead all I can access from it is a forum that is run by the local university.  There’s a thread on there which lists all the k-pop stars who have visited the shopping mall.  Looking back through the thread it seems I’ve just missed out on seeing a performance by one of the members of Rainbow and also some nugu girl group called “Cha Cha” that I’ve never heard of (not to be confused with Chi Chi, a different group).  I read further and it looks like the performance by Cha Cha didn’t end up going ahead, and also people who paid for the performance had trouble getting their tickets refunded.  I think to myself that the world of international k-pop concerts never changes much.

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I’m sitting in my car, parked in the driveway of my mother’s house, with Nicole from KARA.  I’m teaching her how to drive my car, her first lesson is to reverse out of my mother’s driveway and onto the road safely.  My mother’s house has an unusual design, the driveway is about a 30 degree slope downward onto a cul de sac and then onto the street, a quiet side-street with a lot of cars parked along it.  On the left side of the driveway there’s a small patch of grass and on the right side is a drop.

We get in the car and she starts reversing out slowly, I tell her to “watch out for the Israel side” which means beware of the concrete drop because it will fuck up the car if she drives over it.  She starts veering in the opposite direction and I say “careful, you’re on the Palestinians!” as she rolls over the lawn section and into the cul de sac.  I’m starting to panic and I tell her to slow down, but she keeps reversing at the same speed, not even steering.  Then I suddenly realise why – I’m the one in the driver’s seat, not her.  I’m now in the road so I grab the wheel and twist the car around so it’s parallel to the street.  I look behind me and cant’s see anything, the boot of the car is open and blocking the rear view so I don’t know if I’m about to hit another car or not.  I feel by my feet for the brakes but I don’t feel anything except the floor of the car.  I start stamping madly around where I think the brakes should be but nothing is there.  Nicole looks as me and smiles, she says nothing.  I then realise that while the steering wheel is on my side, the pedals are on her side.  I start yelling at Nicole to hit the brakes, but she says that she doesn’t know where they are, even though they’re right at her feet.  I get the impression that maybe she’s playing dumb because she thinks that I might think it’s cute, but I really don’t, I just don’t want to have a car accident.

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I’m in the car park of the radio station, on my laptop organising my songs for the Kpopalypse radio show.  With me is one of the guys in 912 Crew and also Don Mills, they’re going to be guests on my show.  I’m trying not to let the guy in 912 Crew see what I’m writing on my laptop, because I’m doing the new Kpopalypse roundup where I write-up my thoughts on the songs and I think their new song is actually quite crap but I don’t want him to feel bad.

Later on, I’m on air, playing songs.  Don Mills walks in for his guest spot and sits down.  He tells me before we go to air that he wants me to promote a website of his, and that because his English isn’t that good he’d rather that I talk about the website rather than him.  I ask him if he’s selling music there, and he says the site is for ringtones and clothing items, jewelry and other merchandise, not specifically music.  I know that because of this, I can’t shout out to his website because it’s against the station rules, but I tell him that I will anyway.

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I’m playing the computer game League Of Legends.  CL is on the other team, playing a champion which looks exactly like herself in the “Doctor Pepper” video.  The ultimate ability of my own chosen champion is a nuclear rocket with unlimited range (similar to Jinx) that is so powerful that if it hits the target it will detonate a nuclear device on them in real life, and it can only be fired once per game.  I tell myself “I need to hit CL to stop more terrible music being made, of course the loss of life for anyone she is near when she detonates would be tragic, but potentially greater amounts of casualties will occur if shit music disease is allowed to propagate”.  I fire the rocket straight at her, but CL has an ultimate ability of her own which warps the speed and trajectory of projectiles – this ability messes with the flight path of my rocket so instead of flying right at her, the rocket flies in a circular pattern around the entire arena.  I watch the rocket as it spins around in large slow circles, which gradually get smaller and slower as they gravitate towards the center of the battlefield.  Eventually the rocket runs out of steam in the center of the map and falls to the ground, failing to detonate.  I think to myself that I probably will not win this round.

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I’m watching a music video of San E and three nugu female rappers, the song is called “Yolo Fuck Yolo”.  One of the nugu females is a blonde woman called Lucyfag.  Everyone is dressed in brightly-coloured hip-hop clothing.  Whenever the chorus happens San E yells “Yolo Fuck Yolo!”, grabs Lucyfag roughly by the head, pulls her towards his crotch and starts humping her face in time to the beat.

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I’m driving up to the Barossa Valley, a rural wine-growing district north of Adelaide.  I decide to take some side-streets instead of the main route, and drive through some dirt roads flanked by corrugated iron fences and farmland, there are a lot of people around going about their daily business or just hanging out on the side of the road.  Eventually I come to a whole district made of weird cobblestone buildings, completely different from the surrounding area, and unlike the farmland it’s completely deserted.  The change is really sudden, there’s a definite invisible line where the rural parts ends and the cobblestone suburb begins.  I stop driving because this new district looks so weird, I want to investigate it.

I get out of the car, my girlfriend is with me.  I discuss moving here with her to this area, she agrees that it could be a good idea to move to a quiet area.  We walk up to a building and there’s a Korean girl inside who is dressed very smartly, she is a real estate agent.  I ask her if I can buy property and move here.  She says that this is okay and that it’s no problem to move here because nobody lives here so it’s really hard to sell the properties, so I can have it for a cheap price.  However, it will take time to organise, so I’ll have to go somewhere else for a while and wait.  The girl then disappears off to another room.

I get back in the car with my girlfriend and we drive back the other way a little, to a dirt clearing.  Until we can move into the weird cobblestone area, we have to make a living somehow, so we set up a roadside stall offering services to Korean idols.  Various k-pop idols come by complaining about hairs stuck down their their throats when signing that they can’t dislodge on their own, my girlfriend uses long tweezers to expertly pull the hairs out.  While she does this, I use my laptop to check their videos, live appearances and social networking activity for any nipslips that could cause controversy.  IU stops by, she tells us that it’s really difficult to convince regular stylists to fish down her throat for hairs.  I check all her recent live performances, there are no nipslips, she is pleased about this.

A blonde woman from a nugu group then stops by and asks for our services, and I find a selca of hers on her Instagram where she’s looking at a computer and one of her boobs is accidentally exposed.  I realise that the blonde woman is Lucyfag from the San E video “Yolo Fuck Yolo”.  IU tells me to look behind me.  I turn around and behind our stall is another stall which has been set up by k-pop paparazzi, they have long-range cameras pointed at us and I realise that whenever I find a nipslip on my laptop they are taking photos to spread to the press.  IU starts talking about the k-pop media, describing them as “bloodsucking leeches”.  I start packing up my stall to move it to a new location away from the press, IU helps me fold down the various parts of the stall so it will fit in my car.  She tells me that it’s probably about time to move into my new house now.

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