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Why does 2000s Korea look like 1980s America? (4 Viewers)

Drew_B

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Anytime I watch a video clip of anything released in Korea from 2000 to 2010 it looks so old that you would assume it was from the 1980s.

Maybe it's the hairstyles. Like long hair being popular with males during that time which was popular with guys in the 80s in the States. Also maybe the quality of the videos are alw6so bad but looks like what we had in the States in the 80s.

Was Korea really 20 years behind America in everything??

Cause it sure looked like it.
 
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Anytime I watch a video clip of anything released in Korea from 2000 to 2010 it looks so old that you would assume it was from the 1980s.

Maybe it's the hairstyles. Like long hair being popular with males during that time which was popular with guys in the 80s in the States. Also maybe the quality of the videos are alw6so bad but looks like what we had in the States in the 80s.

Was Korea really 20 years behind America in everything??

Cause it sure looked like it.
ahh drew that is 40 years.......
 

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Other country, other trends. Perhaps koreans thought the same about the fashion in the US.
 
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the 80s are trendy now in 2020 too. the koreans are so fashion forward
 

RainbowDevil

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Most likely the fact that they weren't on the same cultural and technological level at the time. As well as generally as artists, music in Murica was much more of a deal than it was in Korea obviously seeing as most people have no idea what even music in korea was before the 2000s
 
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You mean long hair like this? this hairstyle is probably mostly seen in 2000s videos and I think it was popular worldwide.




not everyone was wearing those haristyles, but I was a teenager in those times and I remember boys wearing longer hair and of course, the videos are a bit exaggerated. no boy would ever wear an eyeliner to school or wear that sort of "rooster" hairstyle, but all artists were doing that style more or less.

Tokyo Hotel if I remember? Paramore kind of? 30 Seconds to Mars, Good Charlotte, Green Day
It was popular everywhere. (For the record, Paramore are Americans soooo....)

1609017251717.jpeg

 
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Most likely the fact that they weren't on the same cultural and technological level at the time. As well as generally as artists, music in Murica was much more of a deal than it was in Korea obviously seeing as most people have no idea what even music in korea was before the 2000s
technological level?????? SAMSUNG, EXCUSE ME? Everyone knew and has always known Samsung, Korean economy started to rise in 1960s!!!!
are you kidding me? everyone has always known Korean products FOR AGES.
FOR AGES BEFORE MCDONALD CAME TO EAT OUR ORGANS :D

how freaking young is everyone on this forum?
are you all Americans living in a cocoon or something?? what the hell???
 
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I don't know but to me Korea's music of the late 90s to early 00s were pretty similar to what was trending over here in EU, even looks wise they wore the same clothing and hairstyle as boygroups here. I am sure if you look up G.O.D and compare let's say The Backstreet Boys they will both wear the same fashion imo.
 

RainbowDevil

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technological level?????? SAMSUNG, EXCUSE ME? Everyone knew and has always known Samsung, Korean economy started to rise in 1960s!!!!
are you kidding me? everyone has always known Korean products FOR AGES.
FOR AGES BEFORE MCDONALD CAME TO EAT OUR ORGANS :D

how freaking young is everyone on this forum?
are you all Americans living in a cocoon or something?? what the hell???
Not that type of tech my friend. I mostly mean cameras, lighting and everything else related to video. Even tho Samsung and many other companies come from Korea they weren't high quality during their entire existence and they also don't extend to all sides of musical or video production.
 
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I don't know but to me Korea's music of the late 90s to early 00s were pretty similar to what was trending over here in EU, even looks wise they wore the same clothing and hairstyle as boygroups here. I am sure if you look up G.O.D and compare let's say The Backstreet Boys they will both wear the same fashion imo.
right ? I live in a country that people STRUGGLE TO FIND ON A MAP and yet ,we had similar hairstyles and it was more or less for everyone. we were crazy about Green Day, Tokyo Hotel and all the yadada and that was after the Iron Wall fell :D.
but mid 1990s and up were pretty much globalised
 
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Not that type of tech my friend. I mostly mean cameras, lighting and everything else related to video. Even tho Samsung and many other companies come from Korea they weren't high quality during their entire existence and they also don't extend to all sides of musical or video production.
we are talking 2000s right? Host and korean, japanese films started to be hella popular and were considered really high quality visually as well as when it came to writing.
 

RainbowDevil

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we are talking 2000s right? Host and korean, japanese films started to be hella popular and were considered really high quality visually as well as when it came to writing.
They may have been more popular but they weren't generally and globaly popular. As drew mentioned watching most videos from that period looks like smn from 80s America and that exactly is the thing. They weren't used to using that same technology as Americans were since they had been using the tech, which was evolving as the industry was, for their global music industry which was booming since the 60s. While in Korea, music before the 2000s wasn't, it also wasn't profitable so the money just wasn't there. That's mostly where the tech part comes from, the stuff was so widely used in America at that point while in Korea it was a rarity still. The video editing/producing and everything else was essentially in it's infancy within Korea, as far as music goes.
 
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They may have been more popular but they weren't generally and globaly popular. As drew mentioned watching most videos from that period looks like smn from 80s America and that exactly is the thing. They weren't used to using that same technology as Americans were since they had been using the tech, which was evolving as the industry was, for their global music industry which was booming since the 60s. While in Korea, music before the 2000s wasn't, it also wasn't profitable so the money just wasn't there. That's mostly where the tech part comes from, the stuff was so widely used in America at that point while in Korea it was a rarity still. The video editing/producing and everything else was essentially in it's infancy within Korea, as far as music goes.
We are talking 2000s I need to remind you that and you are simply not right. 2000s are the years when bands of Second Generation started debuting.
SuperM, Bing Bang, Girls´ Generation, TVXQ!, and many others that are considered somewhere in between like BTS, Monsta X etc.
I think you are mixing 1990s and 2000s when in 1990s many countries were waking up from the post-Communist era and it was in general a time of catching up with "the West".

I would also recommend to reread your comments and how it might look ignorant as to putting one country down as backwards, but ok.

2000s were pretty much global already. I think you might just need to watch more films?
I´m not Korean but Boys over Flowers looked to me like any other (American included) teenage TV Show made in 2000s.

adding: and Host was very popular even here where I live. I must admit Japanese culture is a bit more popular over here though.
 

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We are talking 2000s I need to remind you that and you are simply not right. 2000s are the years when bands of Second Generation started debuting.
SuperM, Bing Bang, Girls´ Generation, TVXQ!, and many others that are considered somewhere in between like BTS, Monsta X etc.
I think you are mixing 1990s and 2000s when in 1990s many countries were waking up from the post-Communist era and it was in general a time of catching up with "the West".

I would also recommend to reread your comments and how it might look ignorant as to putting one country down as backwards, but ok.

2000s were pretty much global already. I think you might just need to watch more films?
I´m not Korean but Boys over Flowers looked to me like any other (American included) teenage TV Show made in 2000s.

adding: and Host was very popular even here where I live. I must admit Japanese culture is a bit more popular over here though.
Yall are only focusing on the technical part of my argument.

I was also talking about styling. This picture of TVXQ from 2005 looks like the kind if guys you'd run into in New York City in 1987.

 
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Someone has to take the lead, n others follow.

In the early 20th century, USA led/made flapper/jazz/big band music n it flourished. Later it was swing, rnb, n watever 50's music was called. Rock n roll n pop music of the 60s to 80s came after. You only think abt it maybe cos u were more familiar with 80s music/hairstyles/mtv. If u grew up in the 60s/70s maybe ud see similarities to then?

Yall are only focusing on the technical part of my argument.

I was also talking about styling. This picture of TVXQ from 2005 looks like the kind if guys you'd run into in New York City in 1987.

I rlly think they look to me more like an intermediate period of an inbetween bsb/nsync n 1d. Idk i wasnt in new york in 1987, tho iv warched movies n tv from tat era-still think its closer to 1999 than earlier.

Hong Kong, Taiwan n Japan of the 80s, 90s n 2000s had wat seemed to me to be more contemporaneous to American/UK music/popular cultural fashion than corresponding korean era, maybe korea seemed to catch up/go beyond from 2010s onwards. (Accordingly as to wat was available/knockoffs/affordable in those countries at the time ofc). Hk/jpn in 80s/90s seemed similar/almost same as US/UK in some sense. Taiwan from 2000s onwards too. There r still blips to me but overall tat seems true to me.

As for korea, from 2000-2018 apart from a sporadic smattering i dint watch anything other than i think Kwon Sang Woo in 1 movie n JSR or sth maybe can count on 1 hand all the korean movies i watched. Just dint grab me then. Looking backwards now im unable to tell objectively how drewb's original point in OP is proven or disproven. Its just too subjective n whims of memory nostalgia are hard to overcome/overlook. My familiarity is more with mtv of the 90s like r.e.m n nirvana tho i knew of earlier stuff too. I think drewb's memory might also be playing him slighlt false conflating the 90s with the 80s. Werent u a toddler then? Wat do u rmbr of 1987 n do u hv pictures of a similar era tat looks like 2005 tvxq? Wat abt 1990s Shinhwa, H.o.t. seo taiji n jyp. I think the pix of seo taiji n yg look exactly like it was taken in the 90s, so unless they were stagnant or deteriorated, i tend to believe korea 2000s were exactly how pop culture then looked everywhere else. Ill just post this cos thinking more abt this makes my head hurt.LOL
 
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Safe to say that K-Pop borrows heavily from US music. That's not a slam either. But my point is that they drew from 80s to 90s r&b music wrapped into a pop package... So its not surprising that they took inspiration from other trends. Like a couple of songs released within a few years have sounded like mid 00s trap music.

Plus modern styles do look like what I would have seen in decades past in US and Europe.

This is not a dig, so don't try and come for me.
 
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Long post, but the thing is that in this thread everyone is right and wrong at the same time, so guess i'll try to explain a bit (?).

While the music was inspired in the west, the visual aesthetic was mostly inspired in Japan, which had its own very different trends at the time, heavily inspired in anime as well as the 80s as it was a golden era for their media and so it established most trends that would then be followed for decades and are still pretty die-hard. But regardless:

Although Korea's economy "boomed" in the 60's, the wide majority of its population was poor for a majority of its modern history as a product of japanese occupation-then the korean war-then the military dictatorships which except for Park Chung-Hee (the one behind the "boom") focused on just holding on to power and little else, leaving the country mostly undevelopped. So it wasn't until the late 80's and 90's, with the slow transition into democracy and liberalization of the economy that it started reaching other demographic groups aside from the wealthy and the government.

This involving also liberalization of the media which had been heavily monitored for decades by conservative/pro-government businessmen who monopolized a majority of media becoming a circlejerk of very similar content over and over and over again. Only really growing in the 90's when, with the fall of the dictatorships, these businessmen slowly lost more and more power, creating a vacuum, filled by their rivals as well as by new actors and characters of many backgrounds as well as lesser businessmen that finally had the opportunity to grow, allowing other ideas to flow into the market for the first time in a long while.

All of which brought what koreans define as their golden era in most forms of media, whether it is dramas, tv shows, films, or music, you will see that a majority of the media-related records in korea were all achieved in the 90's and never reached again - except for some which were only recently broken.

So yeah, Korea was technologically advanced, and rich, statistically speaking, but that wealth didn't reach most people much less so did the technology, until the late 80's and early 90's. Most of it had been focused exclusively on industrialization and the conglomerates as well as those close to the government and their business of interest (cars, manufacture, electrodomestics, we all know which ones i'm talking about) but nothing else aside from what had already been established as a moneymaker. But at the same time, the early 2000's korean content wasn't really backwards, it was just different, and based on a mix of what had succeeded domestically in:

-Korea's 90's golden era (which was an experimental clusterfrick of things from all the way back to the 20's big band to 90's techno)
-then the US (both from the 80s - which was a golden era of media for the US and was the era most of those artists or their producers grew up during and drew inspiration from - and whatever were the current trends at the time)
-and Japan, who was - until the 90's crash -, far ahead of the west too in many areas but was just different. And the talk about Japanese media is a whole other topic that would take too long.
 

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