Kpop fans are like the would-be bride in the story I am going to tell below.
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A woman belonging to a higher class goes to meet the family of her groom-to-be. He looks beautiful, his family looks reasonable, and it appears to be a perfect family.
However there is a room the family will NOT open at any circumstances.
She gets curious. She learned lockpicking for fun, and she gets her pin to open the lock while pretending to go to the bathroom, which is way smaller than what is in her mansion.
She opens the door, and a Strange Creature jumps out of it.
She, running like hell, asks what is the Strange Creature.
While most of the family are busy trying to put the Strange Creature back to her room, the family patriarch explains that the creature is actually the family's great-great-(a bunch of 'greats' omitted) - grandaunt who was born about 1,340 years ago and owns the house, and the family has to take care of her and if the upper class girl marries the beautiful son of the family, she has to take the Strange Creature with him because the Creature is part of the family. The patriarch continued and said the Creature likes to eat rib eye, raw cow's innards and sometimes some fish.
Most stories end with the girl running out of the house like , well, running from the Strange Creature, and never looks at her would-be groom or anyone in that family again.
However the i-fans, even after learning about the existence of the Creature who controls and significantly skews Korea's digital charts in her favor since she is owned by Kakao, which owns Melon, accepted Kpop and by doing so also kind of accepted the Creature as part of the Kpop culture, even though they don't actually listen to her songs which are not palatable for most ifans which is exacerbated by her insistence to write the lyrics herself in K-O-R-e-A-N.
People like Lim Youngwoong do stay in their own turf only and do not try to go outside of it. So, the trottists do exist, but are mostly outside of the ifans' attention. At most some older Asian fans might be interested upon trot but that's about it.
But the Creature often attacked Kpop acts at will, and battled it out with the biggest act of all, putting herself at #9 of the most awarded artists of the world last year, probably the first local singer who managed to accomplish the feat in the history of the world.
The way the fanchants are set up is 'left' and 'right', meaning it won't be a 360 degree concert like 2019 , meaning it will indeed be held in the Olympic Stadium , as I had feared for many months.
Events of the last few days (death of the ex-Japanese PM, still the most powerful person in there; the collapse of Sri Lanka; etc.) might have dwarfed what happened on Jun 15, but as far as the world's pop culture is considered what happened in June 15 is the most important news of the year, since it shook the base of Kpop , and the world pop culture, significantly.
In the recent years, excluding acts debuting before 2000, only JYJ (2nd Gen), Big Bang (2nd Gen, incl GDragon), EXO (3rd Gen), and BTS (3rd Gen) managed to have local concerts in Stadiums in Korea. And only EXO and BTS were two day events.
The way it is progressing, it seems the Creature will have the first two-day concert in a Stadium in the 2nd Gen, and the 3rd after 2015, putting her name before all of the 2nd Gen and in the same league with EXO and BTS.
All while YG did NOTHING to promote BlackPink, whose first week sales is now broken by aespa which becomes the first girl group to sell more than 1 million copies of albums at 1st week.
I now have to question the entire Kpop world - was it right for the ifans to support KPop, knowing there was someone who was hell bent upon destroying it while controlling the digitals which could have ended the whole show?
The whole illusion is about end in a couple of months when the Creature installs herself as the successor of BTS.
The moment I feared for so long is about to arrive, in my opinion.
