K-Pop Info Guide
I'm sure many of you already have K-Pop related sites you check out for the lastest updates, but here are some more you might want to check out:
THE INFO SITES:
American KPOP Fans (Highly Recommended)
Kristen and Kim run the sites. They share info with you about groups, links, photos, videos, macros, tour dates, and other websites useful for finding info on their own K-Pop Guide (http://americankpopfans.com/2011/10/05/akpfs-guide-to-being-a-knowledgeable-fan/). They also have a great sense of humor and aren't afraid of sharing their opinions. They also have awesome GIVEAWAYS! There kind of like Allkpop.com except without all the evil. Seriously their amazing, during the SMTown NYC concert they gave minute by minute updates (heck they were much more useful than SMTwon's own official updates and much faster). If you don't feel like looking up so many sites for the latest info this is a great site for you.
http://www.facebook.com/americankpopfans#!/americankpopfans
http://www.americankpopfans.com
Asian Junkie
An info source on the latest news. There are also reviews and his opinions(I love how sarcastic he is). Besides K-Pop theres also a section for J-Pop.
Koreaboo
Another great info site. I don't really have much to say about it thought since I don't use it quite often.
Seoul Beats (Recommended)
This site is great. They have reviews/recaps on films, dramas, and albums. They have articles on recent issues in the realm of K-Pop. They have fashion articles, chat boxes, and more in-depth articles about the more serious issues in K-Pop(Ex:Open World Ent. scandal). Oh right they also have some hilarous articles where they poke fun at the things that make you go WTF! K-Pop?
Soompi
They have great info and I love how they divide their categories up they have tabs for news, photos, videos, people, fan clubs, forums and the newly added shop. They have Giveaways too.
DRAMA/VARIETY SHOWS & SUBS
Daeback Subs
This is a great site for english subs not only for dramas, but also for variety shows. If you want to search for just a specific episode where your favorite group was on you can find that too.
Dramabeans (Recommended)
They give great recaps of dramas or movies often with the authors own hilarous reactions to certain scenes. If you're someone who doesn't mind spoilers and might actually need a summary of the first few episodes to decide if you want to watch the drama well, they can help decide.
Drama Fans
They provide eng subbed episodes for literally thousands of dramas and movies. This is sort of like an asian drama/movie site since they sub Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Korean films/dramas. They've also subbed a few variety shows like We Got Married.
English Sub
This site provides some of the fastest subbing I've ever seen. This is where I went for Extravagent Challenge(somehow I forgot I already understood Mandrin so I kept waiting for subs -___-) and Shut Up Flower Boy Band! subs.
iTheTimeBlog (Highly Recommended)
This is one of the main sub sites use. She (at least I think their a she) doesn't sub the shows herself, but forms sort of a collab site with other subbing channels. She uploads links for the shows which are either on youtube (unlisted), facebook, or other video sites. Theres a page where you can find other Fandom based subbing channels too. There are subs for the majority of variety shows, We Got Married, specific groups own variety shows (ex:Hello Baby or 4Minute Mr.Teacher), Gag Concert, etc.
http://ithetimes.wordpress.com/
Koala's Playground (Recommended)
Best Recaps Ever! The most accurate and specfic recaps I've found. Plus I love how she fangirls in her recaps too. Even when I've already watched a drama or finished that episode in a drama I'll go here to check to see if I missed something.
MISC.
AAshlia & JD Relic (Recommended, but Highly Recommended for Kiss Me's)
This couple has by far the best english K-Pop song covers I've ever seen and their covers always have great quality (and ooze talent) since they record them in their own recording studio. Sometimes english covers sound awkward because its too much of a direct translation but somehow they always get it right. JD Relic might be a familar name for a lot of Kiss Me's considering he took part in producing and arranging several of U-Kiss's more recent songs. He actually works with a Marcan Entertainment in Korea. JD Relic is the main producer for U-Kiss now and hes taken part in producing Neverland, Baby Don't Cry, Top That, Tick Tack, Forbidden Love, and Doradora. If I remember correctly hes also the one who produce Baek Ji Young - Bad Girl and Supernova - Stop Girl. He also did the remixes for Tick Tack and Neverland.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ashilia4life
Asian Fanfics
If you're into fanfics this is the site for you (you should also check out Live Journal and Winglin). I've made some great friends on this site. You get to communicate with fans across the world and read their blogs, posts, and stories. There are some amazingly talented writers on there (maybe I'll post a list of them later on idk) you just have to pick through the piles of generic stories. Confession I love OTP one shots. I think I might be addicted...(Kpop relevant: Normal People are addicted to drugs, , alcohol, and violence. Kpop fans are addicted to fanfics, variety shows, and online media sources.)
DJ Masa (Recommended)
Hes a 23 year old DJ from Brazil and has some really cool mixes. Every year he makes one or two mashups of the hottest songs of that year (these are my favorite) and occasionally he just does other mixes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/mmixes
Eat Your Kimchi (Highly Recommended)
They are an adorable Canadian couple living in Korea who used to teach English in middle schools there, but have now dedicated their careers to being full-time vloggers. If your a full time K-Pop fan you're missing out on a lot of K-pop humor that we get from this lovely Canadian couple. They have WANKing Wednesdays(Wonderful Adventure Now Korea) and Music Mondays (which even if you don't watch any of their other videos You should watch the music reviews because they are hilarous and you will be left out of the EYK Humor loop(it's a thing...I said so I say it's a thing). They now have Kpop Charts Updates, K-Crunch Cocktail, and K-Indie Playlists on their main channel. They have TL;DR(Too Long Dind't Read - kinda like this whole page really) every other Thursday and Bloopers on their bonus channel. They also have a third channel called Open the Happy where they post random videos(sort of like the ones they used to make when they first became vloggers).
http://www.youtube.com/user/simonandmartina
KPOP Color Coded Lyrics (Recommended)
Great romanization lyrics are put out really fast and she also has her own Kpop info guide(http://kpopcolorcodedlyrics.wordpress.com/bored-things-to-check-out/). Her lyrics usually come out only days or sometimes hours after the song or music video has been released and if she doesn't already have the filler tracks on an album romanized you can request them and she gets them done usually by the next day.
http://kpopcolorcodedlyrics.wordpress.com/
Still Not David
Hes a half Korean half Vietnamese vlogger. His cats name is Dubu so everytime he called his cat I thought of Onew). He only recently started making videos entirely focused on K-Pop, but he has made references to K-Pop in several of his videos so I think hes still relevant(and even if he isn't I'm a fan so...yea). I find him to be hilarous whether hes talking about K-Pop or his cat. He also has covers of K-Pop and non K-Pop songs up on his channel. He recently started making StillNotKPOP videos(get it StillNotDavid..ok I know lame I'll just go). I swear he channels Brians Joo so much (Briena's ghetto black girl impression) but not even on purpose I thinks he actually just a bit of a diva.
http://www.youtube.com/user/StillNotDavid
I obviously wrote more info on the sites or people I follow more often. Overall if you want to be really updated(cause with kpop its like your offline for 4 days and 10 groups have already made their debut/comeback) so the best way is to follow the people or sites you know you want information from on Tumblr (Eli and Beckah ex member of Afterschool have accounts) , Facebook (Kim Kibum the actor has an official page and SM Ent. has their official pages), Twitter (follow yo' idols and those awesome fansites), Google + (Infinite has them), Me2Day(its like asian Twitter basically and lots of idols have them), etc.
I mean what better way to get info then from official companies, idols, and official fandoms right?
In case you didn't know why I called Allkpop out for being evil(this is a subject Kim and Kristen over at American KPOP Fans have said before) here it is:
- They are a self profit company and their sister site 6theory is as well, unlike many of the dedicated fans that run the smaller but more dependable sites.
- They get sponsored by certain companies to have their ads bombed towards you when you skim the site.
- They often have very biased writers who pick at the information in the article to the point its hard to see the facts in there. Theres nothing wrong with having biasness just when you let it cloud your judgement to the point where your not giving the reader anything its very unprofessional. Facts first then own opinion.
- For so many writers and translators they sure have a lot of mistranslations causing widespread confusion among international english speaking population of Kpop fans.
- Some of the users on their are the reason Kpop Fans have bad reps(ex: "No my oppah is better" or "How dare you call my bias untalented their an idol aren't they" or those constant spammers etc etc etc)
I used to rely on this site for all my information but after they changed how their front page looked I foudnd it hard to navigate the page so I quit using it(I didn't know about their evil then). After I discovered other sites for info I discovered that they had so many mistranslations and that they left out important articles in favor of so and so had lunch here and was spotted -____- like are you kidding me? What are you a diet planning book?
I'll take a quote from Kim and Kristen "This is what we want: Fair reporting, interesting stories, and less sensationalizing. We are fans, not money purses for those sites and their ad engines to drain dry! "" "
*Those were all personal opinions and if you disagree I hope that doesn't deterr from this group. I am not advertising any of my own sites or channels with the above links as my own, simply sharing them for other fans to use if they choose.*
I hope this post was at least somewhat useful to you guys. I might have put personal opinions in there way too many times and if anyone was offended by anything I said (unless its the Allkpop thing and if otherwise reasonable) I apologize for unintentionally offending you in anyway.
If you have any suggestion for sites or channels that should be added on here leave them in the comments please. Oh and if you already follow several of these sites go on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google and Youtube and search for kpop bloggers the majority of them can be resourceful to you and are hilarous. And if you like any of the sites I posted share them with a friend for happiness and laughter are to be shared.
So...Boom Shaka Laka Peace I'm out ^^
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*this was something i posted onto a facebook group i created called KPOP LOVE ! <3 (theres an actually heart yes)
so if you have facebook feel free to join the group. it's basically a group i created with some of my fcbk friends so that people with a common interest of k-pop can chat with each other. i just created it yesterday so theres not much to it cept an intro and this guide, but i'll be putting more stuff up and if you do decide to join don't be shy make your presence known. post pictures, blogs, videos, links, etc.*
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