American guys form K-pop group; K-pop fans unimpressed

Just when you thought the music industry couldn’t get any weirder, here comes a K-pop group composed of four American boys: one mixed-race, three white.

The all-American band EXP Edition describes itself as “born in NY, made in Seoul.” It is comprised of Koki Tomlinson, who is half German and half Japanese; New Yorker Hunter Kohl; Portuguese Frankie DaPonte; and Croatian Šime Košta.

According to the band’s website, none of the four are fluent in Korean. They did, however, relocate to South Korea in order to learn the language, and to record their first album.

Suffice it to say that netizens and K-pop fans are far from impressed.

On April 13, EXP Edition uploaded a teaser for their debut single, “Feel Like This,” on YouTube. It has since been viewed over 246,000 times, and received almost 8,000 dislikes versus near 6,000 likes.

April 16 marks the single’s YouTube debut. As of writing, it is nearing 133,800 views, but is faring a little better in the likes vs. dislikes department, with around 5,400 of the former and 3,970 of the latter.

While the song is mostly in Korean, some fans claim Korean lyrics aren’t enough to make it K-pop.

One major complaint is that the video lacks the sophisticated dance choreography of your typical K-pop music video.

“This is not K-pop,” said Keo in the video’s comments section. “Where's the dancing? Rap? All they're doing is jumping around like western boy bands.”

Some K-pop fans simply didn’t feel the music, while others hated their look.

“Am I the only one that thinks some of them look creepy as f**k?” said _dekapai.

A few have gone a step further, accusing EXP Edition of racism and cultural appropriation.

“Clear evidence of white people capitalizing off POC’s successes,” said one.

“[I]f the American music industry can't let Asians in it then why tf should we let white people into ours?” said another.

A number of people brought up another important issue.

“What pisses me off that a lot of money went into making this group and there are real KPOP groups that are struggling to even sell their album and even have food in their plate,” said farah 013.

Another stated that much of the anger isn’t due to the group members being white, but because of EXP Edition’s belief that “putting the Korean before the word pop is going to automatically gain them recognition and popularity when the groups we stan [stalker fan] trained for YEARS just to debut."

This is in reference to the fact that many South Korean artists and entertainers—both males and females—go through years of arduous physical training to get in shape, and, more importantly, to possess the sheer physicality to be able to execute the complex dance routines usually seen in their music videos and live performances.

Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that EXP Edition started as an art project by sociologist Bora Kim, who wanted an exploration of “what K-pop and what K-pop fandom is.”

"I wanted to see what would happen if I made American boys into K-pop performers, by teaching them how to sing in Korean and act like Korean boys, and complicate this flow/appropriation even more, since I’m in New York, where so many talents are just one online recruitment ad away,” she said in 2015. Back then, EXP Edition had six members. They used Kickstarter to raise the $30,000 required to fund their album.

Kim added that she wished to explore how the concept of Asian masculinity has been impacted by K-pop. It is no secret that K-pop boy bands don’t exactly conform to the traditional Western view of what makes a man attractive.

"For example, a young group of pretty boys with great skin start rapping in a hip-hop music video while wearing a lot of make-up,” she said. “It is totally gender-bending and experimental, but, at the same time, it is very typical, mainstream K-pop.”

Whatever the case may be, it appears EXP Edition will have to brave the crucible of harsh criticism and online outrage before they can even dream of becoming considered a legit K-pop band. — BM, GMA News