Sydney Wise is an average freshman at FHN. She goes about her day, listening to music to help her focus on her work and studies. However, this music differs from most. It all started in Spring 2014 at the end of her seventh grade school year at Barnwell Middle School. Wise discovered Korean pop music, also known as “K-Pop”, while she was at home, surfing the web out of boredom. Little did she know that a simple interest in “Overdose,” by EXO, would blossom into a passion.

“It almost sounds like American pop music, but in Korean, obviously,” Wise said. “There are some different styles. It sounded catchy to me.”
The moment she heard Xiumin’s, a member of EXO’s, voice, Wise found herself falling head over heels for this foreign genre. She listens to EXO and BTS the most. The sound makes her want to get up and dance. However, according to her, watching the members of Korean boy bands bust out moves during recording sessions for music videos will suffice for her.

“[My first and favorite band is] EXO,” Wise said. “They have great singing voices and their music is lovely.”
The K-Pop fan base has grown a lot in the past few years. With new K-Pop bands rising to the media surface and more people discovering them every day, it’s definitely not a surprise to the current fans.

“The fan base isn’t too crazy and there really isn’t very much drama,” Wise said. “I like it because when I talked to the other fans, they were nice and didn’t have a problem with me joining the fan base.”

When Wise first started indulging, she knew almost no one who listened to the same genre. At the time, K-Pop wasn’t the popular music culture it is today. In fact, nobody had really known what it was. However, it didn’t take long to find others with the same interest.

“I knew she had a passion for it,” freshman Trinity Farr, a friend of Wise, said. “I find it funny when she obsesses over it.”
By the time Wise had found her new obsession, she had been listening to the Korean pop music for a full month.

Having no desire to listen to anything else, she knew she would love it for a long time.

“In all honesty, I think [my obsession] is worse,” freshman Halie Willbrand said. “I hope for her sake she never gets as bad as me.”

It is now 2016, a full two years later. Wise is still in love with K-Pop just as much as she was when she first discovered it in 2014. It continues to have a positive effect on her as well as the whole K-Pop community at FHN.

“K-Pop is kind of like its own little culture,” Wise said. “It makes me inspired to be a part of it for a long time.”