Missing Kevin Moon’s curly hair

She/her. Send me Jongho mirror selfie’s and we’ll get married. Pan🏳️‍🌈

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Kevin Moon for 'FREECHILD' mood shot 2.

[26 @dailyhaechan]

LEE HAECHAN????

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#HAECHAN FOR BLINGY MV TEASER ❤️‍🔥

[allkpop @allkpop]

#BlockB's #UKwon apologizes for past fan signing comment https://t.co/2syMZNguSY

[‏ً @LHCFEED]

haechan of the day 🐻

[Soompi @soompi]

All #NCTDREAM Members Renew Contracts With SM Entertainment
https://t.co/omDgIOXODC

[NCT 127 @NCTsmtown_127]

It’s finally happening!
#NCT127 #AGT @AGT

[ً @0420MEDIA]

PARK JONGSEONG?? WHAT THE HECK

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HWASA (MAMAMOO) is nominated for the Best Female Vocalist Award 🏆

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[26 @dailyhaechan]

haechan and his cute habits… 🥺

[Unpaid 사서 Moon @Moonismean]

Vernon’s point here is actually much more nuanced than “old K-pop was better” or “K-pop is becoming American.”

K-pop has always been hybrid. Its history is deeply connected to American and European pop, R&B, hip-hop, dance music, and also to the Japanese music industry. Even the formation of what we recognize as modern K-pop in the 1990s happened through taking foreign musical forms and recontextualizing them within Korea’s own language, industry, performance culture and audience.

That’s why the important part of what Vernon is saying is not that K-pop suddenly started borrowing from American pop. It has ALWAYS done that.

The interesting change is how much the distance between the source material and the Korean reinterpretation has narrowed.

Think about the difference between earlier generations and now. A 2nd-gen song could be heavily influenced by an American genre and still sound unmistakably like a Korean production because the influence was being filtered through a very particular Korean arrangement style, vocal structure, songwriting approach, choreography and idol-production system.

Wonder Girls, BIGBANG, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, etc. were absolutely not “uninfluenced” by Western music. Quite the opposite. But you could often hear the process of localization more clearly.

And that localization was actually one of K-pop’s strengths.

Korea didn’t simply import American pop and reproduce it. Producers took global trends, adapted them to Korean audiences, combined them with Korean industry practices, and eventually developed a system capable of exporting that localized product back into the global market.

That is basically the fascinating paradox of K-pop’s globalization: something can be heavily influenced by global pop while becoming more distinctly Korean through the way those influences are reorganized.

What Vernon is noticing now is almost the reverse side of that process.

The global music industry has become so interconnected that producers, songwriters, choreographers and labels are working across the same international networks, using the same DAWs, sample libraries, trends, genres and songwriting camps, and responding to increasingly similar global market expectations.

So naturally, the “filter” becomes less audible.

It’s not that K-pop stopped being influenced by American pop. It’s that the global pop vocabulary has become so shared that sometimes there is less sonic distance between “K-pop” and “Pop” to begin with.

And honestly, this is why his comment about the 2000s/early 2010s makes sense to me. He isn’t necessarily saying those songs were more original. He’s talking about a period when the process of taking a global influence and turning it into something recognizably K-pop was easier to hear.

That distinction matters.

And honestly, I could yap about this for much longer if anyone is interested 😭 There are some genuinely fascinating articles and discussions on K-pop’s musical hybridity, localization, globalization, and the changing relationship between K-pop and global pop.

The more you look into the history, the more interesting Vernon’s observation becomes.

[The Hollywood Reporter @THR]

“K-pop sounds more and more like American pop.” #Seventeen's #Vernon shares his thoughts on how #Kpop has evolved since his debut on The Playlist. https://t.co/lYPOOE4LHZ

[allkpop @allkpop]

#BIGBANG appointed as first honorary ambassadors for Korea's aerospace agency KASA https://t.co/knFTjkBZKN

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ASSEMBLE!

NCT 127 【BLINGY - The 7th Album】
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[allkpop @allkpop]

#BIGBANG's 20th anniversary Han River event to be live-streamed on Coupang Play https://t.co/PN7mDx0qiI

[26 @dailyhaechan]

haechan looks so good here…

[𝙙𝙖 @haechanprints]

pretty boy haechan

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maknae haechan with his hyungs 🥹🤏🏼

[Soompi @soompi]

#OHMYGIRL Transfers To DSP + #XLOV's Agency Announces Name Change Following RBW's Structural Changes
https://t.co/C7QUvlvb0b

[햇곰🐻 @HAE_Teddy]

Love beyond