Trot: Korea's melancholic pop that came before K-pop

K-pop is one of South Korea's biggest exports

Writer Vivian Yoon could never have imagined that the music she secretly loved as a kid growing up in Los Angeles’ Koreatown would become the phenomenon it is today. In this 14-part podcast, Yoon takes the deepest dive into the history of K-pop, a surprising journey that passes through the 1992 LA riots and a hip-hop club in Seoul once frequented by Black American GIs.

K-pop is defined by catchy music, synchronized dances, and devoted fans

Thanks to its eye-catching aesthetics and catchy music, South Korean pop has sparked a global industry. Both their sound and visuals are meant to be fun and addictive to consume.

Listening to K-pop in North Korea is punishable by execution

As far as we know, North Koreans are instead listening to music that serves as public service announcements or some catchy electronic music for dancing.

Seo Taiji and the Boys are considered the first 'true' K-pop idols

This article explains how the success of a rebellious '90s boy band inclined an industry to capitalize on that success and meticulously craft new generations of stars. While BTS exhibits major talent and charm, their rise may partially result from a formula for mass appeal that music executives cultivated.

PSY—GANGNAM STYLE

One of the first K-pop songs to reach a critical mass of fans in markets far outside of South Korea was 'Gangnam Style'—a lighthearted, catchy track from Korean rapper Psy that soon had fans around the world trying out the music video’s signature horse-riding dance. The video for the song, which was uploaded to YouTube in July 2012, was also the first on the platform to reach 1 billion views.

An archive of Korean film

If Bong Joon Ho’s 2020 Oscar-winning film Parasite whet your appetite for Korean cinema, check out the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube channel, which has more than a hundred full-length classic films available to stream for free, some dating back as far as 1930. Many of the titles are remastered and feature subtitles in multiple languages. Start with “Mandala” (1981) and “Aimless Bullet” (1961).

K-pop band BTS released their fifth album, 'Arirang,' after a four-year hiatus

The album reflects the identity and roots of one of the world's most popular boy bands. Alongside a new single and free concert, the release kicked off BTS's 82‑date world tour through 2027. The free concert at Seoul's Gwanghwamun Square drew tens of thousands of attendees and was livestreamed on Netflix.

TikTok is resurrecting sampled songs

Rapper Doechii's song "Anxiety" has become a bona fide chart hit. Interestingly, its popularity on TikTok propelled Gotye's "Somebody I Used to Know" (the song Doechii's song samples) and Sleep Hallow's "A N X I E T Y" (a song that samples the Doechii song) onto the charts as well.

Brazil's tropicália movement fused rock 'n' roll, Latin music, and poetry

Tropicália was a short-lived Brazilian style of rock 'n' roll that blended samba, bossa nova, modernist poetry, and American rhythm and blues that offered provocative, anti-authoritarian, and avant-garde ideas through popular music, much to the delight of the country's evolving youth culture.

Experts don’t believe upbeat tunes, called ‘recession pop,’ are legitimate recession indicators

Social media users have begun deeming pop music by the likes of Kesha and Katy Perry a “recession indicator” as they try to predict the next economic downturn.

The classic girl group sound arrived with doo-wop

Doo-wop was a vocal-based pop music popular in the ‘50s that coincided with the rise of early rock ‘n’ roll. The mid-tempo, harmony-heavy songs about teenage life provided the template for the girl group sound, which arrived at the end of the decade.

How to eat Korean food

If you don’t know your banchan from your bibimbap, Chef Seoyoung Jung offers a quick breakdown of the anatomy of a typical Korean meal. She also gives some useful do's and don'ts for Korean mealtimes, including why you should always place your rice bowl to the left of the soup bowl (and never pick it up while you’re eating)

There is a nature preserve in Korea's DMZ

In almost every way, the Demilitarized Zone is a depressing place, a testament to humans' inability to make peace. There is one surprising upside: Keeping people away has allowed nature to thrive. Recently released images offer a 360-degree view of some of the hundreds of endangered species making a comeback in the DMZ, including white-naped cranes, mountain goats, musk deer, and golden eagles.

The simple melody in 'Auld Lang Syne' has led to the song’s repurposing

In addition to becoming a standard tune to ring in the new year, the song has been reworked as a Dutch soccer anthem, a Japanese standard, and the South Korean national anthem. A significant part of its widespread use is that it has no copyright limitations. It helps, too, that it's simple melody is easy for even the most amateur singers to tackle.

How Spotify creates niche genres

One of Spotify's most recognizable features is its playlists. The provider offers an endless stream of strangely titled mixes with names like "Hyperpop," "Phonk," and "Lorem," which suggest uniform genres and scenes despite featuring seemingly random assortments of artists and songs. This article unpacks why Spotify organizes its music in this way and how, unintentionally, the process erases organic movements that developed outside of the app.

Osamu Dazai's 'No Longer Human' found a new generation of readers, thanks to TikTok

The novel was published in 1948, a month after the writer's suicide, and went on to become a classic of Japanese literature. Decades later, an English translation gained popularity on TikTok, where younger readers praised the book for its handling of alienation. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

A Tiger economy typically describes a booming Southeast Asian country

The term “tiger economy” has been used over the last several decades to describe a developing country experiencing rapid economic growth, often due to developing export-oriented industries and/or financial markets. The term was originally applied to Southeast Asian economies, including South Korea’s, and has since been used to describe Ireland, the Baltics, and Dubai.

Honky-tonk features a rollicking stomp

Widely considered the first honky-tonk song, Ernest Tubb’s "Walking the Floor Over You" is a perfect example of the subgenre's upbeat percussion, barroom piano, and chippy lyricism. The song is a country music classic, being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and preserved in the Library of Congress.

Exploring Oskar Schlemmer's 'Triadic Ballet,' a Bauhaus-inspired performance piece

The "symphonic dance of threeness" brought together Bauhaus' varied artistic interests and offered a fable in which collectivism wins. This history and timeline of the work details its origins as well as its near-destruction at the hands of the Nazis, who considered it profane.

Listen to the evolution of 'Ground Theme'

Koji Kondo's "Ground Theme" is perhaps the most recognizable piece of music in all video games. As the Mario franchise expanded, the song remained, albeit with different arrangements and in different styles. You can browse every version of the song below. It's a fascinating decades-long evolution of a classic composition.

A lot of jazz relies on syncopation

The style is when a musician plays a rhythm on the opposite side of the beat. That means notes are played on the "upbeats," or the spaces between the main beats of a musical bar. The effect is music that can sound unpredictable, even if it's been carefully constructed.

Gutai was performance art’s Japanese predecessor

Works by the post-WWII Japanese artist collective Gutai are widely considered a precursor to Western performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. The word “Gutai” means “concrete” in Japanese, referring to the concrete ways the artists’ bodies were used to create their works. Gutai members like Kazuo Shiraga, who painted with his feet to express the movement of his process, are thought to have influenced later artists like Jackson Pollock.

Witness the birth of punk rock through the archives of an influential music magazine

Trouser Press magazine (originally Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press) was an influential publication that operated from 1974 to 1984. During that time, they ran cover stories on emerging acts like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and others, offering contemporary readers a window into how punk was understood as it evolved.

Nostalgia is a psychological coping mechanism that can help combat loneliness—but it's created from bias

Researchers have observed that though nostalgia can help counteract feelings of loneliness, our memories of the past are somewhat rose colored. Negative emotions seem to fade faster than positive ones, a phenomenon that they suggest may be a psychological coping mechanism so that memories don't hurt every time they're recalled. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

A guide to the romance genre's major tropes

This guide breaks down romance's most prominent tropes, or narrative patterns, used by romance writers and adored by their fans. After you learn about "friends to lovers," "marriage of convenience," and "forced proximity," you'll start to see your favorite romance reads in an entirely new light.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.