40-something K-pop’s ‘auntie’ fans stand proud

Lee Un-Young poses with her collection of K-pop memorabilia. Ed Jones / AFP photo

They don’t fit the normal fan profile, but South Korea’s 40-something K-pop “aunties” are every bit as obsessed with their idols as their teenage counterparts.

Posters and photos of one of K-pop’s best-known boy bands, Big Bang, adorn every wall of Lee Un-young’s apartment in Seoul – a live-in shrine to a decade-long devotion.

The fact that she is old enough to be the mother of any one of the band’s five-member line-up doesn’t bother the 46-year-old housewife at all.

“There are a lot of auntie fans in their 40s like me, who started following Big Bang when they were in their 30s,” said Lee, who has a particular soft spot for the group’s leader, G-Dragon, who has carved out a successful solo career on the side.

Lee admitted to “feeling shy” when she first started going to Big Bang concerts and other events when she was already a good 20 years older than most of the teenage girls around her.

“But then I slowly found some other fans who were around my age and we immediately clicked with each other,” she said.

“These days, five of us get together once a month and all of our conversations revolve around Big Bang and G-Dragon.”

Lee’s husband Park Tae-kyun is supportive and says he admires his wife’s commitment, although he could do without the posters that cover even the windows of their apartment.

“Even in summer, we don’t get any sunlight,” he complained.

The K-pop phenomenon has its roots in the 1992 debut of Seo Taiji and Boys, a trio of hip-hop singer/rappers. The group’s fusion of Western pop music with Korean lyrics struck an immediate chord with a generation that was coming of age in a newly affluent, newly democratic South Korea.

They were followed by the first wave of “idol groups” such as H. O. T, who spawned devoted and intensely competitive fan bases and became models for the boy and girl bands who would take the K-pop trend global over the next decade.

The idol band formula has evolved but its core image remains the same – young, attractive bands, with a carefully honed fashion sense and meticulously choreographed dance moves.

The obsessive nature of their fan bases can be extreme, ­especially the so-called “sasaeng” or “stalker” fans – mostly 13 to 17- year-old girls who have been known to break into their idols’ homes.

Although the overwhelming majority of K-pop followers are either teenagers or in their early 20s, Baek Sung-hee, a housewife in her mid-40s, sees nothing odd in her passion for the music.

“To me, age is just a number, nothing more,” Baek said.

“And anyway, I know some K-pop fans in their 50s and 60s, so I’m a younger sister compared to them,” she added.

Baek and her friend Park Si-woo, 45, are both huge fans of the group Super Junior-M and one of its members in particular.

Henry Lau isn’t even Korean, but he speaks the language fluently, and Baek and Park think the 25-year-old Chinese-Canadian singer is inspirational.

Park was going through a personal crisis when she first heard Lau sing the title track from his 2013 debut mini-album Trap.

“I was very drawn to the song, It just made me want to become free and leave everything behind,” she said.

So drawn, to him, in fact, that she opened a snack bar in Seoul called “Cafe Henry”, which sells “Henry burgers” with various fillings.

Like Baek, Park said she knew a number of committed K-pop fans in their 60s who feel awkward about their musical ­passion.

“Some of them have told me they’re just too embarrassed to admit they are fans,” she said

Younger fans actually seem quite accepting of the “aunties” – known as “imos” – and treat them with more admiration than scorn.

Na So-young, a 22-year-old student, says the older women even turn out for airport events, when hardcore fans throng departure gates to see their favourite band off on tour.

“Sometimes we miss breakfast because we head out to the ­airport in the early morning,” Na said. “Auntie fans bring lunch boxes and hand them out to everybody. It’s like a family.”

A less wholesome image is ­attached to the aunties’ male counterparts – “samchon” or “uncle” fans – middle-aged men devoted to following K-pop’s sometimes highly sexualised girl bands.