The Dark Side of Fame, or how Kpop’s dreaded “Black Ocean” inspired the plot of The Band
There’s a wild statistic out there that says upwards of a quarter of millennials would quit their job tomorrow in order to become famous. Once upon a time, being doctors and lawyers were considered the “dream jobs”; these days, fame itself routinely beats out those careers for desirability[1].
Despite being a millennial myself, I find these numbers baffling. I—along with at least one person I saw on Tiktok whose name escapes me—always thought that the trick to life was to be as successful as possible without being recognizable while walking down the street. Maybe it’s my general aversion to hats that makes me cringe at the idea of not being able to walk outside without donning a baseball cap or some other disguise. Maybe it’s my introversion telling me that being constantly accosted by strangers is a horror I would wish upon nobody. It’s probably why I’ve always wanted to be an author and never an actress or musician or influencer—and not just because all my talents huddle around the former and not in the latter. Fame strikes me as a liability that comes with certain careers and not the entire point, but apparently that makes me a minority (in more ways than one).
Given these facts, the story of Kpop’s “black oceans”—when it came upon my radar a few years ago, right around the same time I discovered that South Korea was making some of the best music on the planet—stood out as the kind of horror that kept me up at night, mostly because it really happened to those lucky (unlucky) enough to find themselves in the spotlight.
The first documented instance of a “black ocean” involved a Kpop group named Girls’ Generation and a sea of light sticks at a concert. Shortly after their debut as a brand new nine-member girl group from one of Korea’s Big Three entertainment companies (in this case, SM Entertainment), they were invited to perform at Dream Concert, an annual showcase featuring the most popular Kpop idols. Apparently, these members had been “caught” flirting with boy bands leading up to their appearance. They made commercials and did photoshoots together, as idols are known to do; they seemed to be friends with some of these guys who were at the same agency.
For context, keep in mind that South Korea don’t share the same sexual mores as their western counterparts—Kdramas and movies rarely have sex scenes, or even tons of kissing—so the kind of mildly suggestive behaviors that American audiences wouldn’t have batted an eye at nevertheless rankled enough of their Korean fans that it inspired the first “black ocean.” Normally during Kpop concerts, not only do fans come with color-coded light sticks whose design and hue correspond with their favorite band—white spherical ARMY Bombs for BTS, black and pink Hammer Bongs for BlackPink, cylindrical chameleon Eri Bongs for EXO, neon lollipop Candy Bongs for TWICE, etc—but they turn these on during performances as a form of highly-visible cheering. But in the middle of this particular concert, during Girls’ Generation’s ten-minute-long performance, just about everyone in the audience turned off their light sticks. The members ended up performing to a largelly silent and dark stadium. In the absence of these lighted handheld electronic devices, it looked like a giant empty space.
Part of me—my primordial midbrain, where the fear center that is my limbic system resides—can’t imagine how these nine girls felt for the ten longest minutes of their life. The psychologist in me wonders if this is the kind of event sufficient to induce post traumatic stress disorder.
The other part of me—the slow, methodical, logical side that is my prefrontal cortex—can’t get over the logistics. The Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul where the Dream Concert took place seats 69,950. How that many people collectively got together and coordinated the simultaneous turning off of all their lighted electronic devices over a single music group’s perceived social sin is beyond me. (I can’t even get a dozen of my closest friends to agree upon a time for brunch). Maybe the world of Kpop and its fans is just that coordinated in a way that is near impossible for Americans used to our idiosyncratic and sloppy individualism to fathom. Maybe this was the opposite of “flash mob” except instead of choreographed dancing among strangers, it was collective punishment doled out in a prolonged silent treatment.
Whatever it was, this very real black ocean inspired the plot of my novel, The Band, about a fictional Kpop group by that same name. In it, a controversial solo song by the oldest and most visually-appealing member of the five-member boy band leads to a public backlash that leads our protagonist into hiding at a McMansion of an American therapist he meets at the grocery store. But even in his absence, the wrath of public opinion burns bright—enough to prompt an American audience during a live TV performance to enact their own version of the “black ocean.”
Only recently did I discover that black oceans are more common than I originally thought. I assumed what happened to Girls’ Generation was a one-off. Turns out, it has happened multiple times, sometimes to the most beloved and popular Kpop groups in existence—including SEVENTEEN and once upon a time, even BTS. Ironically, that gives me hope. If the most famous and well-recognized Korean musical group in recent history—Bangtansonyeodan—can survive not one, but two black oceans in their lifetime and move on to dominate not just the world of Kpop, but pop music the globe over, then that means terrible things can be mere punctuation in the chapters of our lives. The real ending—and the only one that matters—is (in the words of BTS themselves) “yet to come.”
[1] See Henderson (2017). “One in four millennials would quit their job to be famous.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2017/01/24/one-in-four-millennials-would-quit-their-job-to-be-famous/?sh=2002b072c438