Vivian Yoon grew up in Los Angeles’ Koreatown during the 1990s and 2000s surrounded by K-pop. But for a long time, she considered herself a secret K-pop fan.
“I kept my love for K-pop hidden because it represented this side of me that made me ‘other,’” she said. “I just couldn’t figure out where Korean culture fit into the American identity I was aspiring to have, as opposed to Korean American.”
But Yoon has since embraced her love for the genre. She is the host “K-Pop Dreaming,” the new season of LAist Studio’s California Love podcast, where she looks at how K-pop became a huge global sensation and interweaves it with her own personal and family history.
Yoon joined KPBS Midday Edition on Thursday to talk about how she blended the phenomenon of K-pop with personal memoir.
