The Verge spent a solid twelve hours at K-Con, an event for K-Pop fans featuring musical guests, panel discussions on things like Korean music and fashion, a number of merchant booths, and over 10,000 ticket holders, according to MNet. The highlight of the night was a concert in the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater where a half-dozen acts performed many for the first time in the United States.
K-Pop, in case you havent been paying attention, is a particularly catchy and calculating strain of Korean popular music that somehow manages to simultaneously sound like just about every contemporary musical genre, a conflation of the various strains of electronic dance music mostly trance, electro, and dubstep arranged in conventional pop song structure. In addition to taking off in Asia in a big way, K-Pop has found some popularity in the United States, more as a subculture than as a bona fide phenomenon in the west.
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"K-Pop is not just a song or a genre, it's an entire culture," explained Martina. "You're really getting involved in a community of people. They all like the same band as you, and you all get to know the same thing, and it becomes a family of people. So that's why everyone's so passionate."
