Giaae Kwon is the author of I’ll Love You Forever: Notes From a K-Pop Fan. In the essay collection, she
explores her personal history as a bbasooni (K-pop stan) alongside the evolution of the K-pop industry. In doing so, she uncovers the cultural and political forces that birthed the K-pop idol and paints a compassionate portrait of fandom — a much-needed counterweight to all the ink spilled about its harmful excesses.At Bustle Kwon tagged "five books that every bbasooni should read," including:
Excavations by Hannah MichellRead about another book on the list.
Excavations is a lovely novel to pair with Korea: A New History of South and North [by Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo]. A fictionalized account of the 1995 collapse of the Sampoong department store, it does a great job of synthesizing Korean history from the postwar through the demos by university students and factory workers that marked the 1960s to 1980s, and the novel brings us to the doorstep of K-pop. I was really impressed with how Michell compresses modern Korean history into a pretty slim, engaging novel without dumbing anything down.
--Marshal Zeringue
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