Nothing about Korea resonated until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and met classmate Hyun Ae who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked. I'd been swapping mix CDs with people for years and gotten into bands and music as a result, but nothing compares to the impact and change K-pop brought. And it wasn't necessarily about that mix CD. Hyun Ae's CD may not have even been the start. I liked songs off that CD and most of it went into my iTunes collection, but it didn't make me a dedicated K-pop fan. It was just good music I was introduced to.

YouTube also started becoming big in 2006 and I credit YouTube for helping launch the second Hallyu wave, which otherwise might have been contained in South Korea without the international exposure YouTube brought. Trying to reconstruct my personal history of K-pop, I recall an early YouTube video of a karaoke competition variety show called Korean Madness catching my attention. Aside from those teenage high school students being hilarious and full of personality (Hyun Ae informed me later that the show was a competition and that those girls ultimately won), I ended up liking the song (the original is played at the end of the clip and, yes, I have it in my collection now) as well as the other songs they sang in the course of the competition. Those girls had good taste.

The next step was the Wonder Girls "Tell Me" dance phenomena. Wonder Girls debuted in 2007 and their dance for "Tell Me" went viral with high school students, flight attendants, military personal, traffic police, etc. etc. uploading themselves doing the Tell Me choreography. I watched a lot of those, starting with one high school student, and got into the song. Isolating the backing track, it's quite groovy and subtle, although I'm sure I didn't notice how cool it was right away.

Hyun Ae and I had fallen out of touch by the time I saw the video for Girls' Generation's (SNSD) Gee (2009) on MTV probably in 2010. That was when it took off. Initially, part of me was practically offended by what was on my TV screen, likening it to awful, superficial, garish, candy J-pop. What the hell is this crap? the snob in me sneered, reaching for the remote to change the channel, and I pointed the remote at the TV and . . . didn't. Not only did I stand there with the remote pointing at the TV for the rest of the song, afterwards I immediately went online to look them up.

So much of that video and song should have had me cringing. Even now I don't know what attracted me more to the video against what should have repulsed me. I should've considered it god awful and I wouldn't blame anyone clicking that link thinking it is god awful. But it's going to be a classic K-pop song if it isn't already and I agree with that. It wasn't pivotal only to me. SNSD had debuted in 2007 to much acclaim domestically in South Korea, but it was "Gee" that made them famous throughout Asia and led to a string of hits that made them the reigning queens of K-pop all through Asia.

Very soon after that, Invincible Youth started airing in Taiwan with two members of Girls' Generation (Sunny and Yuri) cast and I watched religiously even though it only had Chinese subtitles. The other cast members introduced me to other girl groups leading the second Hallyu wave (T-ara, 4minute, Brown Eyed Girls, Secret and Kara). K-pop became an obsession since 2010. No explanation except that it's a future life resonance. It seems I've determined that my next locale of rebirth will be South Korea and all this is an indication of it.