um lol. the title's pretty self explanatory.

i was really surprised to see so many nonkoreans (not that it's a bad thing) into korean music. i've honestly never met a person who wasn't korean, listening to korean music. i think it'd be really cool if people in my area did that lol XD
and i was really surprised when i saw that most of the soompi users aren't even korean when this is a kpop forum.
i'm korean myself, and i prefer listening to korean/american music because i can understand it.

so, if you're not korean, how'd you get interested in korean music?
and if you're not asian, how'd you get interested in asian music?

well, i got a penpal through this program at school, who happened to be from south korea.
and she recommended to me some music and dramas, so i checked them out.
and then i was like, "whoa! korean stuff is awesome!!" XD
plus, there are a lot of koreans at my boarding school (who live in seoul),
so yeah... i kind of got interested through my friends.^^

Korean dramas -> Love Letter -> Lee Dong Hae -> Super Junior Facebook Group -> Soompi -> DBSK
And everything else, I just began listening to other artists as I cruised around Soompi for a little bit.

1TYM's beats reeled me in.
My bestfriend introduced me to them, and I just got hooked.
Then came the kdrama, more kpop, etc.
And now, my neighbor is korean. He introduces me to new artist, actors, actresses, and keeps me updated on stuff.
I like it

I saw a part of SuJu Fullhouse & fell in love.

a friend of mine mentioned boa and i did some research on her...5 years ago...
so while i was looking for boa media...i found boafans.com? i think and then they went down for awhile and found my way to soompi

and then started listening to other artists
i'm not much into boa anymore, but she did spark my interest in this genre of music

Back in the day when I used to have a xanga (it's all about myspace and facebookie now), alot of my online friends were asian and had asian music on their pages. I think the first Korean song--actually the first asian song--I heard was by BoA. My addiction eventually branched out into Korean dramas and movies :x

ooh it's so interesting to see how people got into korean music XD
i try doing that with even my korean friends, and they show now interest at all ._.

Big Bang was recommended to me for workout music and then I got hooked.

My dad borrowed a Korean drama from one of his friends and I watched it and loved the music so I got the OST... and that's how my love for Korean music started.

although i am korean, i'll answer anyway to enlighten everyone
i was exposed to kpop through beautiful eugene noona

i think i discovered dbsk for the first time & then loved them..and went on soompi and branched out. i love asian stuff ! =D

I have a friend who is obsessed with Super Junior. Two years ago, she changed the lyrics to some random song for one of our assignments. I had never heard it before but I really liked it. Assuming that it was a Super Junior song, I downloaded Miracle on Limewire. Turns out that the song wasn't even by Super Junior. I never found out what that song was.

big bang inspired me to get into the kpop world back in 2006

I've already loved Japanese stuff since like 5th grade. But I met my best friend later who was obsessed with Asian dramas and DBSK. She made me a drama lover, but i wasn't so much into Korean stuff at the time. Then she made me join soompi xP, and i saw someone's Big Bang signature picture. I was like "who's that?" and she said "oh that's just big bang." Then i went search happy and am now a Big Bang fanatic. This opened me up to other amazing artists like DBSK, Gummy, Epik High, and SuJu.

I'm not Korean/Asian & my story of how i got into Korean music is kinda complicated....but I'll try to explain as best as i can.

(I'm not too sure how it started in the very beginning, but this is what i suspect happened lol)
In primary school we had to learn Japanese for 7 & half years! its was heaps cool! I really enjoyed the lessons, it was always so interesting & fun(at least to me it was keke) & I loved making origami^^.

Um yeah...so then i guess i kind of had an interest in asian culture, but nothing really started till there was that
tsunami in Phuket & they showed that MTV Asia aid global benefit in Bangkok concert. It was the first(and last T_T) time i had ever seen/heard asian artists performing on Australian TV. Sadly i had forgotten it was on & only got to see the last few people perform (which made it so i didn't see Rain/Bi's performance)...However i did get to see Jay Chou! He was so good! The very next day i looked him up on the internet & immediately got hooked to listening to his music .

After a while i became curious of what Japanese music was like...so i found a website that had their own radio that played
all japanese music, which led me to being a big fan of singers like Gackt, Arashi, KAT-TUN, Utada Hikaru, L'Arc en ciel, W-inds
& Rag Fair etc. Then one day while looking at Gackt stuff on a forum, I saw a photo of Taebin & thought he was quite hot lol....uhh so then i found some of his music & loved it! And through Taebin i soon found 1TYM & Se7en...which then some how led to Dong Bang shin Gi! & every other korean singer/group in the world haha^^. And in the end i turned into a crazy DBSG fan kekeke.
The End.


(geez that was long)

Edit: Oh! & since i started looking for Taebin videos when i discovered him...that made me find X-man, love letter, kdramas & singers that were on those shows.

Well, for me, I've always liked Jpop music ever since I was really really young (probably since grade 3/4? Yea, really young ^__^) cuz my brother always listened to it, so I kinda just got hooked on it too.
I got interested in kpop music when my friend discovered DBSK and told me to listen to 'Rising Sun'. =]
Me, being too much of a jpop fan at the time, didn't bother to listen to it... until one day I happened to find myself watching the Rising Sun music video and falling in love with it! hahah
So I became a hardcore DBSK fan >=] which eventually led to me finding out about soompi
where I discovered other kpop artists (BIG BANG!! <3) and other related kpop stuff (game shows -Love Letter- & -XMan-) haha
so pretty much from there I've become really into korean music/entertainment XD

At first, I didn't like Kpop or anything Korean. Why? Because I wasn't interested, I thought it was lame, and the fact that EVERYONE during grade school was totally obsessed with KPOP, it just didn't interest me.

So, during college, a friend that used to really be into kpop FINALLY, got me to listen to a korean song. (Honestly, I ONLY gave kpop a chance because of my favorite idol, a Thai singer, was a huge fan of SE7EN) I'm still not entirely into kpop, nor am I crazy obsessed with it, but I do like Super Junior, Epik High, and just a few other artists. I like music that I don't understand, I guess because it just has this nice ring to it..

Also, the game shows are hilarious! When I started to look up se7en, SUJU..that led to rain, 1tym..taebin..etc etc...and they appeared on game shows such as XMan, love letter, star king, etc..and others were on there..Tim, brian joo, tablo, yeh all of them..haha and that's how it began..yehhh..

I'm not Korean, but I love the music. For some reason it's really different and I like the styles, plus the male artists are hot and dorky. Anyways, to me, Korean music just seem to lured in people and keep those connected. Well that's my opinion. (^__^)

a non-korean friend sent me se7en and taebin's songs through email, she just likes asian stuff in general
so yea, she sent me songs, and then one artist led to another to another to another, and i was bait

it alllllllllllll began with
FULL HOUSE
daaamn, that was such a great drama!
Bi/Rain ..

I'm a person who has nothing against different types of music. If I like it, I like it.
I was soo into jpop and a jpop fan like me introduced me to DBSK during their hi yah yah days and she sent me their songs.
I fell in love with their music, even though I didn't understand.

And well I really got into Kpop and such after my mom rented my name is kim sam soon because she was recommended to rent it.
And we started watching more and more dramas and I guess I decided to listen to kpop while at it and I got hooked=]

i m non korean and i don't have any korean frens

but i got into korean music through my sis....the first boyband i ever saw was shinwa
my sis and i watched them in arriang when they took part in the dance battle...i was attracted to them coz of their dance...
and then few years later.....my sis introduce me to DBSK...they were the first boyband i listened to (music)....i was in luv with Jaejoong rite at tht moment...i wanted to know more abt them.....the first video...i watch was My Destiny........
after tht i started watching k-drama.... the first drama i watched was "autumn tale".....i luved SHK...a lot...
then i watched "full house" and tht was the best K-drama i've ever seen.......i can't even count how many times..i have watched it....till today......

i got addicated...
now i am upto date with all the DBSK info. and the drama....but recently i haven't found any intersting drama to watch...so bored to death....

i never thought i would get into korean music.....
now i listened to korean, japanese, bollywood, english, spanish, and nepali....tht like 6 different countires..hehe....
and even though i haven't met any korean frens....all of them are asian but not korean....

korean ppl....seems to be hard to be frens with.....i don't know but thts how i feel.......

i listen to DBSK, se7en, rain, Suju, Turbo, and Drama OST.

but it was DBSK..who made me stay back........

ever since i got inot Korean Music...i get really excited when i meet korean ppl or someone who can speak korean.....but all the korean ppl..i have met hasn't been tht pleasant...sooo for me...........rite at the moment.......i would say...tht
i like korean music and drama
i like korean artist
but normal korean ppl...hmmm...haven't met any good ones....

by the way...when i meet ordinary koreans..i don't cling to them..or ask them to speak or sing in korean......i just ask question..like...how is life in korea and are they into korean music...n stuff...but oh well they don't want to talk....
for them....asian only consists of chinese, korean and japanese ppl.......Lord bless them...

i'm not asian, but a few years ago, i found out about utada hikaru, since i bought the kingdom hearts game. i loved "simple and clean". so i searched that online, and i also found her japanese songs from her DEEP RIVER album. so i really enjoyed it. after that, i bought the final fantasy X-2 game. i liked the english version of "real Emotion", so i then discovered the japanese version, sung by Koda Kumi. then i looked into her music too. i got really into jpop since the fall of 2005, and my main artist bck then was only koda kumi, since i loved her songs the most. but now i have waay too many artists, lol.

A friend of mine from school was a huge Ayumi Hamasaki fan so he sent me some of her songs and it all went from there really.

my cousin and i started watching the AZN channel as a joke cause we saw a drama on (it turned out to be winter's sonata) and we ended up watching it for 7 hours. haha. the whole time i saw previews for My name is kim sam soon. so i found that online and watched it.
that started it all. i went on wikipedia and looked up like korean culture of something and found kpop.
i first got into Rain cause that was the first person i had heard of. then the obsession started to grow. haha.
i wish one friend like kpop or kdramas so i could have someone to talk about them. but no luck. all alone in my love for it...
all the artists are sooo much cuter than ones in american. and i love all their different personalities. <3

A few years ago whilst I was holidaying in Cambodia (my nationailty), I was watching TV and a music video popped up the song sounded good, so I wrote down the singers name and song.
When I got back home, I googled the song and singer and downloaded his album and such (the singer was Wheesung by the way). After that I found out about SEVEN, SHINHWA and all the YG Family artists.

well the reason why i got into Korean music even though im not Korean (I'm Chinese by the way) because of BoA and TVXQ

ehehe it all started out with a friend then it came to listening to DBSK.
and im still inlove with their music and them <3

I'm Asian but not Korean, but since I was small my family were always watching Korean drama, or the TV will have Korean drama at 12:00 noon, it was time when we finish lunch so we always gather up and watch haha,,,,wow over 10 years already, but I'm not really into music until Super Junior came to my life....2 years ago. I've been really enjoy korean music, and since i live in korea town and all of my friends are korean, every where is korean music haha

I was on wikipedia and looked at Korean entertainment and saw BoA. So then I clicked SM Entertainment. Then my fandoms began.

Super long, sorry haha

Hmm well i'm caucasian and I used to live in a crazy small town with like.. barely any asian people in it. So i'd never been introduced to any music other than english music before. So the day after christmas [boxing day] I bought this one american band I liked's cd, and it came with an extra bonus dvd of music videos. So I was watching the dvd and I kept looking back at the list on the dvd of the band names and song titles because i'd only heard of two of the bands before. So I was expecting this one song to come up that i knew [cause the case said it was next], and all the sudden this other band came up! They started singing, and it was really cool sounding to me, but then I was like "Wait... this isn't English? o__O" and i had no idea what language it was in haha. Plus the music video kind of scared me a bit, so I was like "gah... no more please." and turned it off.

Anyways a few days later I wanted to show my sister the "creepy music video", so I went on youtube and looked up the band... and then my sister left to talk to my dad but I continued to listen to the video.. and the song was actually really catchy even though I had no idea what they were saying. So I looked at the side description and it said "Dir en grey- The Final .... cool jrock band!" or something like that. So I looked up more songs by them, and I totally fell in love. So by listening to them, I started to check out more and more japanese rock bands and japanese rock singers. And then one day I came across a drama I thought was japanese, but then turned out to be korean. And I really liked it, but I still hadn't listened to any korean music. So one day I made this friend off the internet off of this Dir en grey forum, and she told me to check out some DBSK music and I did and then.. *loves* aha. So now i'm pretty much in love with all types of music- Korean, Japanese, Chinese [Mandarin&Cantonese], Thai, Viet, German, French, Tamil, etcetc ^^

Ohman. Sorry haha, this was so long >__<

My friends introduced them to me at first and I wasn't very interested until I started hanging out with a group of Koreans and they forced me to watch some dramas and listen to some music.

Honestly, i was never really into nor liked Japanese or Korean stuff when i was young. However, back in 2006, my friend who was totally addicted to Kdramas and Japanese songs influenced everyone in my group to listen to them. I gave them a try and i think BoA's Milky Way was the first Japanese song i ever listened to. I guess the songs were 'alright' but i still wasn't too fond of them. That was when Shinhwa came in. After i listened to their 8th jib main track, Once in a Lifetime, i became totally addicted to them. From there, i was opened to other Korean and Japanese singers and yeah... the rest is history.

Channel surfing,I found KBS 'Music Bank' one day...

I loved the music so much that I started learning korean.

Then I got a few penpals who introduced me to korean food and comics,

then I got addicted to dramas and on and on....

It's a part of how I grew up since I was so young at the time...

i got into kpop two years back because of a music competition whereby the groups are able to choose which songs they like to perform, and yeah, out of so many groups, there is a particular group chooses dbsk's songs. so yeah, i decided to check it out and got to like them after that... haha

I forgot how but I just started listening to Se7en and then got addicted to the Se7en + Taebin couple thing hahas. Then basically YG brought me into the kpop scene.

ok first off I am 28 and I have been listening to kpop since I was 18. dang I'm old j/k . but I was flipping through the tv channels one day and I saw a m/v that looked cool and I liked the song. it was uhm jung hwa's molla m/v.

I am not korean nor asian. but I have always liked jpop and kpop. I listen to more kpop than anything and this includes american music. don't know I just like kpop more lol. but that's how I got into korean music. just flipping through the tv one day and I have been a fan ever since.

i was watching the international channel and bi's mv came on and i got hooked. dbsk and se7en's mv came on after and i fell in love.

It all started with Korean dramas. I got hooked and I started to notice the soundtrack more which eventually got me listening to other Korean music as well.

kpop ≠ pop that koreans listen to
kpop = pop that is made by korean artists

many chinese/japanese/thai/malaysian/laotian/singapore/vietnamese/cambodian people listen to this music. we each listen to music from other countries. i listen to music from many countries including japan, korean, chinese and thai.

all my asian friends aren't korean or japanese but they listen to a lot of kpop/jpop/jrock

well my sistter was really into it.. before even watching korean dramas! so it was round about 2002 .. she was interested in k-pop .. n we both never watch k-dramas! she started to buy their cd's from ebay! .. i wasnt so into it..

until i heard the song 'kiss-because im a girl' .. i started to like k-pop.. i knew it sounded good..

also there was that song day by day by AS ONE .... SES... they were quite popular back then! ..

but it wasnt until watching k-dramas i became a fan! .. so it was after watching 'jewel in the palace' i started to have more interest in it! .. n also stairway to heaven 'bo go ship da' ...

FORGOT to mention.. Boa!!!! .. she also played a part in my k-music journey! I recognise her as being soooo pretty, young n talented!

anime (inuyasha) --> boa's japanese songs --> boa's korean songs --> korean music in general

so it started with boa =)

from the information you gave i think it started with inuyasha O_o

My non asian friend got into it because of me. =].

I'm not Korean. I first got interested in Kpop when I was introduced to ShinHwa/Fly to the Sky.
I guess everything started from there on^^.

My best friend (she is Cantonese) and we
were looking at Asain Stars and found
Edison Chen and I thought he was cute.
So I started listening to his music and
it went on from there.

i am asian, but not korean.
i got into this because of my korean friends,
and i already watched a few taiwanese/jdramas
from there i got into korean dramas, then i watched some game shows
where i was interested in the celebrity guests (like dbsk!)
and so i researched, and became addicted (:
i also have some nonblood-related family members who are korean too !
i always ask them, "how do you say __ in korean?"
so it's funnnn (:

Okay here goes my story.....

When I was in highschool I met my friend Shelly. Her Uncle Jimmy had been in the navy and married a korean lady, Auntie Sonmi while he was overseas. They had Shelly's cousin Sumi while they were living in japan. I met Sumi at Shelly's 16th birthday party and got my first taste of Kpop by listening to "Candy" by H.o.T

After that day, when Sumi got home, she made Shelly a set of three mix tapes. They had H.o.T's first album, songs from Seo Tai Ji, Untitle, DJ. D.o.C, the original line up of Young Turks Club (with the girl Jinah who tried to start rumors about her and HeeJun back in the day) and Turbo's first two albums I believe, cause I remember Twist King on there. Shelly made me a set of the tapes and I was hooked. Because at the time, all the music that was on the radio where I lived was gangsta rap, like NWA, and the like. It was a whole buncha swearing and topics like violence against black people with cops and such that, being a white girl being raised by my grandparents, I didn't know anything about. But the korean music, while it was a language I didn't understand, the music was happy sounding, the beats were cool, and yes I admit the guys were hot. xD

About 3 months after that, when I'd nearly wore the tapes out, Shelly was going home on the bus, and she saw a video store. So the next day, we had play practice, and while waiting we walked down to check it out. It turned out to be a video store called Jin Video, and it rented out korean dramas and movies, and also had cd's for sale in a glass case by the register. Well needless to say, Shelly and I were pretty happy. By this time though, H.o.T's Wolf and Sheep had come out, and I bought Sechs Kies 1 and 2. From then on, Jin Video, and the Thai resturant around the corner from it, became Shelly and I's weekend run for the next 4 years, long after high school.
Then I began learning korean. I'm still in the process now cause there's still alot that I don't know, but I'm getting the general idea. I used to squeal in rapture when I heard a word a knew. haha.
For the next... I'd say 2 years I would get random pop ups on AOL (back when I used it) with people that thought I was korean cause I had korean music in my AOL profile. And when they would come up with random stuff in korean and I'd tell them I was white.. I'd get one of two reactions. I'd get, "Wow that's cool you're into another culture, how'd you find out about it?" or I'd get "WTF are you listening to MY music for, you're not korean you should listen to your white people music you cracker." -___-;; Needless to say I've had more then my share of people being predjudice against me because i'm white. But I've gotten used to it, and it takes alot to hurt my feelings now a days. I started listening to it in 1997. I was 15 going on 16 then, I'm 26 about to be 27 now... and they say it was a phase HAHA! ;p

So yeah that's my story....

I was accidentaly watching Pops in Seoul on TV Arirang and have seen Super Junior...and i get hooked even though i´ve never liked pop from anywhere before...weird,but maybe fate:D