Kara Show Their Odd Girl Charms and Talk About Performing With Psy and Sexy Stage Costumes in "High Cut" Pictorial

On August, 30 a pictorial and interview featuring Kara members Seungyeon, Gyuri, Nicole, Hara, and Jiyoung who is making a comeback with provocative choreography and a sexy stage, in star style magazine “High Cut” has been publicized.

In this pictorial, the fresh-faced girls give off an air of autumn and femininity.  The concept of the pictorial was to show the girls’ odd girl charms running counter to their surprisingly sexy comeback image.  In one photograph,  Hara and Ji Young wear dresses but Hara wears a baseball cap and Ji Young wears running shoes.     Another photograph shows, Ji Young pairing a white mini-dress with sky-blue sneakers and a baseball cap with the brim turned up.

Excerpts from the interview were also released.

Seungyeon: “When I was little, when I watched TV, I thought when girls reached an age over 20 years old, they would become like Jeon Ji Hyeon [beautiful actress known for odd girl comedy “My Sassy Girl” and dreamy time-traveling romance “Il Mare“]. But, even when I look at myself, even though I am 25 years old, that sort of feeling seems very far.  I think because I still wear short pants and T-shirts or hoodies, but my friends wear skirts, blouses, handbags, and heels.  When I get into my late twenties or thirty, I wonder will it be weird.”

Gyuri: “Even though I cannot carelessly say Kara forever, I know it is when the five of us, are all together as Kara, we shine the most and receive love.  Just by knowing that, isn’t that enough?  I say this because there are many people who don’t know that.”

Nicole: “It is not that I am close, but I once drank tea with Nakatomo Yuto [Japanese footballer playing for Italian club Internazionale].  After coming back from Italy, [Nakamoto] came to Japan, it was the last part of his vacation, [Nakamoto] said that he was a fan of Kara.  He said he had even bought Kara’s album.  Later, through an acquaintance, we were told he wanted to come see our performance, so we gave him tickets.”

Hara: “Because I asked my senior Psy if I could appear on his stage just once, this is something that started, a writer said let’s just all go together on stage and it became a bigger thing. … In front of us, my senior Psy simply told us that we did a good job and acted cool and as if it was not a big deal, but they said that when he went back to the waiting room he was really happy.  They said he spent the whole day laughing.”

 Jiyoung: “Our stage costumes tend to be very strong [image wise], so, we were worried that our fans would think they were too short and ask couldn’t we cover up.”

Kara made their comeback on August 22 with the release of their music video for new single “Pandora” and showcase performance at the W Seoul Walkerhill Hotel.    But, Kara’s comeback has been plagued with various controversies: criticism over lingerie-esque comeback outfits, reports of unapologetically parking in handicapped spots, more criticism over comeback outfits plagiarizing Gucci’s 2008 S/S swimsuit, netizens’ anger over their silence on the Dokdo issue, and even Japan’s Foreign Affairs Secretary jumping into the fray by throwing away his favorite Kara CDs.  You can read more about Kara coming back to trouble on Soompi.

To preview the photographs, don’t forget to click through the gallery on Soompi!