Did You Know... K-Pop?

Welcome to our “Did You Know K-Pop” series, filled with interesting and random facts of K-Pop and Korean entertainment.

Sometimes interesting facts are mentioned in an article or interview, and are then never heard from again. Of course hardcore fans of artists and other K-celebs will have heard of these before, but they are still fun to mention, especially to those who are newer to the fandom.

Have a fun or interesting K-Pop fact you want to be heard? Send a message to rain@soompi.com, and we will check it out!

Expect more new facts to be posted regularly.

#1: What a coincidence! Before moving to Korea to become trainees and later debut as members of Girl’s Generation, Jessica lived in San Francisco while Tiffany was in Diamond Bar. This was first mentioned on an episode of “Win Win” in April 2010. The photo is from an interview we had with the two in late 2009.

#2: Be careful when using a number in a group name. You never know what’s going to happen.

#3: Their debut album “Play” was released on April 7, 2014, and they won M!Countdown the next week on April 17. Fellow YG artist Lee Hi previously held the record with 11 days, having released her debut single “1,2,3,4” on October 28 and winning on M!Countdown on November 8. Of course, both of these artists were well known before their debut due to appearing on the show K-pop Star.

Can you guess which boy group and girl group were the fastest to win a music program? Find out next page!

#4: CNBLUE released their debut mini album “Bluetory” on January 14, 2010 and won on the January 29 episode of Music Bank. Later that year, miss A released their debut mini album “Bad but Good” on July 1 and won for the first time on M!Countdown on July 22.

#5:  Idols L, M, N and V should be familiar to recent K-Pop fans.  Attack is a boy group that made their debut in 2012, and their rapper goes by the stage name A.

Project group S featured Kangta, Lee Ji Hoon and Shin Hye Sung and was only active in 2003

T is a former stage name for the rapper Yoon Mi Rae.  Female singer J is now more currently known as J.ae. Male solo singer K had a more active music career in Japan. ‘K’ was also used as the stage name of a “Dream High” character.

Y is also the ‘angel name’ of AOA‘s Youkyung.

#6: This one does get mentioned a lot, but is still very interesting to know. They were all featured in an MTV pre-debut show “Diary of Five Girls” (You can find some subtitled episodes on YouTube.)

The girls still keep in contact and are supportive of each others’ promotions. G.NA would have been the leader and Hyosung the maknae (youngest). Jiwon was a pre-debut T-ara member before debuting with SPICA in 2012.

While we will never know how successful this group could have been, it is nice that they all were able to eventually debut.

#7 : This random fact is brought to you by our 2014 K-Pop Infographic from earlier this year.

Jungah was born on August 2, 1983, while Kaeun was born on August 20, 1994. The age gap actually used to be large as Kahi, the former leader of the group, was born on December 25, 1980.

2NE1 has the second largest age gap, with 9 years, 9 months and 25 days in between the oldest and youngest members.

#8: DBSK (also known as TVXQ) performed an a capella version of “Oh Holy Night” with BoA and also their debut track “Hug.”

Check out the performance here.

#9: Decided to go with something random for today. This is more proof that your college major won’t necessarily relate to your future career.

JYP debuted in a group in 1992, and then had his solo debut in 1994. He graduated in 1996.

Yonsei University is one of the most prestigious universities in the country, alongside Seoul National University and Korea University.

#10: Most groups usually win 1-2 weeks after they make their comeback stage. For Crayon Pop, it took a few weeks for the song’s popularity to grow and become a viral hit.

Their “Bar Bar Bar” single album was released on June 20.

#11.  Back then, SM Entertainment wasn’t a big company yet, and not as established in their training program. G-Dragon would go there to practice dancing every month or so.

He talked about how he joined SM Entertainment in an interview here. He left SM Entertainment due to being unsure about what he wanted to do. G-Dragon became interested in rapping after discovering Wu Tang Clan, and then joined an academy to learn freestyle rapping. There, he became friends with PeopleCrew. In 2001, he participated in Korea’s HipHopFlex album. At 13, he was the youngest rapper on the album. Check out the song here.

He was later found by Sean of the hip-hop duo Jinusean, and was recommended to Yang Hyun Suk to join YG Entertainment.

The pictures are used are G-Dragon, when he was in middle/high school.

#12. Girls’ Generation also won the “Half Year” and “End of Year” chart wins of the show, making it a actual total of 11 wins. “Gangnam Style” was released in July, so it only won the “End of Year” chart, giving it a total of 17 Music Bank wins.

The nine wins for “Gee” were in consecutive weeks, while “Gangnam Style” had 10 consecutive weeks of wins. It is also interesting to note that “Gangnam Style”‘s first win was in August and had its last win in January 2013.

Both M!Countdown and Inkigayo remove a song from their chart once it reaches three wins.

More K-Pop facts coming soon!