From LAist Studios, K-Pop Dreaming is a new podcast about the rise and history of K-pop in the United States, as told from the point-of-view of the Korean diaspora in Los Angeles.
Host Vivian Yoon takes listeners on a journey from K-pop’s origins in Korean trot music and American presence in post-war South Korea to the 1992 LA Uprising and the booming global popularity of K-pop in the present day, all juxtaposed against Yoon’s own coming of age as a second generation immigrant in Los Angeles, struggling to fit in and come to terms with her own identity.
K-Pop Dreaming is the second season of the series California Love with new episodes being found in that feed. The first season was a coming-of-age story in Compton that wove together memoir, pop culture, and oral history. This new season continues in the same intimate tone, but this time, we are centered in Los Angeles’s Koreatown.
