Suzanne's K-pop Academy

Dear fellow k-pop lovers,

Last Saturday we watched the movie '71: into the fire' in our K-Pop Academy class. Such a sad movie! But it's also really good. If you haven't seen it yet, seriously, go watch it!

Assignment

This week I picked the option C of the assignment sheet: write a letter to a k-pop star that is currently doing military service. We were given some options of who to write to, and I choose to write to Bi Rain, because I really admire him for his work ethics (and I also because I know that he speaks English, which comes in handy since my Korean is still very, very poor).

Research

My knowledge of the Korean military service (and the Korean war) is no where near enough to be able to understand what it’s like to be in Bi Rain's shoes. This worried me, because it makes it really hard to come up with something to write, let alone make it look sincere and heartfelt.

To overcome this problem I asked one of my Korean friends, who had already done military service, what he would have wanted me to write to him had I known him at that time.

My friend told me that would have wanted me to thank him for protecting Korea and call him ‘oppa’ a lot. He also told me that soldiers don’t have a lot of time to read their mail, so photos are a good alternative. And that, if I could, I should include drawings, because he liked receiving those from friends when he was in the army.

Creative content

Instead of just writing Rain a letter, I wanted to do a little bit more to show how much his fans miss him, support him, and appreciate his hard work. So I asked my friend if there were any products or items he would have wanted me to send to him, to which he answered that I could have send him warm clothing for the winter.

I thought ways to make the assignment more fun and cheerful for a while and I came up with the following idea: I was going to make Rain a care package containing a hat, a scarf, gloves, shortbread (just because it’s typically British), and what I would like to call a encouragement album.

The encouragement album basically consists of photos of me and fellow students of my university holding up cardboard signs with the contents of my letter on it (Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’- style and it has also been done in the film Love Actually, except I’m taking pictures instead of making a video).

Love Actually - Cardboard scene

Music Video 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' by Bob Dylan

These pictures I would put into a photo album, on every the page on the right (like a flip book). On every page on the left I would put a small drawing of an animal, an post-it with a Korean word written on it, and/or an encouragement quote (from Rain himself and other famous people) to hopefully cheer him up.

On the final page I put the hand-written letter itself. It says the same thing as what's on the cardboard signs (except that it mentions the shortbread), but I still wanted Rain to have a written version.

My theory behind this is that he is an celebrity and therefore probably gets a lot of packages and presents. I wouldn't be surprised that he gets so many that he can't keep them all, and has to throw most of it out after looking at it. But a written letter doesn't take up that much space, so I thought I should give him a one just in case he would like to keep some of my work without it taking up loads of space.

Here is the result: