여러분 안녕하세요! 나는 알렉스입니다! My name is Alex, and welcome to my blog, Cherry Blossom Road. In this post, I’ll explain what I plan to do here and introduce myself a little bit. This will be both a welcome and an FAQ section. I’ll update it with additional information as that becomes necessary. Thank you for reading!
Frequently Asked Questions and General Information
Who are you?
I’m Alex, and I’m a college student from the United States. I don’t want to go into much more detail than that, just for general privacy reasons, but I’ll also add that I am not Korean, and do not speak Korean. I know a few words and maybe a phrase or two, and I can transliterate Hangul, but aside from that, I don’t have any skills in the Korean language. I speak English and Spanish, and I use he/him/his pronouns.
(Side Note: If you’re interested in Korean pop culture and don’t know how to transliterate Hangul, I strongly recommend you learn how to do that. Transliterating just means converting Hangul characters to other written languages. Essentially, it’s knowing that “안녕하세요” is equivalent, more or less, to “annyeonghaseyo”, even if you don’t know that that means “hello.” It’s really easy to pick up and makes it so much easier to find and engage with content. There are plenty of free guides scattered across the internet, and if this blog gets any sort of traction at all and people want links to those resources, I may post some here.)
What is the purpose of this blog?
Here, I plan to review and discuss Korean music, specifically K-pop and Trot. The latter is going to be my main focus, both because I love trot music and because I haven’t found many any English-language sites or resources which dedicate any significant amount of coverage or resources to trot music. I plan on making a post at some point exploring why that is the case. I do also love K-pop, as well as some Western pop, though I want to focus this blog on Korean music for the time being. I may try to keep up with current and new releases, but there’s also so much good music out there which is underappreciated within the K-pop fandom (to say nothing of any trot song which came out before “Love Battery”). I’ll make sure to keep up with tagging and categorizing any posts I publish to keep everything easy to find, or at least I’ll try.
How did you first become interested in K-pop and trot?
The first time I really encountered K-pop (outside of the height of the Gangnam Style meme craze) was when I was on vacation with my family and we stopped at a teppanyaki ice cream restaurant. Inside the restaurant, there was a television set to a channel of music videos (probably Korean MTV or something), and I listened to the song that was playing and decided I liked it. At the end of the video, the artist name and song title were displayed, and I made a mental note to look it up when I got home. That song was “Drama” by 9Muses, and I sort of fell down the K-pop rabbit hole from there. I haven’t gone to any concerts or bought any physical albums, but I’ve followed/been a fan of K-pop since early 2015.
As for when I encountered trot, I was on Youtube one day and turned on autoplay. At one point, it played a music video by an artist I hadn’t heard of named Hong Jinyoung for her song “Thumb Up”, and the instrumentation, arrangement, and singing style were interesting enough to grab my attention. While I wouldn’t call myself an expert or a scholar on either genre of music, I enjoy them both as a casual fan, and want to express that appreciation through a platform like this.
Why did you name your blog “Cherry Blossom Road”?
One of my (and Korea’s) favorite singers, Jang Yoon-Jeong, released a song in 2017 called “Cherry Blossom Road (벚꽃길)”. I first heard it on a random trot Spotify playlist and really enjoyed it, but for some reason, it’s since become a challenge to find on the internet. For some reason, Spotify is missing a huge amount of Jang Yoon-Jeong’s music (as well as a lot of trot/Korean artists in general), including Cherry Blossom Road, which was taken down for reasons I can only fathom. In addition, the music video only exists on Youtube as this fan-uploaded version with hard-coded Thai subtitles. While there are a few music show stages of Jang Yoon-Jeong performing this song, there’s not much, especially given how popular a singer she is. It also doesn’t seem like she performs this song much at concerts or public events.
Basically, my blog title is a tribute of sorts to an absolute gem of a song which, for some reason, seems to be relegated to status as a deep cut in the trot canon. I’ve embedded the Thai-subbed version of the music video below, and I plan on doing a review post of this song, which I’ll link here when it’s published.
I like your reviews, and I have a song, album, or artist I think you should check out. How can make a suggestion to you?
First, thank you for the compliment. Second, you can email me at cherryblossomroad95@gmail.com. If you can include a Youtube or Spotify link to the song, album, or artist you want me to look at, that would be helpful. Please don’t include anything as an attached file, since I won’t open it. If you’d like me to credit you, please include your name or a username, and if I write a review post for your submission, I’ll note that you are the one who suggested I review the subject of the post.
Cherry Blossom Road 