{"id":426,"date":"2016-07-04T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T15:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=426"},"modified":"2026-07-17T13:50:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:50:28","slug":"soul-seoul-dreams-desi-k-pop-star-korean-music-psy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=426","title":{"rendered":"Soul to Seoul: The Dreams of a Desi K-pop Star"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span>hen the Korean Cultural Centre organised its first K-pop talent hunt in New Delhi in 2012, two handmade signboards placed on the small stage of the Jawaharlal Nehru\u00a0University auditorium announced the event. Among the handful of people who showed up, there was a young fangirl from Mumbai\u2019s Kandivali suburb. Nikita Harnami travelled all the way to Delhi after preparing her performance of \u201cLionheart\u201d in earnest for weeks. She had seen the video on YouTube a couple of hundred times, crooned in front of the mirror, memorised the Korean lyrics by rote before she boarded the train, with her father in tow. The sparse display that greeted her at JNU was far removed from the glitzy performances\u00a0which had\u00a0lured her into this world, but\u00a0Nikita refused to be fazed. She got on stage with a hammering heart and with a crowd made up of not more than a few other contestants and their families. Nikita performed the K-pop track \u201cLionheart\u201d, just as she\u2019d learnt from the YouTube video.\n\nHer journey as a desi K-pop aspirant had begun.\n<\/p>

***<\/p>\n\u2018\u2019Please, I\u2019m SO not like the other crazy fangirls,\u201d Nikita starts the conversation with a disclaimer. But something gives her away. It could be the tall boots, them funky leggings, that clingy stars-and-stripes tee. Or even the carefully drawn on cat eye and the carmine mouth. When the 22-year-old graphic designer walks into the crowded Mumbai mall and plops into a chair at a coffee shop, all around her, jaws drop.\n\nWhen the K-pop fever gripped Nikita six years ago, South Korea was a blip on the map for her. If you had asked her to name the country\u2019s currency she wouldn\u2019t have been able to tell you, but now Korea is all that\u2019s on her mind. During a late night YouTube binge in 2010, Nikita stumbled upon the band Super Junior and saw their video \u201cBonamana\u201d. She fell in love with everything in this hallyu world \u2013 the twee, overly bright, kitschy-cute world of K-pop. Everything was enthralling \u2013 the choreography, the music that was similar to Bollywood and the boys who were way cuter. She watched the video on repeat that night and by the morning Nikita had sold her soul to Seoul.\n\n\"Nikita1\"\n

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Nikita does not understand Korean but can sing all the hallyu chartbusters.<\/p>\n

Pratik Gupta\/ Arr\u00e9<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nNikita became a K-pop fangirl way before Psy, a spiffy, rotund man whipping an imaginary horse, who brought the K-pop revolution to India. \u201cGangnam Style\u201d, actually a jab at K-pop and its pastel palettes, animated animals, preppy high schoolers and hyper-stylised first love, exploded beyond its local bounds. India\u2019s been riding Psy\u2019s Gangnam wave<\/a> for about four years now, but Nikita, like a true early adopter, is dismissive of the artist that has made her passion mainstream.\n\nBut even before Nikita got her early-adopter certificate in 2010, there was a whole generation of Indians who\u2019d got there in the \u201990s. They all hailed from the Northeast.\n\nKevin Hrahsel grew up in Aizawl, flooded by South Korea\u2019s \u201cbiggest export\u201d. The 19-year-old with his floppy, bleached hair and slick moves is the embodiment of the South East Asian nation\u2019s obsession with hallyu.\n\nHe and his six-piece ensemble Frozen Crew, are prepping for a maiden trip to K-pop mecca \u2013 Seoul. The gang bagged a gold at the Korean Cultural Centre\u2019s contest in 2015 and performed with crews from around the world in the city. When N-Sonic, the first-ever Korean group to perform in India, came to Guwahati in January last year, Kevin was in the crowd, freaking out. This is living the dream; their shot at Korean pop stardom.\n\nNikita also got her shot at stardom in 2015. She was welcomed by a much bigger spectacle\u00a0at one of Delhi’s biggest auditoriums, when she\u00a0went back and won a bronze with her rendition of 2NE1\u2019s\u00a0\u201cCome Back Home\u201d.\u00a0Sponsors had jumped on the K-pop bandwagon by now and as Korean cutie Minwoo of ZE: A J handed her the trophy, a packed hall cheered her on. 2NE1 is now the altar that Nikita worships on and CL<\/a>, the fierce frontwoman of the Korean girl band 2NE1, is her goddess. That her waif-like idol with porcelain skin and rainbow hair looks nothing like her isn\u2019t a deterrent.\n\n