Crayon Pop captivates foreign media

The almost embarrassingly silly concept of the nation’s latest girl group craze Crayon Pop has managed to grab the attention of overseas broadcasters.

Journalists from the U.S.’ ABC News as well China’s Shanghai TV came to Korea on Thursday to spend the day with the five ladies of Crayon Pop since the quirky choreography to the group’s hit single “Bar Bar Bar” has begun to blow up virally, resulting in people asking whether it may follow in the footsteps of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and “Gentleman.”

“It is true that the international broadcasting companies will be following Crayon Pop for a day,” a representative of Crayon Pop’s agency Chrome Entertainment stated in news reports. “We are both surprised and happy that they want to do story about Crayon Pop.”

The choreography to “Bar Bar Bar,” known as the “Straight-Five Engine Dance,” has members Ellin, So Yul, Gum Mi, Cho-a and Way jumping up and down and side to side on the stage wearing motorcycle helmets mimicking parts of an engine cylinder. The single was released in June but made minimal impact on the local music scene until a parody video of its choreography was aired on a segment of SNL Korea earlier this month. The single then reappeared on the charts months after the initial release and is currently at the top of the Billboard K-pop Hot 100 chart for six weeks running after previously being uncharted.

The members of Crayon Pop are still relatively new to the scene with the group making its debut last year. Now, however, the group has gone from having some of the lowest digital sales of any rookie group in that year to becoming the talk of the town. As of Friday afternoon, the music video had been viewed more than 3.1 million times and landed the ladies an album licensing and partnership contract with Sony Music Entertainment Korea. The group also recently became the only Korean artist to be invited to perform at the 23rd Qingdao International Beer Festival.

However, it hasn’t been all bright lights and good news for the young women of Crayon Pop. Aside from the international headlines and music chart domination, the young members have been caught up in a string of controversies including accusations of plagiarism and political bashing.

Earlier this week reports circulated regarding netizens’ accusations of Crayon Pop stealing the group’s image concept from Japanese girl group Momoiro Clover Z, another five-member girl group which was shown to have similar costumes as well as a cutesy pop sound.

The girls have added to the controversies when a number of the members recently posted controversial comments online, which many perceived as mocking former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Although the members claimed that their comments were only intended to be cute and not political, the incident resulted in Crayon Pop being dropped from an online ad campaign.

By Julie Jackson (juliejackson@heraldcorp.com)