Radiolab - K-poparazzi

Episode Date: February 24, 2016

In the U.S., paparazzi are pretty much synonymous with invasion of privacy. But today we travel to a place where the prying press create something more like a prison break.  K-pop is a global juggernaut - with billions in sales and millions of fans hanging on every note, watching K-pop idols synchronize and strut. And that fame rests on a fantasy, K-pop stars have to be chaste and pure, but also … available. Until recently, Korean music agencies and K-pop fans held their pop stars to a strict set of rules designed to keep that fantasy alive. That is, until Dispatch showed up. Taking a cue from American and British paparazzi, a group of South Korean reporters started hiding in their cars and snapping photos of stars on their secret dates. The first-ever paparazzi photos turned the world of K-pop upside down and introduced sort of a puzzle … how much do you want to know about the people you idolize, and when is enough enough? Produced by Matthew Kielty and Alexandra Young. Reported by Alexandra Young with Brenna Farrell. Special Thanks to Dispatch, Haeryun Kang, Joseph Kim, Charlie Cho, Hyena, Crayon Pop, Jeremy Bloom, The Kirukkiruk Guesthouse, Choi Baekseol, Jiin Choi, David Bevan, and The One Shots.  And if, like us, this story leaves you with an insatiable desire to listen to K-pop here is a starter list of our recommendations: 

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. See? See?

Are you surprised that this is so popular? Am I surprised? You know what I'm surprised about? I'm surprised that this morning I was walking to the subway and I was like, man, I want to listen to my K-pop playlist. I guess I'm a little. I'm surprised at that myself. Just take a note, Robert. Fantastic.

And I did listen to it, and it was amazing. And I, it's just, it's undeniable. Okay, I'm Chadabumrod. I'm Robert Crillwidge. This is Radio Lab. And they? Oh, sorry. No, no, you go.

No, no, please. Today, a story from a reporter, Alex Young. Hi. Hi. We just to set it up. This story for us connects to one. we did a few podcasts ago about Gary Hart and the moment when how we covered politics changed. This story is about a similar change that's happening right now, right in front of our eyes, in South Korea.

So we're going to travel a few thousand miles. Yeah. And this one, all the usual dynamics you would expect in this kind of story get totally flipped. It's not about politics at this time. It's about music and fans. It's going to sound a little bit like a music piece, as you've already heard, but really it's a puzzle. If you really admire someone and love them and so on, how much do you want to know about them really?

Yeah, is it tell me everything or tell me nothing? And if someone does try and tell you everything, at what point do you say stop? Ready? I'm ready. Where should we begin? Well, I think before we get to the moment that I am very excited about, I need to kind of give you guys a little bit of the world

in which all of this is going to happen. Okay. And so we're going to start with this woman. When I tell my friends about it, I kind of describe it as a prison, but it's a prison you decide to walk into. Okay, so this is Sarah Wolfgang. I was a former trainee for a K-pop group in Korea, and I'm here to talk about that. Sarah is Korean-American. She was born in America. But I actually grew up in Korea. My parents both worked for the military.

And you were living in Seoul? Correct. Okay. Yong San Su. And Sarah says that her whole K-pop adventure, it all started for her because when she was growing up. I really never liked school. So my parents were kind of wanting me to do something else. I mean, they still wanted me to finish school, but they encouraged her to try out acting.

To go to auditions, try out for school plays. And when I was in high school, about 15 years old. I think maybe 10th grade. Her head shots ended up getting passed to a South Korean record company. And when we received a phone call, they were like, oh, hey, you want to come in, audition for a K-pop group? And I was, I actually denied it. I really didn't want to do it. But then she thought, maybe this will lead to an acting job.

So I went in and then they were like, okay, they put me in front of a camera and they asked me to sing. And I'm not the best singer. But that doesn't seem to matter to K-pop. Nope. Everything, you know, can be touched up really well. To make a long story short, they end up offering her a contract of more than five years. And as part of that contract, we were asked to move into the dorms. The what?

There are these facilities that all the agencies have for their idols and training. They described it like a boarding school. All the kids kind of lived together. And so I moved in the dorms with six or seven other girls. And it was here that Sarah says the company basically kept them underlock and key. Well, they didn't lock us in the... there, but we weren't allowed to leave. It's like one of those cockroach prisons, or like those ant prisons.

You can walk in, but you can't walk out. Wait, why is she doing this again? Well, let me explain to you guys just like how phenomenally huge K-pop is. Okay. K-pop actually started in Korea in the early 90s. But like in the last five or so years, it's just spilled out into the rest of the world. And by some estimates, it was generating like around $5 billion a year. And then if you throw in like K-drama, K-soap operas, which is called the Howl You Wave,

that How You Wave in 2012 was valued at $83 billion. Jesus. Really? Yeah. And nearly all of this is based on a kind of fantasy. Because K-pop stars are, you know, products of fantasy world. That's Professor Sukhung Kim. Theater Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.

I studied K-pop industry. You know, stars are the embodied forms of manga and anime and all these unrealistic figures that don't exist in real life. So they have to have just a really beautiful face, beautiful body. You know, excessively long legs, broad eyes, pale skin, flowing hair. They are not the creature of this world. they shouldn't be. You know, they can only exist in fantasy world.

In that fantasy, that's what they're trying to manufacture in those dorms. Like, they wanted us to lose weight, so we would wake up at, like, four or five a.m. in the morning and then go hiking. Sarah says after the hike, they'd come back, eat breakfast. Which usually consisted of lettuce. Then they'd have dance classes, singing classes. And then we had lessons of, I think they're called, like, Humble. lessons where basically this guy would show up to the dorm. And he would teach us to bow correctly.

So we would have to bow in unison so that we seemed as like one big happy group. They weren't allowed to have cell phones, computers, or a relationship of any kind. All companies pretty much don't want you to be in a relationship. And in fact, Sukhung told me that in 2011, one of the members of 21, which is a girl group, managed by YG Entertainment revealed that their management

said they should not be dating before age 29. What? Oh my God. They shouldn't be dating because stars belong to the public, to the fans. And that was a thing. It was like a purity thing.

You know, that pure angelic, Virgin Madonna image. This, by the way, is K-pop writer A.J. Park. Editor at large, at soompy.com, like girl groups, they used to call them like nation's fairies. You know, they had this pure chast image to them and the boy bands too. Because that being single makes them more marketable and appealing.

And AJ says that's the main takeaway. Of course, there's all kinds of cultural observations that you can make about this, but the main driver here is economic. The founders of K-pop knew back in the early 90s that the fans would love the star of even more. if the stars weren't just beautiful and perfect, but they also seemed somehow available. You would be surprised how many K-pop stars come out

and be like, oh, I've never had my first kiss yet. And they're like 19, 20 years old. Kind of like, I haven't had my first kiss. Will it be with you? You know, in feeding the fantasy kind of thing. Wait, wait, wait. Is that all that different than America? I mean, didn't you feel weirder or stranger or somethinger

when, like, I don't know, Catherine Zena Jones married that guy Whatever his name is I don't even want to think about his name Because it changed things for me Me too I mean I didn't have that feeling I mean I don't know

Come on, okay You're always going on about Merrill Street Yes Is she married by the way? To me but she doesn't know it She is married to a very quiet man Who's a sculptor You know

How does that make you feel? I lurk around into shows To see like what does he got that I don't have No but that My point is that that I mean, American celebrity culture has fantasy woven in, too. Of course it sounds. Yeah, but there's a big difference.

In Korea, that fantasy world, it is so extremely controlled. Way more than in America, according to Sukion Kim. And it's controlled not just by the agencies. But by the fans, to the extent that it defies all of our common sense. What do you mean? I'll give you an example. This one I heard from Professor Sukeon Kim and also writer Leslie Timbako. I'm the editor-in-chief of Soul Beats.

It's a big K-pop, K-I entertainment. site. Okay. 2008, there was this new girl group. Girls Generation. Called Girls Generation. Girls Generation is a nine member, all girls group that was like... Annihanna, MTV Sunny Side. Appearing on, like, music shows and, like, variety shows, being promoted as like...

The girl next door, all cute and, you know, like the ideal girlfriend kind of idea. And Leslie says that on some of these shows, girls generation would have been. here with boy bands. You know, who were also promoting at the same time. Groups such as Super Junior, SS 501, and DVSK. Okay, so these three groups in like various shows, they would be like standing next to each other on stage. Talking to each other during variety shows.

And this is where we kind of get into the cultural stuff. There are several times when they're on to. stage with one or more of these boy bands and they're kind of taking the microphone from the host or whatever and kind of just nodding their head whereas the boy bands are like doing these deep bows. Some of the fans are seeing this and they're thinking that's disrespectful. Why? Why would that be disrespectful? Well the thinking is that since girls generation is a new group, they should be bowing much more deeply than their sunbeys or their seniors. Being a rookie group is a big deal in Korea because seniority is something that people hold very strongly.

And so as a rookie, you have to show deference to the superior, you know, senior groups. So they're not showing respect. They're not showing deference. Just in their bowing? That's how some of the fans were taking it. But, I mean, aside from all that, and this is the key, is that some of the fans thought that the girls' generation girls were flirting with some of the boy bands. Like, you know, these little side-glong glances or teasing them.

And so that interaction, seeing that, fans were very very very. very, very, very upset about that. And so all the fans of the three groups, the three boy bands, got together and decided to do a Black Ocean. What is that? We're going to get there. We're going to get there. Fast forward to June 7, 2008. All of those bands that were on those TV shows are playing this big K-pop concert.

This event called Dream Concert. A huge stadium show, like more than 40,000. and fans. And Sukkyong told me that there's one thing you need to know about fans, about K-pop fans, at live events. They all have light sticks. And they come in different colors. Because each band has its own color.

Super Junior, for example, has blue. And when they appear on stage, you see the sea of blue light sticks waving in support of their stars on stage. So they played for a while. And when SS 501 comes out, the whole place just turned to light green. The show goes on. TVXQ comes to the stage. They were like the biggest band at the time.

And then up go thousands and thousands of these ruby red glittery lights. And at some point, girls' generation takes the stage. And here's the thing. Pretty much as soon as they walk on stage. All the people in the audience. turned off their light sticks. What? Suddenly, there was blackout in the whole auditorium.

Everybody stops clapping, screaming, silence. Were you saying like the whole? Like, everybody? 40,000 people? Yes. And if you look up pictures of it, it was a stadium performance. The entire stadium was black. No way. Yes, way. Look at this picture. Oh, my God.

What are we looking at? So this, it's totally black. It's like a whole football stadium. This isn't Photoshop or something? No, because if you look down in the corner, you can kind of see the pink girls generation section. Oh yeah, there's a little box. Like a little boop of pink. Pink is their color.

Yeah. And then everything else is black. Girls generation had to sing and dance to this silent crowd. Had anything like this ever happened before? Never. Well, how on earth did they pull that off? How could you get this many people doing the same thing? Okay, so the way that these.

shows happen, at least at these dream concerts, is that different sections of the auditorium belong to different fan groups. Oh, so they sell it as zone seating. Right, so the fan clubs actually get to, like, dole out the tickets. And during the show, there's this moment where some of the fan club leaders stood up and held up these signs that said, quiet. Dude. This is that upsetting. Yeah.

What don't you understand about this? Because it doesn't seem like the most weighty sin I've ever heard. A little blink of an eye, a little leaning forward, a little failure to bow. But that's just the difference, I guess. Okay, wait a second. If you would allow me to frame for a second. So what have we learned so far? We've learned that this is a global phenomenon.

It's a nightmare that we've learned. This is a total nightmare. It's a global phenomenon born of the nightmare of these stars who seem to be tightly held in check by everybody, the fans, the agencies, everybody. That's what we know so far. That's what we know so far. Okay. And this sort of tight control is how it operated for quite a few decades. But, and this is why I wanted to do this whole story in the first place.

Just a couple years ago, in walks this guy. And he just messes everything up. We sent an interpreter with a mic over to the Gagnum district in Seoul. Gangom style. To speak with a guy named Li Myeonggu. But, you know, he told me to call him Mr. Lee. Hello. Hello.

Hey, I hopped on the line from our studio in New York. Want to get started? Yeah, are you guys ready? Yep. Okay, so here's the story. In the early 2000s, Mr. Lee, he was working at a news organization called SportsSoul, which did all kinds of things, not just sports.

They also did, like, business and entertainment. He was actually in charge of it. He was actually in charge of all the online news. And while he was there, I think it's fair to say that he took his reporting very seriously. Like, he always had this idea in his mind. I believe any contents that can be published that's possible to publish should be freely published. That's the kind of culture that would be better to have. So he was a guy who believed in an independent press.

But he also knew that there were certain things that he just couldn't report on. That certain subjects like politics were just dangerous. How? Why? What are you talking about? We actually need to back up a little bit, put this into a little bit of context. So, between, like, after the Korean War, between, say, the 60s and the 80s, South Korea was under a series of military dictatorships, and there was basically a censorship of the press. Things got a lot better in the 90s when they turned to civilian rule,

but even today, the government still has a branch that goes around the Internet and deletes websites for their content. So this is like the world in which the press is living in. So getting back to Mr. Lee, 2010, he's at SportsSoul, having dreams of independence. And he feels like politics is a little tricky. So he does what to me feels like a little bit of a Trojan horse move. Basically, he says, if I can't do independent reporting in politics, I'll just sneak it into celebrity news.

So we looked on the internet for... Hollywood news and media in the UK. And looked at what they were doing. Hey, Brinney. So he studied the sun, us weekly. TMZ. Wait, he studied TMZ. That's what he said, you know, how they take their pictures.

How close do they get? Because there is, there wasn't. Paparazzi in Korea. And we decided to apply that to South Korea. So what kind of tactics did you use to get the photos in the first place? We decided the best way to do the reporting is, you know, by hiding in the car. Their first target were these two stars. John Heng, who is an idol from a boy band called Shiny, huge band, and an actress, her name is Shin Seikyeng.

First, you have to go through the information gathering process. So they tailed both these stars on and off for one month. Wow. To get a sense of their movement patterns. You know, and they figure out they have this pattern of meeting up in front of her apartment. Really early in the morning, like three in the morning or something, and they take these walks. So. Late October, 2010.

It came to a point where. we couldn't miss the opportunity. They call this, I guess, they call this the D-Day. The dating day, which I think is pretty funny. And on this particular day, one of Mr. Lee's reporters stakes out the apartment and the two stars meet up to take their walk. And you get the very first paparazzi photos, as far as we know, in Korea. Huh, where do the photos look like?

So these photos are so, what, I think they're so cute. It's these two idols. you know, walking down the street, hand in hand, under these yellow street lights, and they just look like they're in their own little world. There's this one photo where he's pulling back her hair, and I think he's putting like an earbud in her ear, and maybe they're sharing a song, they're listening to a song together. He's got her purse on his shoulder, you know, he's just holding her bag for her.

And what happens when the photographer guy runs up and goes in their face? Well, the guys at SportsSoul kind of drew this line, they're like, We're going to keep back a distance from the celebrities. Oh, so there's a silent, like, coming through a car window. Do they see the guy? No, they don't. And that's why these photos, it's not like that typical like hands in the face photo. They just look totally serene.

But this moment, these two innocents are truly innocent. They have no reason to expect anyone to be out there at all. Right, because, you know, before this moment, there weren't paparazzi photographers stalking celebrities like this. This is Eden right here. This is Eden. Yeah, this is... Just before the... the fall.

Let's move on to the floor. The Deepa Sperc's made and the time in 2011 3rd. Mr. Lee said right before they published and this is sort of

become their tradition. All of the reporters got together and stayed in the office all night. And everybody was on pins and needles because, you know,

they didn't know what was going to happen. Are people going to be outraged or are they going to be totally excited about this? They just had no idea what was going to happen.

And you also have no idea what's going to happen until after the break. Hey, this is Mark from Astoria Queens. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Jed, Robert, Radio Lab. Back to our story from reporter Alex Young.

So when we left off, we were talking about Lee Mengu, Mr. Lee, and he and his team had just captured the first, paparazzi moment. In South Korea, they had taken a picture of these two stars. The photos were pretty dark and super grainy, totally paparazzi style, like shot in the night, probably from a zoom lens, like thousands of yards away. It was hard to tell the photographs, really. It says that they all got together in their office, they were just about to publish. No idea what was going to happen.

And when we first published them, nothing. Really? Yeah. Seriously. Oh, come on. I'm kidding. There was general response was... People went crazy.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. The photos went viral. It just took the whole country. There was an incredible amount of web traffic. It was so much that our servers were... breaking down. So people clicked.

Oh, yeah. When it all comes down to it, people really want to know. At first, they just, you know, they just inundated the website trying to look at these photos, but then they were like, oh, oh, no. So then they rushed over to the fan sites. And four of the websites from the boy band, the guy, crashed. Shinse Kyeong's website, which is called a mini-humpy page. It just gets flooded with comments.

Numerous vile comments about how the fans. felt betrayed. People were, like, posting de-faced pictures of her. In typical sexist ways, she got the brunt of it. This is always the way it is, right? Just like in America, that's the way it happens in Korea. You know, when I talked to Limengu, he was the first one to recognize that. Usually when this kind of scandal breaks, it's the woman who gets it worse.

Yeah, yeah. So, how did the agencies respond? Shock. In the beginning, could tell that the companies were not prepared because their official statement would be like, we need to talk to the celebrity about this, or we had no idea this was going on. And you could see that the companies were struggling.

There was actually a couple times later on where, God, the fans got really crazy. And they would actually protest at their live shows or whatever. And then pretty much the next day, like, after the protest, the idol at the center of that scandal would just kind of vanish. Like, they would just take an indefinite hiatus from all of their, like, promotional activities. Like, you mean, like, the agencies just yanked them? I mean, yeah, that was the suggestion, yeah.

Did the agency say anything about that to you? No one would go on the record with me, but I did talk to some people over email. And they said that, you know, when fans react this way, They're kind of forced to take drastic action. So they kind of confirmed that they were disappearing idols? They confirmed with me that they were taking action. But here's what ends up happening. Leven Gou says, you know, that very first scandal that they broke.

Yeah, they got a lot of backlash, but it showed them that what worked in the foreign media could also work in South Korea. So it gave us strength to keep experimenting. So in 2011, Le Mingu and like a couple of the people from Sportsall, they break off and they form this company called Dispatch. And then the following years, 2012-2013, this is this really important chunk of time where they just start pumping out scandals. We must have done more than 10 stories. You must have done more than 10 stories, small and big. Do you want to hear the list?

I do want to hear the list. First off, there's Park Sjian. She's dating Mr. P. Then there's Buhara, who's with Jun-Yung. Then there's Tachian, who gets caught with Jessica, in rain, dating Kim Tiki. And you have Yuna, dating Lisa and Guy, Sully and Chizu, that was like a crazy one.

And, of course, we all remember Beckion and Tayan. I don't remember. Oh, I remember. But according to Sukion Kim, you had so many scandals in such a short period of time. Headlines after headlines after headlines at such a frequent rate that we fans became somehow desensitized by this news. It shook us. And I'm going to put myself in there now, yeah. It shook us. According to writer A.J. Park, what you saw after this crazy onslaught of scandals is, well, a couple things.

So the paparazzi became a trend, something that all the Korean entertainment news started picking up. There starts to be all these other poplar. Paparazzi companies that come out. Competitors? Exactly, just like dispatch, but with a different name. But the craziest part, I think, is that you start seeing celebrities tiptoeing out and telling the truth about their lives. Little by little, the celebrities would get more comfortable about revealing it themselves. For instance, in 2012 on this talk show, Kwonghi, who is a member of this K-Pop boy band,

he made ways because he explained that. Celebrities dating cars. In order to get away from all these new paparazzi, they park by the Han River and they have their dates there. And there are parking lots where multiple celebrities park and have their secret dates inside the car. This is something that people always sort of suspected was the case, but it was kind of like the first time it was just out in the open like that.

And I think, I think that the audience reaction is like super telling because you can hear it in the tape. They're laughing. So he's breaking the spell. And what you'd expect is... Yeah. What you get is... Casual laughter.

So that's a sea change. That's a real seat change. And this happened in just two years, you're saying? We probably have to say five years. Yeah, but still, I mean, that's... See, this actually does make me think... I mean, well, first of all, it's interesting to think of paparazzi as liberators in this case. Totally, totally.

Because we used to think... was like scum. Yeah. But, I mean, if you pan out, here's literally the thought I'm having. Like, there's a tendency, because we're dumb Westerners, to sort of see what happens in places like Korea as being very different from us, like culturally separate. Yeah. But to hear that they change that quickly makes me think in some way that we're all very similar. Or maybe we're all headed to the same place and like tabloid is the great equalizer.

And maybe we're all going to just end up all of us in post-Kardashian hell. Like literally, like this is how far they traveled in five years. And literally in another five years, you will have the Kardashian family of Korea. Right, right, right. Just dishing all the time, making sex tapes on their own, whatever it is. I also thought the same thing, you know, being from America, you're like, well, this is just inevitable. But I actually don't think so anymore. A.J. told me a story that really changed my mind.

It was like it was our water gate. It was our K-pop gate. It changed everything. This story, it revolves around. Ely! This one young female solo artist, Ailey. She's just hugely popular. I mean, they actually call her the Korean Beyonce.

And in 2013, she was just killing it. By this point, Ailey has a couple albums out. Her YouTube videos have millions and millions of views. But then... November 2013, a bomb drops. What happens is this guy, cold calls dispatch. Mr. Lee actually picks up, and he recorded this phone call between them. And the guy tells him, I have nude pictures of A. Lee.

Mr. Lee tells the guy, We need to know how you obtain these. The guy says... I received them. From who? The singer. The singer gave them to you? Yes.

Why? I was her boyfriend. What is he exactly as he asked? So he's calling dispatch to see how much these nude photos are worth. And when I was talking to Mr. Lee about this, he said that in that moment, when he was on the phone, as a reporter, I was greedy about the story and the information. He said that he wanted those pictures.

But what he ends up telling the guy is, we don't want your photos. And then if you keep listening to the phone call, you can. Hear him. You can make a long story short. We're not to give us, and the other person to do you start getting really upset with the ex-boyfriend.

Like, this is not right. You're crossing a line. So to make a long story short, dispatch turns down the photos. And the photos somehow make their way to a competitor's website. This one American K-pop website

called All K-Pop, who was pretty big. They were probably the number one K-pop site at that time. In the world? Or for English speakers. For English speaker. And they publish the naked picture?

They're the ones who publish the naked pictures. I can't remember if they censored it or not, but if they did, it wasn't a very good job. Like you could see. So the photos come out, and what would you expect to happen? Some anger, maybe, a little bit, and then basically people just click on the pictures. No. What actually happens is instantly, the entire K-pop world, bands together, black ocean style. and just comes out against all K-pop.

The agencies, they start threatening to sue, this competitor website starts this boycott. And in just a few days, the figure was like 22,000 Twitter followers just stopped following them. Really, their reputation just tanks. It was a warning to them. You know, don't mess with us.

And so they really haven't, I mean, I haven't really followed them in a while, but they haven't recovered since then. But what I think is the most surprising part of this is just three days after the photos come out. It was the night of one of South Korea's biggest award ceremonies, called the Mellon Music Awards. And, you know, scheduled for that night,

Ailey was supposed to receive one of these top ten artists of the year awards. And I think to everyone's surprise, she actually showed up. Melon Music Award, top ten. In about two hours in... Gayne, who'll be it? E. Lee! You know, they call her name. And she stands up, walks to center stage.

She goes to the presenters, she takes a bow, and I think she looks fraught, or at least overwhelmed. But then she faces the crowd. At one point, her face kind of cracks. She puts her head in her elbow, and she starts crying. She says, it really means a lot to me, that you supported me, that you believed in me. Despite everything that's going on. Thank you. And then she walked off stage.

For me, the story shows that they're going to draw a line in the sand. That's different from ours. For now. Or for a long time? Or can you say? I mean, when I asked A.J. Park, the same question. Do you think that it's going to go the way of the West? I mean, she said no way.

I don't think it's ever going to be that way. Why not? I mean, culturally, Koreans, we're a little more strict. And also, I think there's also a part where we look at the U.S. And we're like, come on, guys. You know, like, we see them as an example of let's not totally go there. So like the U.S. is a cautionary tale or something. Yeah.

Like, don't ever get to that point, guys. And maybe this is one of those ones where you really wonder, like, is there a cultural difference that runs deep enough that you can say, shh, to the part of you that says, I want to know, I want to see, I want to hear. And I think that ultimately there might be. I don't know. Part of me thinks that as the, when it gets so easy to know, the most intimate details about anyone, We'll all give in. I know there's part of me that just feels that way about humans. Yeah, I don't know.

I have to go with Robert on this one. Well, I have to go with Ailey. Oh, me too. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. This piece was produced by Matt Kilty with Alex Young, reported by Alex and also Brenna Farrell. Thanks to our guests, Sukion Kim, A.J. Park, Leslie Tambako,

Li Myeonggu, Sarah Wolfgang. And very special thanks to our stringer and interpreter, Harian Kang, Joseph Kim. Jeremy Bloom, Gianchoi, and the K-pop supergroup Kran Pop, who happens to be on Alex's playlist, Spotify playlist, which also has like K-pop favorites from the entire staff. That's at RadioLab.org. Hi, it's Leslie Timbocko. I was talking about the Radio Lab credits. Hi, this is A-Ban-Cim calling.

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