October 15, 2012
For one's new to K-Pop or one's who are only familiar with few websites for their K-Pop news, they might wonder about K-Pop Entertainment sites that not only supply information, but makes them want to go back to the site. Here is a list of the best of the best English Korean Pop Entertainment sites in my opinion and why.
My Top 10: English K-Pop Entertainment Websites
Allkpop is unarguably the number one source for K-Pop news and gossip. This site also has the guest appearances of many popular groups, from their Wonder Girls appearance to their B.A.P appearance, allkpop has it all. They also come out with occasional, yet great OP-Ed articles and challenging contest to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Though they often publish uninteresting news (for example, every other article is about Suzy) over great articles which can attract many fans (I submitted 2NE1 appearing on British TV maniacally a few weeks ago and it still has not been published) and have posts with a lot of obvious mistakes in grammar, their news is, for the most part, up-to-date and great.
DKpopnews (Daily K-Pop News) is probably the site I visit most. There are more interesting articles posted by dkpopnews than allkpop at sometimes faster speeds, yet a lot less buzz. It's rare to see even a comment on this website and its events lack significantly if compared to sites like allkpop. Their last group meeting was with a group called "Girlfriend" in which 99% of the comments were stating their unawareness for even the group's existence. However, instead of spamming Suzy articles 24/7, it puts articles of other groups in which I have interest in without bias, which is something I appreciate.
3. ohkpop.com
This site is severely underrated. The news is better than allkpop and soompi combined and is almost at the dkpopnews range. It misses news dkpopnews failed to post and shows mostly relevant news rather than other, more popular sites. The only set back is that it's so underrated, it does not hold events or anything to look forward to. It has an "Interviews" section, yet it's not their own Interviews and rather other's Interviews. I recommend this site to anyone who wants to know the best of the best news and doesn't care much about the popularity of the site.
4. en.korea.com
This site is extremely amazing. It has it's own blog, fan clubs, store, technology tab, chat and even a health & beauty section. It's astonishing this site isn't the most popular. The news is up to par and the tabs of the site are very entertaining. The only set back is checking the site via mobile and going on the site's Facebook page. It's obvious on the home site, they can speak both Korean and English fluently (in which allkpop sometimes has trouble with doing on many of their articles) yet on the Facebook, it's obvious that the person or persons running it isn't fluent in both languages. Also, via mobile, it's hard to click the site and sometimes leads you to the artist's fanpage when you actually just want to read the article. Other than those flaws, this site is great.
5. soompi.com
Soompi, "the longest running K-Pop site since 1998", comes in at number 3. It's news is somewhat like allkpop's, not posting all but often posting uninteresting articles (one article was even about Suzy laughing) and it's comments aren't up to par with allkpop's comments which are instant. Many articles barely reach 10 comments and their "POPULAR" list to the right side bar shows it's relevance and popularity.
There were however, many articles posted that day.
It often posts articles that allkpop or dkpopnews has already beat it to, and is only there if you are truly bored and have already checked the top 2 sites.
Placing at number 6, kpopstarz is a good news source. If you happen to go on the Celebrity tab of the website, you'll notice that they have an extremely well-organized list of most of the Korean Pop celebrities and interesting bios. This website is also has langauges to choose from, so if your native language is either Spanish, Japanese, Chinese or English (ironic the Korean Pop website doesn't have Korean as a language) then this site is for you. Though the news isn't as well as kpopnews or ohkpop, nor is the homepage organized and is rather just a clutter of all of their tabs in one, this site is a good site to go on.
7. koreaboo.com
This site is undeniably one of Korean Entertainment's most powered site, bought by MNet and having a music community at last.fm, Koreaboo is great. The only trouble with the site is that it's something you probably wouldn't want to go to if you are already familiar with the sites above. This site has almost everything allkpop has posted, yet hours or even days later. Though the layout is very good, this site isn't recommended for someone who goes on allkpop frequently and not for someone who wants to know a lot of news about celebrities.
8. gokpop.com
This website places at number 9 for various reasons. Though this website is good, the comments lack, the news isn't as entertaining or exciting as the previously listed sites and the layout is barely above average. Their fan clubs, in which are listed to the right, aren't well populated due to the sites attention however they have KPop Charts and even Upcoming Birthdays which is a plus.
9. Social Networking Sites
Social Networking sites are in present day is probably the most used kind of sites in the world, even before pornography. "If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd most populated country in the world". Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are some of the best sites to check for k-pop news yet only if you follow or friend the good entertainment tellers. Most, if not all, of the K-Pop sites listed previously have at least a Twitter or a Facebook and publish their news through their social networking sites as well as through their homepage in nearly the same time so it's up-to-date depending on which site you either like, follow, etc. on your social networking page. There's no true setbacks in social networking, as the comments are abundant depending on which site you are using and which site you are relying on for your news, the news is up to date and it's entertaining.
10. K-Pop Forums
Many of the sites listed previously have a k-pop forum, the most popular k-pop forums happen to be forums.allkpop.com, forums.soompi.com, 6theory.com, hallyu8.com, etc. (I'm planning to publish and article of the different forums, so stay tuned and check frequently until it's published!). Most of the time, the forums has it's own "news bot" if it's a forums of an already big entertainment/news website (example: allkpop forums has a news bot and it's own section to post allkpop.com posted news). If it's not posted by the bot, many forum users follow many of the previously listed sites and post the news information on the forums before many people have even heard about it. Depending on the forums popularity, the members can either be abundant or be scarce and if the members are scarce, chances are, the news is scarce as well. However, if you choose the right forums, they can be the perfect source of information.
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Check out JPKC Productions on YouTube. Their reaction video to BTS's and BigBang's comebacks were funny and very entertaining.
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