I only learned about Gag Concert a couple of years ago when my cousin was showing me how funny it is. I later found that the best part about the comedy is that, it is very updated. After each episode airs in Korea on Saturday, you will find it uploaded to YouTube by Sunday. Even better, the entire episode is available with English subtitles. Oddly though, they don’t have the same in Japanese despite how crazy fans here can be.
I have this loathing of Korean artistes who make their fans buy several copies of their albums in order to get to shake hands with them. If their album sells a million copies, you can safely divide that number by 10 to know how many people actually purchase them. Some people I know buy over 70 copies. Same tactic as AKB48. But it’s not so bad in AKB’s situation because for every one single you buy, you get to shake hands with your idol. For every single you buy, you get to cast a vote for that same idol. In Korea, it’s by lottery, so people buy more to increase their chances of getting picked. That’s perfectly fine because people can still buy just one single and get picked if they’re lucky. But when you say you have to buy two copies of the same album to get to meet your idols, that’s throwing away your pride as an artiste. It’s not the same as when you buy two things from Daiso, because the two things you buy each has their value. The second copy of the same album provides no additional value. Album sales no longer proves your popularity, but your marketing skills. And if I go on any longer, I would’ve to change the title of this post.
So about Gag Concert, they have multiple skits each based on a theme and these skits have a foundation upon which jokes are built. These foundations have the same recurring lines every week with only the details of the joke changing, which makes it easy for learners to practise their listening skills and learn new words that are actually used instead of textbook conversations like:
A: Is that a flower?
B: No, that’s a horse.
In what world does this conversation take place?
Repetition is also how children (or maybe just me) learn languages. They I don’t memorise. Well, actually more like I can’t memorise since I have a poor memory.
The crux of comedies are, however, created based on what the locals find amusing. It’s never really good nor useful to translate them since the jokes are more often than not lost in translation, and that what a culture finds funny, another culture might not. But for language learning, it’s pretty good I would say.
On a separate note, The Big Bang Theory is one comedy that should not be translated to Japanese.
I’m not quite sure which Korean groups u are actually pointing fingers at for selling albums in this manner- because i really can’t recall any. However, if u are saying doing a Japanese/Chinese version of a original Korean album, then, i roughly have an idea. This is a marketing strategy to reach a wider market- so “selling the same album” repeatedly to the same fan don’t really happen. FYI, sadly to say, Korean fans aren’t really buying album much now as most choose digital downloads- quite similar to what is happening around the world. These groups’ incomes are generated from other sources such as concerts and advertising. This brings us to the point on why Japanese market is still lucarative – the Japanese are still buying albums, that’s why AKB can still survive. AKB is a commercial miracle that can arguably only happen in Japan.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the group. Gotta check with my Korean classmates about that again. If I didn’t remember incorrectly, it’s a relatively new group that requires fans to buy two copies of their albums to get to participate in the handshake event.
As for the Japanese market, it’s interesting to note that singles sell better than albums, unlike in Singapore where we tend to consume more albums. Whenever I go to karaoke with Japanese friends and sing a song that they don’t know, we’d eventually arrive at the conclusion that the song is from an album which is why they do not know. Also why AKB singles are selling like hotcakes, but they’ve not really released too many albums. Might be worth an entry itself.
Singles sell better than albums? Strange indeed. Since albums should be considered better value. Btw, Its just reported in strait times that the last HMV outlet will close at the end of the month. That marked the end of CD shops era. Gotta missed the heeren days. :/
Got to agree with your post. And for an extra note, Korean albums have photocards in them as well. Say if you purchase an album from a certain group with 10 members, but you only like one member, you just have to buy more albums until you get the card you want. Reminds me of the days when I was a kpop fanatic… (Am very guilty about this.) Marketing > popularity..Something kpop is known for recently. Not sure if that can be considered as a good thing.
Anyway, I am always surprised when I find people who enjoys gagcon. Most of the Korean wave fanatics I know don’t even try to watch it. When they do, they usually say that they don’t like it because some Korean jokes can be hard to comprehend for foreigners. But after I continued watching it, I started to really enjoy it. I started to understand their comedy, and I think I do learn Korean better when I watch gagcon, as compared to variety shows or dramas.
Great article as always. Cheers!
Thanks Futabun!
I also didn’t like Gag Concert when I first saw it. But overtime, I began to appreciate some of the jokes.