SEOUL —
Korean-American
K-pop star AleXa has wanted to be on stage since she was a kid,
but her search for fame in South Korea was also fuelled by another reason — to
help her mother find her birth family.
اضافة اعلان
Adopted from South
Korea by an American family, her mother knows little about her birth culture
nor does she speak the language.
The blue-haired
25-year-old who recently won the
American Song Contest — the US version of
Eurovision — told AFP that eating kimchi was one of her few cultural links to
her Korean heritage growing up.
That is, until
AleXa discovered K-pop in 2008.
“That kind of
sparked my dream and my drive to become a K-pop artist,” said the Tulsa-born
rising star, who has been dancing since she was two.
Growing up in
Oklahoma, AleXa said seeing entertainers on-screen she could identify with as a
Korean American showed her “an interesting path to follow”.
At university, she
took home the top prize at a K-pop competition — a trip to South Korea to film
a reality show where she met executives from her future company and entered the
grueling star-making training so many young hopefuls embark on.
Like many adoptees, she would like to trace her birth family, but “The laws here in Korea are a little strict regarding if the child can find their birth parents and vice versa.”
She moved to Seoul
in 2018 and — having never spoken it while growing up — studied Korean at an
academy for a few months, continuing her lessons by watching movies and TV
shows while undergoing intensive dance classes.
Search for family
While AleXa has found success as a K-pop idol, her quest to find her
mother’s family is proving to be a more arduous process, foiled by
South Korea’s restrictive adoptive laws.
Born in Ilsan,
northwest of Seoul, her mother was adopted when she was five.
Like many adoptees,
she would like to trace her birth family, but “the laws here in Korea are a
little strict regarding if the child can find their birth parents and vice
versa,” AleXa said.
South Korea places
the right to privacy of the birth parent above the rights of the adoptee.
The country has
long been a major exporter of overseas adoptees, with hundreds of thousands
sent away since the 1950s.
After the
Korean War, it was a way to remove children — especially those born to local mothers
and American GI fathers — from a country that emphasizes ethnic homogeneity.
Even today,
unmarried pregnant women still face stigma in a patriarchal society and are
often forced to give up their babies.
“The opposite party
must be in search of the other in order for the first party to gain
information,” the singing star said.
That has not
happened in their case, so her mother is still unable to find AleXa’s grandma.
However, she has
had some success through the internet and DNA testing, and found some cousins
in other countries.
AleXa said they
haven’t given up hope.
“Hopefully in the
future, we can find some of my Korean family here. It would be nice,” she told
AFP, adding that she now considers Seoul her “second home”.
Representation
When NBC decided to put together the American version of the Eurovision
song contest, AleXa — “a Eurovision fan” — was invited to enter to represent
her home state.
It gave her and her
team a chance to bring K-pop to American audiences, and they immediately began
planning.
“How can we do
staging, what concept would work, what would really grab the American audience
while staying true to the K-pop?” she told AFP of their process.
Beyond nationality
or language, for AleXa, K-pop is a commitment to concept, styling and execution
— the hair and make-up, sets, staging and cinematography must be perfect.
“I really enjoy,
you know, the spectacle, the art, the wonder, the beauty that is K-pop,” she
said.
For her American
Song Contest finale, AleXa descended from the rafters to the stage on a throne,
then launched into choreography of military precision with her dancers as she
sang “Wonderland”.
Her win has K-pop
fans applauding her for bringing the genre front-and-center to American reality
television.
Growing up, some of the only representations that I saw for myself was Mulan, an animated Chinese character, and I’m a Korean-American.
She hopes the
growing diversity in the industry will bring the music to more countries.
“Growing up, some
of the only representation that I saw for myself was Mulan, an animated Chinese
character, and I’m a Korean-American,” she quipped.
But since Korean
bands like
BLACKPINK and BTS went global, “K-pop has become such a safe space
for so many kids”.
She believes the
growing number of non-Korean idols within the industry is also good for her
adopted home.
“Korea is a rather homogenous country. So having all of
these foreign idols, I think it’s a really cool eye-opening opportunity for
Korea as well,” she said.
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