This whole love child of friends and Kpop started as a weekly pizza party at my parent’s house where we listened (aka I forced) everyone to watch Kpop. At this time I was working at an animal rescue and it was just my coworkers- only one of which was a Kpop fan before we met (Marie). As time went on I dragged most of them into the Kpop hole- and even brought one girl to see BTS with me in 2017.

Enter best friend of 26 years and counting- Rachel, who I not only pushed into the Kpop hole but convinced her to go to Japan and Korea with me in 2018 (her having never flown anywhere outside of the East Coast of the US). We had a BLAST and planned to return… multiple times.

As time went on the Kpop Pizza Parties faded, and eventually we all started other jobs. In an attempt to make friends I decided to start making all of my new coworkers listen to Kpop… Unfortunately only one stuck with it (and I dragged her to see Stray Kids in 2021). I started to miss the days of Kpop Pizza parties, and now that I owned my own home I could start hosting again. I invited Marie and Rachel (who actually share a birthday!) and basically said: here- we all love Kpop let’s all be friends.

The Kpop Pizza party was reborn. But this time we decided to start expanding our dinner options- and it eventually became me making various Korean and Asian inspired dishes for our weekly meetings. But soon our trio grew, as Rachel got another friend of hers involved. Welcome Halle- you became one of us!

Halle wasted NO time in convincing her friends Natalie and Sam to dip a toe in, and after some video binges and concerts they were in. Welcome Sam and Nat- you guys also became (you guessed it) one of us! Jess was the last addition- friends with Halle, Nat and Sam (it was only natural we absorbed her too) and her voice of reason energy was much needed on our goblin group (aka finally Rachel had another adult to help her herd the kittens). At this point we no longer called it Kpop Pizza parties, our group name officially became the Kpop Collective- but our main group chat was named Hongjoong is the Captain of this Delulu Ship.

We have gone forth and started assimilating more people into our collective group- meeting new friends at concerts, new coworkers, interns/externs, and even family members who were previously not convinced they wanted to join (I’m looking at you Koder girls).

It’s safe to say anyone who comes in contact with us is now exposed, and I like to believe their life is bettered by it. I mean my boyfriend can now name all of BTS, ATEEZ (mostly reliably), a few members of Stray Kids, and knows that there are 13 members of Seventeen. I am pretty sure that’s a win.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to become…..