You Know You're Obsessed with K-Pop When...

~idkwhy.really. wants to suck you into her K-Pop obsession. Proceed at your own risk! —Sparkitors

Sit around, young Sparklers and Manklers, as I tell you a story about a teenage girl. This girl was quite normal: half-hipster, half-mainstream, one hundred percent AWESOME (do I smell a hint of groundless confidence?). But then the unthinkable happened: she was pulled into the world of K-Pop. It all happened one summer day when she was on YouTube and saw a thumbnail of a "Super Junior Mr. Simple" video. It looked interesting enough, and so she clicked on it.

At first, as she watched the video, she couldn't tell apart any of the guys at all, even though they were extremely good looking. "Wait, which one is he again?!" could be heard as she kept replaying the video. As she moved on to watch even more music videos of Super Junior, she became even more confused because of the fact that they all change their hairstyles within each video, and that was the only way she managed to tell them apart in the first place.

Fast forward five months, and here is this girl, writing a post for SparkLife when she should be working on a biology paper that's due in a little more than twelve hours. She's watched dozens of shows with all her favorite K-Pop idols, downloaded all the music videos and all the albums for at least a dozen idol groups, and is completely, passionately OBSESSED with K-Pop!

Think you're as obsessed with K-Pop as this girl is? Here's how to tell.

1. You want to move to South Korea. Yes, you've imagined moving to South Korea—more specifically, Seoul—just so that you can be closer to your precious idols. Don't lie to me. I SEE YOU HIDING THAT SOUTH KOREAN BROCHURE IN YOUR DESK. *looks at you creepily*

2. You know why Jay Park left 2PM, why Heechul, Hangeng, and Kibum left Super Junior, and why Yunho and Changmin are the only two remaining in DBSK.

3. You either went to the SM-Town/United Cube concert in New York City or you cry every day knowing you missed out on such a great chance.

4. You have a folder dedicated to pictures of your K-Pop idols. Please tell me I'm not the only one who has 900+ photos of these beautiful Korean guys.

5. You secretly order K-Pop merchandise online. I did this about a month ago using the debit card my parents gave me. They still don't know that I have a huge SHINee poster from their Maypole photoshoot lying under my bed, with Minho's amazing face on one side with a solo shot. <3

6. You've seen at least two of the following shows: Hello Baby, Oh! My School, Idol, Maknae Rebellion, Idol Army, Explorers of the Human Body, Sesame Player. These are all excellent variety shows that I highly suggest you watch! I've seen all of the episodes of all of the seasons of all of these shows and OH MY GOD too funny! It's actually really refreshing watching these shows because a majority of the funny-ness involved isn't related to sex, drugs, or just general inappropriateness. It's good-natured fun, and it's excellent. (:

7. You recognize Changmin from DBSK as the beginner of the evil maknae trend and Kyuhyun as the perfector of that trend. If you don't know already, Changmin used to bother the DBSK members a lot when they were all still together, completely going against the expectations of a maknae: sweet, innocent, respectful to the older members. As for Kyuhyun, behind that angelic face of his, Kyuhyun has one heck of an acid tongue and is E-V-I-L.

8. You know what a maknae is.

9. You've visited the Asian fanfics website at least once.

10. You can name at least five groups off the top of your head and name all their members AND ages immediately. For me, this would be SHINee (Lee Jinki aka Onew, 23; Kim Jonghyun 22; Kim Kibum aka Key, 20; Choi Minho, 20; Lee Taemin, 18), MBLAQ (Yang Seungho, 24; Jung Byunghee aka G.O., 24; Lee Changsun aka Joon, 23; Park Sanghyun aka Thunder/Cheondoong, 21; Bang Cheolyong aka Mir, 20), Super Junior (Park Junsu aka Leeteuk, 28; Kim Heechul, 28; Hankyung aka Hangeng, 27; Kim Jongwoon aka Yesung, 27; Kim Youngwoon aka Kangin, 26; Shin Donghee aka Shindong, 26; Lee Sungmin, 26; Lee Hyukjae aka Eunhyuk, 25; Lee Donghae 25; Choi Siwon 24; Kim Ryeowook, 24; Kim Kibum, 24; Cho Kyuhyun, 23), Boyfriend (Kim Donghyun, 22; Shim Hyunseong, 18; Lee Jeongmin, 18; Jo Youngmin, 16; Jo Kwangmin, 16; No Minwoo, 16; and F.T. Island (Choi Jonghun, 21; Lee Hongki, 21; Lee Jaejin, 20; Song Seunghyun, 19; Choi Minhwan, 19). WHAT NOW.

11. You know which member(s) in the boy groups have abs. And you obsessively drool over them every time their stylists purposefully have them perform shirtless.

12. You've converted at least one friend of yours into a K-Pop obsessed fanatic just like yourself. All your other friends just don't understand, put up with your crazy obsession on a daily basis, or think you're plain old weird.

13. You're familiar with the terms Shawol, ELF, B2UTY, A+, V.I.P., SONEs, Primadonna, Hottest, Cassiopeia, Kiss Me, Kamilia, Black Jacks, Triple S, 4NIA, Blingers, Flames, Lockets, MVPs, Taemints, MIRacle, Jaywalkers, and J+. These are the names of the fans of the groups and of the individual members. It's actually pretty interesting how they came up with the names! I call myself a proud Shawol, A+, Flame, and J+. Don't kill me if I forgot a group!

14. You KNOW that Kai from SM Town's upcoming EXO is the child of Taemin and Minho. Oh, and you may also be familiar with 2min, Jongkey, Ontae, Keyho, etc. etc. etc.

15. You try to learn Korean in hopes of marrying a K-Pop idol. Or at least understanding the lyrics of their songs.

16. Whenever you hear something randomly throughout the day, you can connect it to K-Pop in some way. Like every time I hear someone say the word "shiny," I immediately think of SHINee and start hyperventilating. Or if someone mentions turtles, I think of Yesung from Super Junior.

As you can obviously see, I'm heavily biased towards boy idol groups, especially SHINee and MBLAQ. So I hope you enjoyed delving into this beautiful world of K-Pop. It's actually really cool when you find someone who's into K-Pop; heck, one of my closest friends was a fan and I only found after I became a fan as well! I think it's just the fact that no one really talks about K-Pop since they think no one else knows about it, but believe it or not, it's a lot more popular than you would think. (:

For all you Sparklers that are K-Pop fans, HWAITING! (<-- that's the Korean way of saying "Let's go!")

Are you obsessed?