The first time I went to Seoul after all that had gone down with Duri, I wasn’t trying to look for him. But when a person you used to know goes away because you left them on the side of the Pacific Ocean on the night his entire world changed and took an entire music industry with it, sometimes the only solace you can afford is to trace some of his steps. See if we can catch a whiff of what he must’ve seen or smelled when he was just another Kpop trainee from outside the city trying to navigate the South Korean capital for the first time, before he became the kind of Kpop idol who could never again walk the streets of Gangnam or anywhere else for that matter because it’d be a fire hazard at that point—the mobs he’d draw.
Day 1: Gangnam Style
I landed on an otherwise dull day on the week of June, before the monsoons.
“Monsoon season, really?” My friend-turned-frenemy Trish said when she heard about the original dates mid-month I had planned on going, right after my birthday. “I hope you like being wet.”
“I do, but not from the weather,” I told her, winking. She shook her head, disgusted that a married woman with children and a somewhat ass-holey husband could still like sex so much. It was probably the primary reason she is divorced and I remain legally bound to another, but she’ll never admit this, not to me or anybody else.
Still, I changed the dates to be the ten days before the occasion commemorating my birth. Not because I had anything grand planned—no mother of small kids I know celebrates their own birthdays anymore—but because I knew it’d be a mental health hazard to be friendless in a foreign country on my least favorite day of the year.
Checking in to my high-rise hotel outside Gangnam station, I didn’t notice the proliferation of plastic surgery offices occupying all the second floors of the neighborhood, above the innumerable Olive Young stores and bakeries and branded shops. My arrival apparently coincided with one of Olive Young’s seasonal sales, which brought such hordes of excessively attractive people to its storefronts that I briefly wondered if I should’ve maybe gotten work done before coming to Korea.
“You gonna get plastic surgery while you’re there?” Trish had texted right after I turned off airplane mode. “That’s why most people go.”
“That might be the most loaded question you’ve ever asked,” I wrote back, not obliging to answer the question. Other than writing a novel about Duri, I told no one about what had happened with him and me.
“What do you suggest” I typed but then deleted. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
“My friend got jawline surgery there last month. Looked like a train wreck because she only had time for one procedure—” she wrote anyway.
“See, that’s why I’d never—”
“But now she looks FANTASTIC,” Trish assured, before adding. “Has trouble chewing though.”
“So worth it,” I replied. I meant it ironically while I was still at the airport, but now I was beginning to wonder.
Day 2: The Fandom Always Leave Their Mark
Today I went in search of the original Big Hit building. I’ve traveled the world but this might have been the hardest tourist destination I’ve ever had to locate. I didn’t realize Seoul had hills until I was marching uphill while lost. Three concentric circles later, I finally saw the unassuming gray structure finely tattooed with Sharpies.
Day 3: Gwangju
There’s this old, old story about the Genius of Vilna who was—allegedly—the smartest, most educated man alive, at least during the time when Vilna was still around and not maybe wiped off the surface of the earth. The legend goes: one day the Genius was chatting with God—as geniuses are apparently wont to do—and the Lord Almighty gives him this mindfuck of a question.
“In one hand, I have all of the world’s answers. In the other, all of its questions. Which hand do you want?”
To which the Genius replies, “My god, give me the questions.”
I don’t identify with gods or geniuses but I do have questions about where the five members of the most famous boy band in the world are today, so naturally I went to little town two hours outside of Seoul in search of the Genius of Gwangju.
I didn’t find him, but did find, not in this order:
1) the (a?) birthplace of democracy
2) the biennial art installation
3) the best cheese-stuffed katsu I’ve ever had.
In the absence of any real answers, food & art might all we’ve got.
Day 4: Busan
At least one member of The Band is from the “Santorini of Korea,” they call it. Like its more famous counterparts in the Amalfi Coast or Cinque Terre (which Busan resembles more than Santorini itself, I can tell you this), Busan was just a humble fishing village before the powers that be figured out how to turn it into a tourist trap, complete with the most touristy food imaginable that of course I had to buy and take a million photos of before eating. Among them include:
1) “Water jelly”: it looks like a Pixar version of the world’s cutest drop of water—totally translucent and round, with a pointy little top. But of course it comes with all kinds of possible flavors—lychee, mango, whatever other Asian fruit you can think of. Because I’m a dumb American, I got mine with chocolate syrup and crushed cookies.
2) “Blackpink” soft serve: you guessed it; I’ll say it—just regular soft serve in unnatural shades of pitch black and neon pink. I told you I wasn’t a genius, and now I suspect you believe.
Day 5: I’ve Seen the Future, and It’s Beautiful + Terrifying
I can count of two fingers the number of children I saw in Seoul so far, and both of them were inside the Kawaii superstore, where the number of adorable stuffies was outnumbered only by the number of adorable donuts and drinks. I find it funny that the subways here—all immaculate, on time, and easily navigated even by Americans who thought Duolingo could prepare them for a trip like this—still have special pink reserved seating for pregnant ladies because there seem to be none here. The demographers have long warned us that this country has the world’s lowest birth rate, and it shows.
Even as a foreigner whose abysmal command of hangul forces the nice boys and girls working at Paris Bakery and 7-Eleven and Lotte World to turn to Papago to help lubricate our conversation, Seoul is both easier to traverse and more advanced than any jurisdiction in America. The highly efficient transportation system, the convenience stores dotting every corner stocked with every conceivable need known to humanity, from pimple patches to sambak gimbak, the surgically fine-tuned faces coated in the world’s most undetectable sunscreen—these make me think that this city is the what the future looks like. A world where everyone is beautiful and life has never been more convenient and the only catch is that there are no children because nobody wants to bring new life into this universe—now you tell me: is that utopia or dystopia?
Day 6-9: Some Things that Happen in Seoul, Stay in Seoul
Day 10: Home
I left South Korea with more than the carry-ons I came with, and I’m not just talking about my Olive Young skincare haul. The details of what I’m bringing back—well, that could fill a whole other novel.
THE BAND by Christine Ma-Kellams
Perfect for fans of Mouth to Mouth and Black Buck, this whip-smart, darkly funny, and biting debut follows a psychologist with a savior complex who offers shelter to a recently cancelled K-pop idol on the run.
Sang Duri is the eldest member and “visual” of a Korean boy band at the apex of global superstardom. But when his latest solo single accidentally leads to controversy, he’s abruptly cancelled.
To spare the band from fallout with obsessive fans and overbearing management, Duri disappears from the public eye by hiding out in the McMansion of a Chinese American woman he meets in a Los Angeles H-Mart. But his rescuer is both unhappily married with children and a psychologist with a savior complex, a combination that makes their potential union both seductive and incredibly problematic.
Meanwhile, Duri’s cancellation catapults not only a series of repressed memories from his music producer’s earlier years about the original girl group whose tragic disbanding preceded his current success, but also a spiral of violent interactions that culminates in an award show event with reverberations that forever change the fates of both the band members and the music industry.
In its indicting portrayal of mental health and public obsession, fandom, and cancel culture, The Band considers the many ways in which love and celebrity can devolve into something far more sinister when their demands are unmet.
Literature and Fiction Literary | Suspense [Atria Books, On Sale: April 16, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781668018378 / eISBN: 9781668018392]
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About Christine Ma-Kellams
Christine Ma-Kellams is a Harvard-trained cultural psychologist, Pushcart-nominated fiction writer, and first-generation American. Her work and writing have appeared in HuffPost, Chicago Tribune, Catapult, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, and much more. The Band is her first novel.
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