RECOMMEND (180)

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

PLUSONE

MORE

E-MAIL

PRINT

TEXT SIZE

They often end the night at the Korean restaurant next door, where they snack on "gimbap" rice rolls and "ddeokbokki" rice cakes, popular street foods often seen on South Korean dramas.

Rodriguez belongs to a TVXQ fan club that has 1,000 members and is one of more than 40 clubs that participated in the second annual Philippine K-pop Convention last year. The event drew 5,000 people, and more than 60,000 "like" its Facebook page.

That's a leap from the 50 or so K-pop fans Rodriguez said she would meet in online chat forums and email groups in 2001.

Miki Acuna, a 21-year-old nursing graduate from Manila, has traveled to Thailand and New York to catch TVXQ concerts. She said she likes the way the singers sound, move, look and dress, and the slick packaging by their promoters.

"The youth today are looking for spunk, the new look," said Schedar Jocson, a University of the Philippines lecturer who has written a paper on K-pop's influence in his country.

"They are looking for their own niche or their own identity," he said, and both the TV shows and pop music give them something more expressive and experimental than homegrown alternatives.

Associated Press writers Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Debby Wu in Taipei, Taiwan; Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.