Guide to finding 2000s kpop specific 'left' sites/blog

 How to find 2000s-2010s blogs and more?

Have you ever come across a post where they talk about old website's the maker has found? I often come across video's where they show ways to find old, for example, Gyaru magazines. Today I'm gonna explain how you can find kpop related 2000s to 2010s blogs and more. I will be making another guide to the way back machine but today I'm gonna give a simple guide so you will not have to go through all of these videos or more.

Understanding 2000s-2010s kpop blogs and more

If you're a newer fan you might not be aware that 'kpop' wasn't really a term before the 2010's, I believe around 2014 this became an often used term. Before that people just referred to the group or member. Sometimes as Korean music. In South Korea there's multiple terms they used for non pop/hiphop music like the word Gayo (가요), which stands for traditional Korean music but used to refer to Kpop before the term Kpop aswell. Ever came across the word 'Hallyu'? Fandom around the 1990-2000s are often referred to as Hallyu wave or a wave of popularity to 'Hallyu'. Which I personally find a very racist term so I rather not use it. A lot of people claim Seo Taiji and the boys was the first 'globally known' kpop groups although I don't really agree on that since the pioneering of Kpop went in a LOT of ways. It wasn't just "Hey guys this is Seo Taiji and the boys and they're now Kpop". The term 'kpop' comes from Korean Hip-Hop. Just because Seo Taiji and the boys were the first popular hip hop group doesn't mean they are the 'first' kpop group. And yes this is fucking controversial to say so please don't cancel me. 

Around 2006 fan forums and fan blogs became super popular, they didn't just talk about the idols but also put a lot of effort in translating, getting all their existing photo's on their site, photoshopped wallpapers, fanevents and even fanprojects and reaching the artist. Nowadays people underestimate the old fandom thinking it's just some forum to talk about the artist, but it's wayyy more than that. Most of these blogs exist from blogger and a few more sites, which I'll mention later.

Find a group/fandom you like

So, next thing you wanna do is choose a group that was popular around the 2000s-2010s. To make it easier for yourself you could go with a group that gained popularity around 2008-9. But if you really want to you can go earlier. I'm personally a really big B.A.P, TVXQ and B2ast fan. So yeah just make sure to find a group that was popular. Here's a list of common and easy to find groups:

Snds/Girls generation
TVXQ/DBSK/Tohoshinki

SS501
SHINee 
Big Bang
SuJu/Super Junior
Code name blue

F.T island 
Beast/B2ast
2PM
2NE1

Children of empire/ZE:A
JQT
SHU-I
Younha 
MBLAQ
Boa 
F(x)

And ofcourse more! Just do some research on a group you like for any reason. 

Let's start the search!

Today I'm gonna focus on SS501 and TVXQ. To start this I'm gonna search on google: 

"TVXQ blogger" or "TVXQ fanblog". Keep in mind that TVXQ has a lot of names so you could also go for DBSK or Tohoshinki and more! 

As for SS501 I'm gonna do the same!

As you're able to see right here, you'll immediately get LiveJournal, Wordpress and Blogger. If you have trouble finding blogs I suggest using this website/archive: shu-i.diromo (web.archive). You'll be easily able to find blogs, forums and more. It's dated and it shows what it exists off. 

Now let's do the same with SS501! This is my first time researching them but I bought some merch a bit ago so I'll have to. 

To be very honest, I'm kinda dissapointed in the results of the SS501 one, but we're gonna keep looking for me, we'll get there eventually. I gotta be honest this is quite hard for SS501, I do find stuff but not exactly what I'm looking for as a tutorial. I will try to keep searching through google.

So next up I got the perfect example for a blog for TVXQ! : 

fanaholic (wordpress)

Why did I choose this website? To show you guys something very usefull in your search. On wordpress you often see a section called: 'Our Affiliates'. You'll see either names, blinkies or stamps attached to it. Because it's an old site not all pictures work anymore and most become lost media sadly

Right next to this you see an example of it. As you can see manyyyyy lost images which I find really sad. You can still press on the small icon and get to the website. Let's press on the top one. 

Ok so, the top one doesn't work anymore because of 'unsupported protocol', In my planned guide to the way back machine we might be able to get on the website. 

So after trying some of the link I found: hanleidbsk (wordpress). This is a blog from August 2008 up to 2010. 

I do recommend using wordpress for this but blogger and more are also possible. You can also use the waybackmachine but again, I'll show that another time.

Rules of re-posting these blogs

Ofcourse, there are no official rules but I do not reccomend posting/reposting a blog where someone's face can be found on. These people are real adults now and might be emberassing for them to find their old blog somewhere. Also a lot of them are younger kids, so please just don't. Another rule I always have is if someone posts their exact adress, yes, even if it's outdates, just don't. Like I mentioned before there's no specific rules but please keep these in mind while making a post. 

My links

So I make posts about archived blogs and here you can find them. I've only been focussing on DSBK/TVXQ recently but I'm currently researching about other fandoms aswell so stay tuned!! 

Post one levi1nnn (tumblr)

Post two levi1nnn (tumblr)

Post three levi1nnn (tumblr)

Working on post 4 !!!

Requests lev1nnn (tumblr)

That's the tutorial/guide of today. Don't feel troubled to sent a message or question. On my requests you can sent a request of a blog or a whole post about a certain group. I'm now working on the last part of the TVXQ blog series so stay tuned for that. I'm sad I couldn't find any good SS501 examples but maybe another time!!