​EUNCHAE’s Star Diary 

Lee Yejin: HONG EUNCHAE, LE SSERAFIM’s youngest member, long dreamed of becoming an idol, and since debuting last year in May, she’s been basking in her new life and the love she gets from the older members of the group. Watching EUNCHAE enthusiastically take to the stage, make memories shooting the group’s variety content, and host a music show is like watching the ecstatic idol’s journal entries unfold before our very eyes. EUNCHAE’s Star Diary, her own web series, gives a glimpse into how the so-called baby host is moving beyond being just a professional idol, meeting with guests of the show Music Bank on KBS2 in the green room and interviewing them while sitting on the floor, to become the nation’s representative idol host.

Without fail, every episode shows EUNCHAE nervously making her way through the hall, camera in hand, to meet her guests in the green room while thinking about what to say. Viewers are also privy to the awkwardness between the host and her guests after she first greets them and they make their way over to the interview locale. Although she can be a little rough around the edges at times—like when she’s overtaken with shyness meeting new people, or when, in some episodes, it almost feels like it’s the guest conducting the interview—the “baby host” turns on her charm and makes the show her own as she turns the interviews into uniquely engaging conversations. It’s often the case that the youngest member of an idol group grapples with escaping the cutesy image set upon them, wanting instead to look cool on stage, and EUNCHAE is no different, declaring herself the “ president of the coalition against pigtails” and trying to recruit other young idols to the cause. She also consistently asks her guests for their MBTI, given that she’s an emotional person who can be thrown off by the mere fact that her guest is a T-type. It’s incredibly entertaining to watch as she builds a repertoire with her guests this way, unearthing unexpected chemistry between them by leaning into her own personality. The whole beauty of EUNCHAE’s Star Diary is that each episode ends right when EUNCHAE and her guests are really starting to get to know one another. With so many guests and episodes to choose from, readers may be looking for some recommendations, so here there are: For those curious to see what EUNCHAE is like when talking with her best buds, check out the episodes with KYUJIN from NMIXX or HUENING BAHIYYIH from Kep1er. If watching her make new celebrity friends is more your speed, look out for the episode featuring aespa. Or, for an episode where she’s incredibly nervous in front of older singers, look up the one with EXO. Finally, check out the episodes with &TEAM and BOYNEXTDOOR for the rarest of EUNCHAE moments: where she’s the more experienced idol in the room.

​“Plastic” (OTOT) 

Na Wonyoung (music critic): Although their group bio—also the title of their latest album—reads “21st century electronic duo,” OTOT’s brand of music sounds, at first listen, more like it’s straight out of the previous century. The kick and snare resonate with each beat, the waveforms are sharp and angular, the vocal samples float around like adorable specters, the melodies are steady and straightforward, and they use analog synthesizers and drum machines instead of a laptop. What makes all this so significant is that the electronic music of the last century landed on Korean shores all too late, never really enjoying its time in the sun before the sound of the new millennium took over. Even in 2016, when Lee Sun Kyu and KO BUMJUN released their first single under the name OTOT, they were already brewing up such undeniable chemistry between them and in their brilliant sound that it felt like they had been making music together since before the year 2000. This match made in heaven can be attributed to collaborations between the two dating back as long as 15 years ago—including Hot Potato’s fourth album and the music of Peppermint Club—plus KO’s own Thin_Go project and Lee’s work as a producer. A number of musicians, like Ftone Sound and Mozosonyon, got their start in indie rock bands in the 1990s, shifting to electronic music in the 2000s and fostering an environment of collaboration between one another, and while OTOT were a little late to the trend, their music is nonetheless a mature evolution of the sound. Their new song “Plastik,” which contains hints of their earlier track “OO” that became popular after appearing in an ad, alternates between chattering mechanical vocals and synths of all shapes and colors, fills each section with hi-hats taking off in differently arranged directions, and pumps with a kick and snare that stays steady throughout. The sharp, vivid sound of the beat gloms together only to glitter again, creating a kind of tension that never sits still (like in the song “Spider,” which, true to its name, feels like it’s humorously imitating the way the bug moves). The direction they take somehow lines up uncannily well with the bullet points of modern Korean electronic music of artists like IDIOTAPE and Ahn Maru—big names whose sound is twisted and flipped until it becomes befitting of the label 21st century electronic duo.