The hip-hop dance style of “breaking” didn’t die in the ’80s; it went global, capturing the imaginations of people of varied backgrounds, including this Korean American writer and practicing “b-girl.” She explores the soulful appeal of this dance style that, in recent years, has been dominated by “The Koreans,” who are winning international competitions and respect in a scene created by African American youth in the Bronx.

By MiRi Park
Photos courtesy of the Korea Times and MiRi Park

I have always loved hip-hop — at least, what I got out in the mostly white Jersey ‘burbs where I grew up. I listened to Hot 97 and watched MTV and BET religiously, pretending to be the lone Asian dancer as I mimicked the choreography in the music videos I saw. Every time I heard Rob Base’s demand to “Hit it!” nothing could stop me from bum-rushing my middle school’s cafeteria floor as the hip-hop dance track, “It Takes Two,” blared through the speakers during seventh-grade dances. My classmates didn’t know what to make of this suddenly crazed Korean doing the Roger Rabbit and Cabbage Patch with complete abandon.

I couldn’t explain my reaction nor did I care to. I never really vibed with the people I grew up with, and dancing my heart out to those beats in the center of that circle was the only time that I felt free from all my adolescent concerns about fitting in.

It would take 10 years, but I would recapture that same sense of exhilaration and liberation when I stumbled upon a dance style that most people, including myself, thought died out in the 1980s along with big hair and shoulder pads. Now breaking — more commonly known as “breakdancing” to those unschooled in hip-hop culture — has become my life. Luckily for me, this dance style that was created mainly by black teenage boys in the Bronx and embraced by Latino kids in the outer boroughs of New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s, continued to be practiced and developed as an art form throughout the 1990s.

Breaking first captured the imagination of the media in the ‘80s, generating hundreds of news articles and inspiring movies like “Beat Street” and “Flashdance.” The dance spread all over the U.S and the world. Soon new communities of b-boys and b-girls emerged. Today’s diverse scene includes people like me, a 29-year-old graduate student with a background in modern dance and journalism who loves breaking so much that, for my master’s thesis, I’m researching the oral histories of New York City b-girls. In my spare time, you will find me rocking beats and preparing for battles — that is, breaking competitions.

Nearly four decades after the creation of hip-hop culture in New York City, the art of breaking has morphed into an international culture. Incredibly, people from my homeland have emerged as some of the best in the world. “The Koreans,” as they are referred to in the b-boy community, have become synonymous with technical virtuosity, gravity-defying athletic power moves and virtually flawless execution. In just the past decade, Koreans have gone from being barely blips on the international b-boy radar, to winning or placing in the top three of every international b-boy battle since 2001. Clips of Korean b-boys performing garner tens of thousands of hits on sites like YouTube, proving that their power of influence may exceed their tremendous physical capabilities.

As a journalist, researcher and practicing b-girl, I felt the need to explore the Korean b-boy phenomenon, which has increasingly made headlines in the international media and sparked a new mania in Korea, where b-boys who were once dismissed as delinquent street dancers are now treated like national heroes.

Hip-hop Shakes Up the Land of Morning Calm

As a graduate student researching the history of breaking in New York City, I can tell you that it’s difficult to trace the exact, undisputed history of any dance form and how it finds its way into the hearts and minds of various communities. But I can say with confidence that the media played a lead role in introducing breaking to Koreans.

In a book titled Korean B-boy, published last year, well-known Korean b-boy Physicx (Hyo Keun Kim) of Rivers Crew wrote that breaking has had a presence in South Korea ever since an American crew called the New York City Breakers performed at Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Ball in 1985, and the event was televised on the Armed Forces Korean Network (AFKN). Throughout the 1990s, underground videos of b-boy practices and competitions from the U.S. and Europe found their way into Korea, and a fledgling community emerged. Soon, Korean pop groups like SeoTaiji Boys, Deux, H.O.T. and Se7en incorporated breaking and other hip-hop dances into their singing routines.

Many of the b-boys I’ve spoken with say they first became interested in hip-hop dance after seeing Korean pop singers and their “back-dancers” (Korean term for back-up dancers) performing on TV.

“I thought it looked cool, so I wanted to try it, and then I got sucked into it completely,” recalled 25-year-old b-boy Style Gun (Geon Woo Kim). He started breaking as a middle school student in his native Daegu and used to watch episodes of American “Soul Train” on AFKN before getting hold of his first copy of a b-boy video.

“After a year of just trying it out, and watching tapes, I started practicing for real,” he said. “I would practice for three to six hours a day with my close friends.”

For other b-boys like 19-year-old Dfiant J (Joon Han Kim), not only were pop groups major influences, so were Korean b-boy crews like Expression and People Crew, as well as a 1997 comic book titled Hip-Hop by Soo Young Kim. Dfiant J was 13 when he got hold of the book and learned how to perform some dance moves from reading it. Despite the fact that nearly all the boys in his middle school started breaking because of the popular Korean comic book, many of them quit after a few years.

Dfiant J kept dancing. “When I was 17, I met [the Korean b-boy crew] Floorgangz, and they taught me the history of breakin’, and the term b-boy, and the music, breakbeats, how they became breakbeats, about all the history, and how to approach the dance about the foundation and everything — how meaningful it is for a person to dance, and get to know himself by dancing.”

Although my introduction to breaking is far different from Dfiant J’s experience, I understand why he kept dancing. I know that we, like other b-boys and b-girls, share this common search for meaning and self-discovery through this style of dance.

When I inadvertently stepped into my first practice session in Brooklyn back in 2001 while researching an article about b-girls, I immediately felt at home. Something about the rhythm of the breakbeats and the physicality of this dance immediately spoke to my soul in a way no other dance form had. I spent most of my 12-year career loving modern dance, but always feeling slightly out of sync with my mostly white peers. In the breaking community, I found myself in a place where minorities were the majority.

As I started to master the basics of the dance, my teacher and mentor Breakeasy (Richard Santiago) explained that the ultimate goal was to incorporate one’s own background and experiences to create a unique style and flavor. The deeper I got into understanding hip-hop and b-boy history, the more I learned about myself. I finally found a place that allowed me to wear my Korean pride on my sleeve among the sea of other nationalities that people brought to the cypher (a circle formation where b-boying or emceeing happens) — and this pride translated into my breaking moniker, SeoulsoNYk. It combines my birth city with the city I now live in, as well as paid homage to Soulsonic Force, the band of hip-hop godfather Afrika Bambaataa.

Although Korean b-boys obviously didn’t face the same sense of racial isolation I did as a Korean in the United States, many did turn to breaking as a means to express themselves and perhaps the frustration they felt living in a society that often shuns those who don’t conform or meet traditional ideas of success.

“You have to consider the social factors that played a role in why [Koreans] became so powerful [in the breaking community],” observed Benson Lee, the director of “Planet B-Boy,” a documentary that premiered in April at the Tribeca Film Festival and follows five crews from four countries (including two crews from Korea) to one of the world’s most prestigious annual b-boy competitions, Battle of the Year (BOTY). “And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that hip-hop, as for every other community in the world, it’s an outlet of expression, but also of stress and social tension.

“There were so many things a lot of these dancers were challenged by in Korea, [whether] it was going to the army or not being able to get into the right university, and they were just dismissed as losers, sort of a disenfranchised sector of Korean youth,” added Lee. “They found b-boying and they realized they could do things through b-boying and express themselves and vent, as well as get recognition, like any other star, to some degree, like a pop star. They became like superheroes, not only in Korea, but throughout the world.”

Charlie Shin — a Queens, N.Y., native who moved to Seoul in 2000 originally to document b-boys, but then stayed to help build the scene — similarly thinks that Koreans have gravitated toward breaking as an outlet to express their han, which loosely translates as a pain that fills one’s soul. In the same way that Korean traditional pansori singing expresses years of suffering through Chinese, Japanese, Russian and American aggression, Shin thinks hip-hop culture, which is rooted in disenfranchised American minority communities, has become another way Koreans express their grief as an oppressed people.

“Our pain is not easily translated,” explained Shin. “I think when you add, like, b-boying, you allow what you have to be transferred into a different vehicle that is more easily understandable to other people. I think that’s what the b-boy’s appeal is. [Korean b-boys] took what they had, what makes them unique as a people, and they focused it through somebody else’s culture and made it their own.”

Like Lee, Shin also noted that many of the Korean youths who felt marginalized within Korean society were attracted to b-boying. The b-boys “figured out a way to exceed the boundaries put in place by Korean society,” said Shin. “Not only are they underdogs, they are like the dogs that have been kicked to the curb in Korea. They’re not [the] kids who study … Korean people love dance, [but] they always look at dancers, at ‘back-dancers,’ as not positive role models in society. But the b-boys kind of found their own place here.”

Far from being marginalized, b-boys in Korea today, after winning international notoriety, are being sought after to do commercials for major corporations and to spice up Korean tourism. B-boys are being dubbed the next big “export,” after cars, cell phones and Korean dramas. This past June, the Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) and the Seoul city government co-sponsored a b-boy competition called R-16 Sparkling, Seoul B-Boy Championship. B-boys are also being tapped for new theater productions that travel abroad. This institutional support b-boys are now enjoying has become the envy of dancers in other countries, but Korean b-boys will tell you that it still does not guarantee career stability.

How They Got So Good So Fast

Of course, JohnJay Chon remembers the time when b-boying was barely on the map in Korea. Chon, a Korean American who began breaking with his Seattle-based crew in 1992, started traveling to Korea in 1996 seeking out other b-boys to challenge.

“My attitude back then was ‘I’m a hardcore b-boy, so I’m going to go out and try to find people to battle,’ but there were no b-boys,” Chon recalled. On a trip back a year later, he finally connected with some dancers and a fledgling b-boy scene. Chon brought boxes full of b-boy videos not sold in Korea and discovered during subsequent return trips that the number of b-boys had grown. He continued to connect the two countries’ scenes by helping to organize major b-boy events in Korea and inviting high-profile American b-boys like Prince Ken Swift and Crumbs to visit the country.

Those familiar with the international scene credit Chon and Charlie Shin — who together formed a company called Cartel Creative in 2002 and produce Asia’s biggest b-boy events like R-16, TV shows and b-boy videos — with building the South Korean b-boy community and helping to showcase its members to the world.

The duo is proud of what Koreans have accomplished in a relatively short amount of time.

“We’re an ocean away from anything remotely hip-hop and, yet, [the Korean b-boys] were able to cling to certain elements of it and learned how to get good,” said Shin.

“When me and JohnJay first saw Korean kids winning and seeing white people clapping for us, it was an amazing thing. To get respect and to get acknowledgement from a culture that’s not yours by people that are not yours, applauding your excellence, years and years of cultural and racial bias just disappears.

“There are no boundaries in hip-hop,” Shin added. “In all elements of hip-hop, we can change it and f-ck with it every single day: the way something sounds, the way something looks, the way you interpret the dance.”

And the Koreans certainly bring something different to the dance form. What observers tend to notice most about Koreans is their sheer physical power in the form of their gymnast-inspired power move combinations like windmills (continuous back spins), flares (throwing one’s legs in a circular motion using only hands as support) and air flares (jumping from hand to hand in a circle).

“Power-wise, I’ve never seen anybody compete with them as a whole,” said Miss Twist (Colleen Moore-Soto), a legendary New York City b-girl also known for her mastery of power moves. She was impressed by the b-boys she saw perform in 2000 while visiting Korea as part of the cast of American b-boy show “Break! The Urban Funk Spectacular.”

“What I saw was amazing,” she said. “For example, their continuous ‘90s (one-handed spinning handstands) are crazy.”

Her husband Abstrak (Richard Soto) from Skill Methodz Crew also went on that tour and battled the Korean crew Expression unexpectedly at a show rehearsal. Abstrak, also a b-boy legend known for his inventive style, thought what the Koreans lacked in dance style (such as footwork), they made up for in their mastery of power moves. He added, “Sometimes I think we [American b-boys] take it for granted. Once you get good at something, you’re like, ‘Oh, I got it.’ But [Korean b-boys] take it extra-serious. We take it serious, but I think they are more focused. They’re more disciplined.”

I have to agree with Abstrak’s observation. I also can’t help but think that b-boying in Korea evolved so quickly due in part to our culture’s bba-li, bba-li (“hurry, hurry”), success-obsessed mentality. I’m sure my mother isn’t the only Korean mom who inculcated the idea that, “If you’re going to do something, do it the best.” Isn’t that how our parents and grandparents raised South Korea from third-world country to first-world status in a short 50-year period?

When Shin introduced me to some Korean b-boys and b-girls in 2001 before I started breaking, my jaw dropped upon hearing how intensely these guys practiced: from four to nine hours a day. Shin explained that Korean b-boys’ fierce dedication to their practices stemmed partly from the pressure to cram it all in before having to comply with their required two-year national army service, during which they might not have time to practice, or depending on their type of service, may not be allowed to dance at all.

Beyond their sheer power and highly disciplined work ethic, “The Koreans” are also making their mark on this scene creatively.

“What’s amazing in Korea that didn’t happen in the United States is that they actually embraced it on another level, which was more theatrical and more artistic,” noted filmmaker Benson Lee, who partnered with Cartel Creative to shoot the popular viral video “Run DMZ” (also known as “North Korean vs. South Korean B-boys”).

“My mind’s blown when I go to Korea now, and I see ads on the highway from the airport to Seoul of b-boy shows in Korea. They just have processed the dance so quickly into a commercially viable art form.”

This attitude toward creativity resulted in some amazing Korean b-boy videos like the first Expression Crew trailer. It reached my friend’s computer in 2002, and I remember watching slack-jawed at the short, action-packed preview clip. The brilliant editing of the clip set a new standard for b-boy video editing, with its exciting soundtrack introducing each member of the crew and showing his strongest ability. Even though he appeared to be no older than 10 years old, crewmember Mute executed 24 continuous air flares, something I had never seen a b-boy accomplish in New York.

The clip not only impressed my friend, KOM3 (Richard Scott), a b-boy from Breaks Kru New York, but it also influenced the way he trained. “As I watched more and more clips of them, I studied how to do certain moves. I adapted a certain movement that many of them had,” he recalled. “[The Koreans] have come a long way from 2002 when I first noticed them. They aren’t just doing things that I can’t do, but they’re creating things that no one can do or has done yet.”

Yes, Korean b-boys are now inspiring Americans, including my former roommate, Mastapeace (Mishi Kim) from Breaks Kru. She traveled to Seoul in 2002 and was introduced to a crew of Korean b-girls by Shin, who also invited her to a b-boy competition that summer. As a person who grew up in the South without a large Korean American community, she was profoundly moved when she saw a hip-hop event produced by Koreans and attended by a nearly all-Korean audience.

“Seeing that made me feel really proud of being Korean. [It was great] to see them repping hip-hop in a very pure way,” she said. “I was very motivated to train when I got back home because I saw how these girls who were right around my age were training harder than I was, harder than some of the guys in America. I wanted to be up on their skill level. There aren’t that many Korean American b-girls out there. It made me want to stand out as a representative.”

Although it seems b-boying is experiencing an incredible high in Korea, some worry that the scene has grown too fast.

“B-boying is like a boiling pot right now,” commented Style Gun. “But as soon as the fire gets turned off, everything gets cold very quickly. Then what’s left?”

“They’re trying to market this as the next Korean wave, so there’s this big boom right now, almost like the ‘80s (in the United States),” observed Shin of Cartel Creative. “JohnJay and I look at this in a good way because it gives us the biggest opportunities to get the biggest sponsors, but at the same time, we’re worried since there are so many people jumping into the field who only want to make money off of it.”

One wonders if just as quickly as the Korean b-boy scene was built up, it could fall apart. But all signs point to the idea that, as with the U.S. scene after the 1980s, breaking will never completely die in Korea, even if it loses its mass appeal. Whatever happens to this scene, no one can deny that Korean b-boys have already left their unique mark.

***

It’s been 16 years since I used to hit the floor of my middle school dances. Now when I hit the floor, it’s usually at practice sessions, clubs or b-boy battles like Freestyle Session 10, a long-running international breaking competition that I attended this past August.

At the Los Angeles event, my crew Fox Force Five was called to battle Rivers Crew, one of the oldest and well-known b-boy crews from Korea. Right before the battle began, a million thoughts raced through my mind. I thought about how humbled I was by the power of hip-hop culture. Breaking has become a language spoken by people all over the world and forged a common ground for people who share the same love of music, dance and hip-hop. I thought about the divergent, yet related paths that have led me, a Korean American b-girl, and my all-Korean opponents to the same battle cypher in Los Angeles in 2007.

Before I could fully contemplate how we all came to embody a dance created in the 1970s in New York City, the music kicked off and the battle started. My adrenaline surged and once again, nothing else mattered except for what was happening inside the circle — a circle that has allowed so many of us to feel like we’ve finally found home.

Know The Flow

Don’t know anything about b-boying? Learn these terms to fake the funk.

Although breaking is highly improvisational, a basic routine often includes the toprock, downrock, power moves and a freeze.

cypher: a circular formation that b-boys and b-girls stand around in, as people take turns dancing.

throw-down: a solo in the center of a cypher.

footwork: also known as “downrocking.” This is the part of the dance where one uses both arms and legs on the floor.

freeze: any time a dancer chooses to stop, end or accent a moment in his throw-down.

power (short for “power moves”): any type of athletic or gymnast-inspired movement that is executed continuously. Windmills (continuous backspins), 90s, airflares, flares, swipes, tracks and air tracks are some basic power moves.

toprock: the dance b-boys do while standing upright before going into footwork, power moves or any other move on the floor.

uprocking: first known simply as “rocking.” Created in the late 1960s by Rubberband Man and Apache in Bushwick, Brooklyn, it was practiced by gangs in the Brooklyn and Lower East Side neighborhoods of New York City to funk, rock and soul records. The dance was done where two lines of (usually) men faced each other and mimicked fighting with each other. The goal was to humiliate one’s opponent by “burning” them, and dancing for an entire record. People danced for the prize of the loser’s shirt, jacket, sneakers, or even girlfriends. Some consider this dance to be the immediate predecessor to b-boying.

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