SHINee performing in London (Photos courtesy of SM Town Facebook page)

MANILA, Philippines – Last month, K-pop boy band SHINee held an opening gala concert in London to celebrate the opening of the 6th London Korean Film Festival.

British and Korean expat fans in England trooped to the Odeon West End Theater to see the boy band.

With all the screaming and fan-girling moments, British newspaper The Independent says, “This is K-pop, and it may just be conquering the world.”

The tabloid published a feature titled “K-pop Craze: The K Factor” about SHINee and K-pop in general and the fans.

The writer, Holly Williams, said she was a bit doubtful about the so-called K-pop phenomenon but her view quickly changed when she saw the throng of fans.

“Initially I'm a little skeptical of just how big this K-pop craze really is – a doubt which evaporates on spotting excitable teens clutching homemade signs on the Tube, a queue snaking round the building and, inside, an extraordinary level of pent-up excitement,” she said.

Th sign that the gala concert would be a huge hit came out earlier when “Odeon reported that the demand for tickets crashed their website just one minute after they went on sale – and it remained down for five hours.”

The scene inside the concert venue was astonishing, The Independent article noted: “Inside, the atmosphere is feverish, and heavy with hormones. The fans – mostly teenagers, almost entirely girls – brandish camera phones with furious focus, and modulate the intensity of their shrieks as each boy-singer appears onstage,” it said.

The Independent said the level of how K-pop is being marketed “makes Syco [Simon Cowell's company] look like an underground punk collective.”

It likened the years of training that Korean singers undergo before debuting on stage as “’X Factor’ bootcamp, but going on for years.”

On SHINee, the newspaper said, “The result of this training is a slick, sharp, slightly soulless pop machine. Their dance routines – notionally sexy, with hipthrusts and pouting – remain curiously sanitized, if perfectly executed. Their singing voices are good, and while the songs are mostly in Korean, there's a fair smattering of English in their lyrics (‘Hello, hello!’ ‘Super crazy!’).”

The article noted that K-pop music is “very catchy.”

“Musically, K-pop hits most successful chart trends: it's bubblegum pop with hip-hop inflections, driven by electro dance beats and with an R&B-slick production finish. And it's catchy – very, very catchy. Having listened to a few tracks on YouTube in prep, I'm surprised to find much of their set is bouncingly familiar,” it said.

K-pop groups differ in style and image, the article said.

“2PM are seven boys who like to get their biceps and pecs out; Girls Generation are an extremely cute, perky nine-piece girl group who dress in matchy-matchy outfits; Super Junior, an overwhelming, 13-strong troupe of spiky-haired male pop poppets.”

It noted that the popularity of K-pop can be attributed to the internet.

“Most fans I speak to stumbled on a K-pop video, and then it's easy through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the bands' own websites to find plenty more. The worldwide web allows for worldwide domination, and the K-pop-pushing labels have got it sewn up,” it said.

But while K-pop is still trying to penetrate the West, the British newspaper predicts that K-pop will eventually become popular.

“Most of the British public may not yet share her enthusiasm, but be warned: as SHINee – and their fellow K-poppers – hawk their doe-eyes-and-tight-denim looks and their all-singing, all-dancing teen-appeal across the globe, the screams seem likely only to get louder,” it said.