In the early hours on Thursday, Nov. 29th, a direct message was sent to the inbox of Kpop Club’s Instagram page, asking for a very special request. Melinda Barrett ‘20, Social Media Manager of K-Pop Club, opened the message from a user that claimed to be on the production team of the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA), one of Asia’s largest and most popular music award shows. The message was asking permission to use one of K-Pop Club’s performance videos in a montage for the show.

“It didn’t feel real at first. It felt way more likely that we were getting pranked than that the people who inspire us to keep doing this would actually see all the effort we put into their stuff,” Barrett said. “I was really excited at that thought that the people who inspire me to put all this effort into K-Pop Club would notice it, even briefly.”

The user from Instagram linked the video they were requesting permission to use, which was K-Pop Club’s pep rally performance from Sept. 9, a video that has gained over 300 thousand views on YouTube. K-Pop Club has had a YouTube channel for over two years, and their channel has steadily grown since the first video they posted. They post videos of their pep rally performances and local non-school events and now have well over two thousand subscribers. After opening the message, Barrett and the executive officers of K-Pop Club discussed the legitimacy of the message, and after investigating the user, agreed to give the user permission.

“It felt surreal, I thought it was a prank,” said Michelle Huang ‘19. “I couldn’t believe it happened to us and it felt like a great honor.”

MAMA has been held in Asia since 1999 and have awarded major music awards to top Asian artists, such as Big Bang and BTS. Originally a South Korean award show, MAMA has expanded outside South Korea to feature artists from all around Asia. Millions of fans worldwide have watched and attended the award show every year. This year, MAMA was held in three locations for the second time: South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. South Korea and Hong Kong had the same theme of Icarus, while Japan had the theme of Fans’ Choice. The message K-Pop Club received did not specify which location the video would potentially be used at or how much of the video would be used, but officers suspected the video would be shown at MAMA Japan as the theme of Fans’ Choice would be the most appropriate category. After telling the rest of the K-Pop Club members that were in the performance video about the news, the members had to stay quiet until the show aired, as the message had asked to keep the information confidential.

Only two days later, K-Pop Club received an email from the same Instagram user requesting permission for yet another video. This time, it was a video from last year at the blacklight pep rally.

Early morning on Wednesday, Dec. 12, K-pop Club member Victoria Chandler ‘20 was awake watching a live stream of MAMA Japan, anxiously waiting to see if K-Pop Club’s video would be included in the show. Finally, Chandler spotted their video from Sept. 9th in a montage introducing nominees for the Best Female Dance Performance award and quickly let the K-Pop Club members know of the news.

“When I first saw our club on the Mnet Asian Music Awards, I couldn’t believe it. It was like a dream come true,” said Chandler.

K-Pop Club’s second video was not used in the last award show held two days later at Hong Kong, but K-pop Club members remained optimistic. Member Nishka Kuttanna ‘21 felt very proud of her fellow members’ feature, saying “It’s such an honor and I can’t believe that we got recognized for or members’ hard work and dedication. To think that we were briefly on Korean TV is awe-inspiring.”

K-Pop Club was just one of many other fan covers from all over the world that were featured in the MAMA Japan show.

“Even though the clip of our video was short,” Chandler said, “it was still amazing for it to be seen by millions all around the world.”