By ELIZABETH ESCAÑO
CHANMI, Jo Sung Mo and Sooyoung.
To the average Filipino, these words probably mean nothing, but they are special for Jean Jaizel Margarejo. Jheng, as she is known by those close to her, is a certified Korean pop (K-pop) fan, cosplayer and performer.
In cosplay(costume play),a person dresses up as another person or character. Jheng, 19, cosplays K-pop idols and performs their songs and dances.
In regular life, Margarejo is a senior mass communication student in Far Eastern University. The daughter of government employees, she is the third of four siblings. They’re all girls, share the first name Jean and love K-pop.
“We first came to know K-pop through the Arirang(Channel). We were able to watch (the music videos) of Jo Sung Mo’s ‘Mr. Flower.’ He was really handsome,” Margarejo said.
Jo Sung Mo’s handsome face and singing skills got her hooked on K-pop. But unlike her sisters, her parents did not love K-pop.
“They did not like it because they could not understand (the Korean language). However, Mom was fond of watching koreanovelas,” she said.
At first, Margarejo was content watching K-pop videos at home, with the aid of subtitles. But a Facebook page changed all that and got her into cosplaying and performing as well.
The Facebook page was for people who were anti-XLR8, a Filipino boyband under the genre of Pinoy Pop or P-pop.
A meet-up was organized in a Makati noraebang (Korean term for karaoke joint). A dozen K-pop fans showed up, and some were already cosplayers. The administrator of the anti-XLR8 page, Athena, invited them to form a cosplay group.
“I did not know how to dance, but they encouraged me,” Margarejo said.
That was where the dance cover group Machal Hakkyo was born. (Machal Hakkyo is Korean for Friction School.) They copied the K-pop group Coed School, which had both male and female members. Margarejo cosplayed Chanmi, one of the girls.
They started on Oct. 23, 2010 and trained every Sunday till Dec. 11, when the 2nd Philippine K-pop Convention was held at the Philippine International Convention Center. Machal Hakkyo’s hardwork paid off as it won Grand Champion in the Group Category (Cosplay) in its debut. They also won in KPOP Nation 2010 as the Best Cosplay Group on Dec. 29.
“Wasn’t our debut amazing?” Margarejo said.
By March 2011, Machal Hakkyohad branched out into sections by gender, just like Coed School. Margarejo continued to cosplay Chanmi as part of Freak Dolls, a 5Dolls cover group. 5Dolls is the all-female sub-group of Coed School.
But an issue arose at a K-fest or Korean festival. “There was a nipslip (nipple slip). Athena told me to do another cosplay to erase the negative image,” she said.
On July 31, Margarejo cosplayed Sooyoung of Girls Generation in the 2nd Annual K-pop and Culture Festival as part of her new image. Her latest involvement is with Freak High, another cover group of Coed School that started in April 2011. She also debuted with A’s, a cover group for Brown Eyed Girls on Oct. 23.
It is not easy to finance her activities. “We save up from our allowance. Sometimes we borrow money. I only ask money from my mom when I have nothing left,” she said.
It’s no surprise that Margarejo has been told by her mom to stop cosplaying and performing. “Stop dancing. You won’t get anything from it,” she quoted her mom as saying.
But that hasn’t deterred Margarejo. “I just want to enjoy. It’s great because we are able to dance to the music we want. The talent that we are not able to show during high school and college, we are able to show (through cosplaying and performing),” she said.
And, just as important, she has built a strong bond with her group members.
“For as long as there is K-pop, many cover groups and as long as K-pop remains popular, we’ll continue covering. We told ourselves that anytime soon, it will be gone, so we need to keep doing it while K-pop lasts,” she said.
(The writer is a journalism student at the University of the Philippines-Diliman who submitted a version of this story to her Journ 101 class under VERA Files trustee Yvonne T. Chua.)
