(upbeat groovy music) Danny: I never liked it. You know, I grew up in the church. Idol is something you're not supposed to have.

Amber: It's a very heavy word. I don't want to be worshipped. Don't worship me please.

Do not worship me. (crowd laughing) (upbeat groovy music) (crowd cheering) (crowd chanting "H. O.

T. ") (crowd chanting "H. O.

T. ") (upbeat groovy music) (rewinding sound) (H. O.

T. singing) Bernie: H. O.

T. provided a preview, a first look of what the future of K-Pop was gonna look like. Hit me.

(hip hop music) (upbeat music) (soft rock music) (upbeat pop music) ("Warrior's Descendant" by H. O. T.

) ♪ ("Warrior's Descendant" by H. O. T.

) (cheering and screaming) (cheering and screaming) Bernie: The fan culture was something I had never seen before. These fans would not only obviously wait in front of the TV stations or the radio stations, often in front of the houses. At times it was fascinating.

At times it was a little scary. (crowd screaming) (light pop music) ("I'm Your Girl" by S. E.

S. ) ("I'm Your Girl" by S. E.

S. ) ♪ Stay with me last forever ♪ Bernie: I just remember that there was this weird rivalry between the fans of H. O.

T. and Sechskies. In the same way that, um, guys are into say, English Premier League teams, and are just decked out whether it's Manchester United Red or Chelsea Blue, that's kind of the same thing with K-Pop fans.

(crowd cheering and screaming) (electronica jazz music) ♪ My name is Danny. Um, I'm from a group called 1TYM and we debuted in the late 90s from YG Entertainment. Teddy is the leader of 1TYM.

We went to high school together in L. A. and we actually met YG together.

YG himself he was in Seo Taiji and Boys, they broke up. He started producing and making music and then out of the blue, he came out with this group called Jinusean. When we first saw them on the shows it was like, we really liked their style.

I mean, I loved it. That was when, yo, that's what we want to do. (Jinusean singing) Danny: I think YG wanted something different.

He wanted to be different. He wanted to present people with different things and his favourite music was hip hop music. I think we were fresh.

1TYM was fresh. A catchy baseline. ♪ Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum ♪ ♪ Dum dum dum ♪ ("1TYM" by 1TYM) ♪ Danny: We weren't the clean cut boys that had every move down or anything like that.

I mean, we weren't H. O. T.

idols and stuff. But, I think that also made us stand out. What we kinda wanted to do was like, hey listen, be a hip hop group that's numbe one and then, you know, like, oh, hip hop is on the scene.

("1TYM" by 1TYM) ♪ 1TYM is one time for your mind ♪ Danny: We were like the outsiders of the music industry at the time. We were not that approachable but 1TYM is most definitely K-Pop. I don't shy away from that, we were K-Pop for sure.

("1TYM" by 1TYM) (soft dance music) Look at me and look at them. I-I'm not them. I could never be them.

It came to us, we're like, oh, hey, yeah, we'll do it. You know, even without really knowing what we're signing up for. Oooh.

(background laughter) Joon: It's like "Three Men and a Baby" almost, but reality, you know? What do you know about kids? I don't, you know, I just know that they eat and they poop and they pee and they go to sleep.

Joon: That was 2000. You know, the creatives, they were way ahead of the time. It was the number one rated TV show out of anything!

One, two, three, whuh! (god singing) (H. O.

T. music) (crowd chanting H. O.

T. ) (H. O.

T. singing) (H. O.

T. singing) Bernie: Lee Soo Man. He had H.

O. T. and then he had S.

E. S. And so we were starting to see the early stages of the Korean Wave.

He created a roadmap of where the industry needed to go. (lively music) (soft dance music) ♪ What if we make K-Pop international?