Thursday 2013-01-24, 12:00am
The kids in the crowd want lights dimmed, an apparent prerequisite to see the abs belonging to the pleasant-looking young man onstage. “Take it off! TAKE. OFF. YOUR. SHIRT.” We are at Toronto’s Korean Canadian Cultural Centre for HallyuCon, one of North America’s first conventions devoted to Korean music, and if the unnamed object of this lust isn’t an actual K-pop idol, he’s a reasonable facsimile. The physical boy-band template leaps borders like any other universalist concept, although certain male idols favor outfits that would look avant-garde on One Direction.