K-Pop choreographer Bailey Sok brings her moves to Spotify: ‘As a Korean girl, I get so hype over it’

TikTok star Bailey Sok‘s Korean heritage plays a starring role in her work life as a K-Pop choreographer.

The 18-year-old dancer from Orange County, Calif., helped kick off the recent debut of Spotify Island’s K-Park digital destination on gaming platform Roblox, and she shared just how exciting the experience has been for her.

“As a Korean girl, I get so hype over it,” Sok told In The Know by Yahoo, before heading to Spotify’s Los Angeles campus for a dance party she was leading.

What Sok has especially enjoyed about K-Park is that the virtual world features more than just music — although she’s a fan of that as well. In fact, K-Pop star SUNMI already has virtual merch on the platform, and Stray Kids gear will be hitting the digital destination soon.

Credit: Spotify Island’s K-Park on Roblox

“It’s about the whole culture,” Sok said. “Whether it’s about the fans, the community [or] the food, everything is always connected in some way.”

K-Pop is always playing

Sok says K-Pop is always playing through her headphones. The Gen Z choreographer, who has nearly 4 million followers on TikTok and Instagram combined, has worked with a variety of contemporary Korean pop stars, but she says it’s the older K-Pop artists that she listens to on repeat the most. After all, those are the groups she listened to growing up as a Korean American girl in Southern California.

2EN1 is in there, BigBang, Girls’ Generation,” she said. “All of those groups. I just can’t help but get so hype.”

Having just celebrated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May and seeing K-Pop groups get even more of the spotlight, it’s especially meaningful for Sok to be sharing her dance skills with an even broader audience.

“It’s really, really beautiful to see groups like BTS and Blackpink in there,” she said. “It makes me so proud to be Korean and so proud to be everything that makes me me,” she said.

In fact, Sok loves seeing not only her heritage celebrated but others’ too.

“It’s never an inappropriate time to celebrate yourself and your heritage,” she said. “Be proud of who you are, and don’t be afraid to be yourself.”

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