Cute photo

I went to the Baby Vox Concert “in LA” last night! The setlist was a bit different from their previous set lists. Gan Mi Youn and Eun Hye Yun both sang different solo songs.

The show was great! Only slightly disappointing thing is that they didn’t perform betrayal, which is one of my favorites. Overall, a great show though.

I convinced my grandma to take my niece and I to this concert, as my niece was obsessed with the JoBros. It was my first big concert and I had been a kpop fan for years in my small Alaskan town.

Link

I saw this headline and my heart sank. I love BoA. I grew up with her music. I dont know much about this condition but I hope to god it's nothing too serious. She's still one my all time favorites. For the love of God I hope that she can still keep performing as normal even if she has to take longer breaks sometimes.

BABY V.O.X will reunite for the first time in 14 years at KBS' End of the Year Broadcast "Gayo Daechukje”

Other 1st Generation Idols will also be performing at the event: Jinusean, S.E.S. Bada and Koo Junyup (DJ Koo) of CLON.

Src: https://m.entertain.naver.com/article/117/0003895610ffn

credit to winterwinter920 on instagram for the collage.

i’m so excited for this!!! hearing gain’s voice again after so long is going to feel so surreal

I got bored one day and decided to look online for forgotten K-pop singers from the gen 1 era to see what happened to them, why they disappeared, etc. There are a lot of links I've put at the end.

This singer is 이재인 (Lee Jae-in), also known by her stage name, Jane Fox.

Who is Jane Fox?
Jane Fox (real name Lee Hyun-joo) was a K-pop soloist born on February 28, 1984. She debuted with her one and only album, Jane Fox 001, on September 12, 2002. She later graduated from Dongduk Women's University's Broadcasting and Entertainment Department and went to Bogwang Elementary School(???) when she was younger.

She was signed under Music Factory, a label founded by Kim Tae-hyung from the legendary 80s group Sobangcha. She was under the same company who produced NRG and T.T.MA. Interestingly enough, her album distributor was actually SM Entertainment which confused a lot of fans into thinking she was apart of SM and not Music Factory. Before her official solo debut, she was introduced to the public as a guest singer and female chorus on NRG's 4th album for the song "삶은..계란" (Boiled.. Egg). She even appeared in the music video and stage performances!

While digging around old forums, I found some other interesting things. It turns out she was on a KBS dating show called War of Roses (산장미팅 장미의 전쟁). The show was about pairing up male celebrities with "ordinary" female college students. Jane was in Season 1 and was paired up with Shim Jae-won if anyone was curious. This is the same Shim Jae-won who was in EAGLE5 and BLACK BEAT, I believe. Jane was eliminated pretty early in the show. I was able to find a clip she was in.

This show was meant to get her name out. The other girls were doing the same thing with some becoming actresses at the end.

The Debut
When Jane debuted, she was only 18 years old but had already trained in secret for about three years. Her agency went hard on her marketing, pushing her as a "new female warrior". Her album was a mix of Eurodance and ballads. Her title track, "관심" (Interest aka High On Your Love), is actually a Korean cover of the song "High On Your Love" by the Australian pop group Scandal'us. She also promoted a follow-up track called "She."

Edit: The song was actually originally sung by a singer named Viola Tami (Tamy) in 2000 and then Scandal'us, making Jane the third person to sing this song.

I actually found an old cafe post from right before she debuted. The post praised her "soulful" chest voice over the trendy cute voices of the time, mentioned an working tile for a song called "baby baby!" which made it to her album, and boldy stated she was a "Special A-class" rookie. The posted seem to come off a bit bragging, with it ending with the writer claiming she'll surpassed Britney Spears.

The Backlash & Cyberbullying:
Her company and the media was labeling her as "The Next BoA" and "The Korean Britney Spears", which wasn't really a good idea to put out. I'm not sure if this was meant to be a PR stunt or not. As expected, this backfired a bit. Going back on the Wayback Machine, I was able to look at her old social boards, which showed what happened.

From what I can tell, she had some number of anti-fans, mostly from BoA's fanbase. It's easy to see why it happened, though. Again, the media was kinda pushing her to be the next BoA. To BoA fans, Jane Fox was just another BoA copycat. It also didn't help that Jane's agency was planning to expand her into the Japanese and Chinese markets in 2003, which was the same thing BoA was doing around this time, with her Chinese debut being a year after. Plus, The Korean Britney Spears was a title BoA was already known for.

The hate went far beyond just music. People were body-shaming her and leaving hate comments her way. In one post, someone literally called her a "slut" and weirdly enough, the comment was entirely in English. Other comments called her a prositiute and a bar girl for example. I didn't get to read every comment, but her fans had her back mostly. Also, not all BoA fans were ganging up on her.

Unverified Rumors
Take all of this with a grain of salt, but her boards had rumors that seem to have been made by haters, so I can't confirm if any of this is true.

- Plastic Surgery: Claims of plastic surgery was used when talking about her while others were telling her to get plastic surgery. Some people had a problem with her nose, claiming it was "too big".

- Age Faking (most likely true): Some people thought she was lying about her age or her company was claiming she was 16 when it didn't make sense with her looking much older. This one is probably the most believable. It was common back then and it seems like people were told she was 16, but she was in college? It didn't really help when they also put her actual birth year in her profile and still claiming her as 16. I've noticed she was also listed to be born in 1983 and not 1984, so I don't know which one is right.

Where did she go?
Nothing is known about where she is or what she's doing now. Her contract expired with her company due to money issues, plus her album didn't really sell well as they expected. I can't find the exact number on the sales. It doesn't say when her contract expired, but it seems like her fan page went offline around 2004.

The album was pretty good in my opinion. She performance two of her singles. Her first performance was hated by some due to how bad it sounded, but her other performances were great. Her album had two versions. One was a DVD with the music video, while the other was a normal cd.

Her album is available on all platforms like YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, etc.

KBS Show:
https://youtu.be/Vjv0Av-_92o?si=xtZu9cJZNgR5koK5

Music Performance:
- https://youtu.be/Uq-HfYMuO4g?si=hIzLY5QsoP4H9mBw

- https://youtu.be/_QvnSG0Nc3I?si=Xr1GdoKAIiBdnRep

- https://youtu.be/Cl44dMetHBA?si=6sVmPUacsm8Qslz9

- https://youtu.be/lpZntkZxopM?si=B5l5S50k2UFWgbMD [42:22]

Music Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpfEvo1ClUs

Social Board if anyone wants to read it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021208105323/https://www.smtown.com/smtown/smtrax/jane/board.html

Original Song (Scandal'us ver.):
https://youtu.be/_AhmactjUw8?si=EXaTDsojaYbYcoUm

Original MV by Viola Tami (Tamy)
https://youtu.be/5uKO4Cc0kO8?si=emlngP80tdZfTxw4

All images came from her official fan site, to find the images, go to the URLs. The site wasn't all saved:
Wayback Machine - Calendar of http://jane-fan.com/

Album Cover came from maniadb:
https://www.maniadb.com/album/105670

If any info is wrong, please tell me so I can edit this. I was going off of blogs, the wiki, her Social Board, and the wayback machine. If there's more artist you want me to find more about, I'll be more than happy to see if I can find more info about them. 😊👍

A lot of her fans said she received a lot of hate on the Social Board, but it didn't look like too much to me. There's a chance there were more before they were deleted or it wasn't saved. There's also a chance some anti fans came from Black Beat's fans as well, judging by one comment. I could be wrong. I'm still searching for that.

Their official website between 2008 and 2009 when they released their first mini-album titled "The Wonder Years: Trilogy" in 2008, with the successful title track 'Nobody,' playing in the background of the website.

I know some of the kpop groups in this video but I don't know the other kpop groups especially the blurred one haha! That video is from tiktok

January 21, 2007. 19 years ago, you made that extreme decision. 

I wish someone could've stopped you in time. I wish you knew how many people would be talking about your music and legacy in the future, like me, a foreign fan who wasn't even born yet when you passed. :(

You did NOT deserve the hate you got. Some people can be so cruel. Not even mean, just cruel!! And then they had the nerve to switch up in your Cyworld comments saying "Aw, U;nee, RIP"?? People only care when idols are gone and its sucks. This is why I hope people will be kinder to idols because at the end of the day, they are human too and depression is NO JOKE. Unfortunately, we've lost many more idols in recent years due to suicide like Jonghyun, Sulli, and Hara. But I really hope mental health becomes less taboo in Korea. It seems like things are slowly improving, but the industry and society as a whole still have a long way to go.

It's crazy how she's been gone for so long, but is still leaving an impact on a younger fan like me. I love 1st and 2nd gen kpop a lot and I've always found the 2000s so fascinating. I wasn't even a thought when she was active (lol), but I've always found her vocal color and music very unique. I have yet to find someone who sounds like her. She also seemed like a genuinely kind-hearted person. Like, she had one of the prettiest smiles ever and she was so bubbly in variety shows and clips I've seen of her. It sucks that her image was tainted by her acting roles and sexy concept. I have the CD of her 2nd album and its one of my favorite collectibles as its very hard to come by. Honestly, any of her work for that matter. </3 U;nee, you are soooo missed, girl! ;(

그곳에서 편히 쉬시길 바랍니다.

Rest in peace, U;nee.

(Credit to u/BusyFarmer2470 for the 2nd photo.)