How 12 year olds see SHINee in Korea o.O

Questions will occasionally pop up via ask.fm about how SHINee is perceived in the general Korean populace. I should start off by saying I hate generalizing people. I feel really stupid if I try and speak for an entire group, because there's always going to be people who have a different opinion on the situation. Truth is unless we take a poll of the Korean population we're not really going to know how popular SHINee is but I'll try and give you a vague idea from my own observations.

So I would say that SHINee is hell popular in the online I-fandom. I wouldn't try and rank them but SHINee's got a pretty enormous International following. However in Korea I think that your age kind of determines what Idol group you're into. I get a great idea of this working in schools. My kids are elementary age so my upper elementary girls (I have very few if not no boys who are into Idols) are completely smitten with EXO. At my last school my girls were into a broader range. Grade 6 kids really liked Nu'est and EXO and my grade 5 girls had a thing for B1A4 and Infinite. A few of my boys really liked Big Bang and CNBlue but Big Bang have fans literally from every age range and background ever. I would hazard to say they may, just maybe, the most popular Idol boy group ever.

From what I hear from fellow teachers in Middle School Beast, EXO and Infinite are kind of trendy and as you get into High School EXO and Big Bang. I keep saying EXO but you literally can find EXO fanatics of all ages. They're crazy in trend and snuck up quickly.

In terms of SHINee they have at least a few fans from all age ranges. Some of my kids will say they like Minho or Taemin or Onew. Sometimes I feel like they're just humoring me though because they know I'm a fan of SHINee. I do have one little girl who really likes Taemin and watched One Fine Day. And one of my grade 4 boys told me his mum was a big Minho fan. Which leads nicely into what I think SHINee's consumer group is: Noona's. I mean you had to have seen it coming. I'm Key's age and if I talk to Korean fans the first thing I usually get asked is how old I am. And I'm usually on the young end of the scale. SHINee marketed to older girls when they debuted and that has kind of stuck. Now they definitely have their fair share of fans that are the same age or younger, but I still feel like the majority of people I see at fan events are older than SHINee. Even if I'm just talking to general people's in public, tends to be older fans that like SHINee. I'm not even talking University age, because even University age girls seem to be EXO fans now-a-days. I'm talking women who are graduated and working.

Talking about the general public from what we've read in various articles, SHINee are well-liked but not phenomenally popular. Really big names in Idols have always been Big Bang, DBSK and maybe SNSD. Most people know of SHINee when I bring them up though. Back in 2010 when I brought SHINee up to a random Korean person, 50% of the time I would have to explain that they were an idol singing group. Nowadays most, if not all, people know who SHINee are they just might have trouble with names. My coworker was trying to name SHINee in a picture yesterday and pointed at Jonghyun and said it was Key. She said the last time she'd seen Key he'd been blonde so that's why she was confused I guess. I think a lot of people recognize SHINee based on their Dream Girl era looks because nowadays if my kids are trying to name SHINee from a photo they get Jonhyun and Key mixed up because they expect Key to be blonde and Jonghyun to be brunette.  Also I would say that Minho is definitely the one people recognize or tend to name straight away. I have a feeling Key's going to sneak up on Minho in general public popularity what with all his variety show appearances lately, but only time will tell.

Dream Girl was definitely the most popular of SHINee's three title songs in 2013. However SHINee's most recognizable song to date is probably still Ring Ding Dong though, which I find bizarre. I mean don't get me wrong, it's an awesome song but certainly not SHINee's best by a long stretch. However the year it came out SHINee experienced a jump in popularity. Whenever I go to gym and the trainers decide to play SHINee for me, a random gym goer will pipe up and request Ring Ding Dong. I also remember a few old guys breaking out into Ring Ding Dong back in 2010 when they heard the name 'SHINee'. That or you'd say SHINee and someone would say: Ring Ding Dong, right?

I guess what I'm trying to say is SHINee have a pretty good public reputation. They're seen as good, hard-working kids who haven't been caught doing anything scandalous or stupid. They're not phenomenally popular but they're certainly not some nugu group. I can tell you right now, ask the average Korean person who Got 7 or VIXX are and they'd think it was a soda or something.

Bonus:

My students can be really cute when they're not being demon children. I often mention that I like SHINee because it's something familiar I can use to try and get them talking to me in the beginning. But it's really ridiculous how many EXO fans there are in my classes. I have girls who are trying to convert me to EXOism. My desk is littered with pictures of Tao because I made the mistake of mentioning I thought he was handsome once. 

I had a student called Taemin and he was the biggest troublemaker in the entire universe. But he bought a Taemin L holder for his English sheets and every time I walked past his desk he'd pick it up and say: Taemin (point at the folder), Taemin (point at himself). Then he'd give me a big thumbs up.

A girl from my first ever class came to my office one day to shyly hand over an Etude House SHINee poster she had at home. Another girl would come into my office and draw Teacher Min x Minho fanart (o.O she shipped 2Min, I dunno?). 

One of my little boys would run up to me every time he saw me and ask me if I knew the latest SHINee news: his big sister was a massive Jonghyun fan and no doubt subjected him to everything SHINee.

I had this little comedian in my grade 6 class who would sing 'Her whisper is the Lucifer' whenever I walked into a room and when I got cross with him for talking in class he'd start singing Dream Girl in an effort to make me forgive him. 

One of my grade 6 girls made computer decorations out of Post notes by writing 'SHINee loves Ms Min' and 'Kibum loves Ms Min' over and over in highlighters and sticking them all around my computer screen. It was the cutest thing ever ^.^

I just got out of my grade 6 class and in break time I always play SHINee Everybody if I can get away with it. It was so cute, all the girls were freaking out and giggling and blushing whenever Taemin's shirtless scene came out. I was teasing them and they were like: Teacher we love abs ^.^~~ Also whenever Kibum came on screen they'd scream and cheer for him because they know how much teacher likes him~~ My cute sweet little girls <3