The date is currently January 10, 2012 and that means it’s Indieful ROK’s 4th anniversary! It’s been another great year for the blog – it’s been fantastic to see the number of readers, subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and last.fm group members grow and I cannot thank you enough for your support.

Since February Indieful ROK has also gotten on the radio with regular segment Indieful ROK Spot on tbs eFM’s Indie Afternoon where Widhi has done a fabulous job helping me out. I’m more than a little grateful to refresh_daemon for all his work with the I Am A Singer commentary series, also inviting Widhi and The Korean to share their opinions, keeping the blog from complete silence when I was otherwise occupied.

Speaking of which, it’s been another great year for me personally as well. I got married to the most awesome guy I ever met, not just once but twice (photos!). After the second time there was also the glorious wedding show and fantastic after party, with friends and family from Sweden and US making it all the more special. And a honeymoon to the little known but very friendly island of Nauru, where my husband and I suddenly ended up on national TV, being celebrity spotted the next day while swimming.

Another milestone of the year was getting my master’s degree, which meant I could finally allow myself to move on with the plans for a full site dedicated to Korean indie music. Korea Gig Guide was launched approximately at the same time as Indieful ROK, and Mark Russell and I have vaguely discussed a joint project since. As those last few pages of my thesis that had remained unwritten for the last three years got some worthwhile contents I happened to mention the idea of a Korean indie music portal to Chris Park of wakesidevision. He pushed us to actually made something out of all of those ideas and early October Korean Indie saw the light of the day.

And Korean Indie is where I’ll be focusing most of my efforts from now on. You’ll be able to find the usual mini interviews and the occasional feature post from me on the main site alongside reviews and more provided by Mark and Chris. For the more news related contents, there’s Korean Indie News that I’ll be updating whenever I have the time – make sure not to miss the continuously updated page with upcoming releases! For the outgoing links that were always meant to be the core contents of this blog, we now have Pinterest. Oh, and we’re on Facebook and Twitter too. It may seem a bit shattered, but I’m confident this will lead to higher quality contents throughout. And to top it off we’ve got the best trick up our sleeve yet to be revealed!

This does not mean that I’ll let go of Indieful ROK. It’s been some truly remarkable years, with the last one in particular bringing plenty of unexpected but much appreciated attention from random sources – one of my proudest moments being Indieful ROK named blog of the month by 10 Magazine in December. What I’ll do is I’ll keep posting the charts regularly, albeit without the new release information that’ll instead be posted on the news blog when applicable. I’ll also turn the blog more personal, offering regular posts summarizing what’s going elsewhere and offering a bit of commentary.

Again, thank you so much for your support during the years that have passed. As Indieful ROK now readies itself to transition into a new format I hope you will still want to drop by every now and then to see what’s happening here, all the while not being shy to turn to Korean Indie for an even more dedicated coverage of the Korean indie music scene.