Q: Who are you? A: My name is Peter and I've been running Bronx's Junkyard since 1998. I was originally born in S. Korea and moved to San Paulo, Brazil when i was 5. After my parents were able to get working Visa's we moved to Northern California when i was 10.
I was born in 1981, which makes me 30 years old as I write this. I love to eat and sleep. I have a passion for cars and motorcycles. My hobbies include watching movies, anime, manga, music, pc games, soccer, basketball, weight lifting, computer/tech, and photography.
Q: What the hell is Bronx's Junkyard?
A: There isn't a way to answer that questions with out going through the history of the site. But since I know there are visitors to the site coming from a Google search for Junkyard's in Bronx, NY; here is the answer in a nutshell.
Bjunkyard is currently a blog-style website that focuses on my personal life, and Korean pop culture. This includes my daily adventures to news and events of celebrities in Korea.
Q: Where did the name Bronx come from?
A: Remember Rumble in the Bronx by Jackie Chan? I didn't get it from that movie. I got this nickname when i was in 8th grade playing doom2, "bronx" just seemed like a cool name at that time.. and never changed it since.
That's where Bronx came from, and "Junkyard" stands for "A bunch of random junk I stuffed into a website".
History of Bronx's Junkyard
Bjunkyard was originally created to provide Music Videos, MP3's, and News(translated) to the English speaking audience. The original Kpop wave started back in 1999 when boys and girls were going gaga over Asian(specifically Korean) celebrities. So Bjunkyard was started to provide rich media and news articles to English speaking fans.
During the early stages of Bjunkyard(2002-2003), it was the largest website around. Some noteworthy mentions:
• Largest collection of Asian celebrity pictures
• #1 forum for Asian entertainment (based on traffic)
• Largest # of members in the forums
• #1 most visited website (based on Alexa.com) for Asian entertainment
• Ranked inside #1000 in Alexa's most visited websites (global)
If you are interested in knowing how the site evolved to become what it is now, keep reading. You can also click on the image thumbnails to see what the site looked like using the WayBackMachine.
1998 - 1999
Bronx's Junkyard was originally a fan site for Lee Hyori from Finkl. In 1998, after watching the music video Rubi, I totally fell in love with Hyori. I remember watching that video over and over and over (had it on repeat). Then i went on a picture frenzy downloading everything i could, buying stuff online and from local Korean stores. Around the same time, a good friend of mine Wayne aka Soso(a well known Starcraft player) was trying to meet Eugene from SES, and got his name on the Korean newspaper by dedicating his victories to Eugene; this gave me the idea, if i created a website that was totally devoted to Hyori with the largest picture gallery of her, i would be able to get her attention. So in 1998, Bronx's Junkyard "Hyori Shrine" officially launched.
2000 - 2003
The original response I received from visitors was insane. I was getting e-mails everyday asking for news updates and additional pictures. A year passed, and in 1999 I decided to merge all of my other web projects into a single website. I started off using Xoom.com and Geocities.com to publish my website. In 2000 Bjunkyard.com 2.0 came out and I purchased bjunkyard.com domain. New server, new host, new forums, new scripts, Japanese and Chinese sections added. These were truly the golden ages of Bjunkyard.
2004
Around this time, my personal life became hectic. I started a serious relationship and graduated College and was working full time. There wasn't much time to spend on Bjunkyard or keep up with all the news. There were also many incidents when I just wanted to take the site down. Hackers (haters) would come and get into the servers and mess around with some of the index data. There would be the occasional forum drama with the internet nerds that enjoy trolling behind a computer monitor. And of course, the hate. I believe that when you hit it big, you won't ever be able to please everyone; and the most outspoken group of people are the ones that aren't happy. They leave negative forum posts, or straight up hate mail.
Bjunkyard wasn't making any profit from advertisement or referral sales. Hence, my priorities in life changed. I started to neglect the site, and I began to feel sorry for my loyal visitors. Finally I decided to shift my duties to a long time friend/site administrator. We both agreed that I would look over Bjunkyard from the sidelines while he stepped up and took over the entire site.
2005 - 2006
The site's layout changed, and many of the functionality became dynamic by utilizing vBulletin's automated news feed add-on's. I was still updating the site from time to time, but Jet had taken the priority role as the site's leader. Bjunkyard was organizing raffles, prizes, and other events to it's members. Site traffic was very high, and there were talks on how to make it profitable. But, we could never find a business model that fit just right. Hosting mp3's were nearly impossible now because of the whole Napster deal. Uploading video downloads to file sharing sites like "Megaupload" were unreliable because of time limits. Streaming was a very plausible solution, but we didn't think of converting video files into flash (and we know who did, and are now millionaires *Youtube*). We finally ended up just doing torrents.
2007
This was the year, I totally distanced myself from Bjunkyard because "life" took the front seat. Bjunkyard was now managed by Jet and a dozen moderators. Actually we had many moderators before, but this was the year they were given more responsibility.I probably shouldn't have neglected Bjunkyard and should have stayed active. At the end of 2007, the site crashed and Jet went MIA. I know he was busy studying for his Phd, and I was busy with my own personal stuff.
2008 - 2009
Bjunkyard remained closed. I didn't really feel motivated to keep the site running by myself because it was too time consuming and unprofitable. Also, 08-09' were the dark years of my life. I was miserable with my life and Bjunkyard was the last thing on my mind that I wanted to worry about.
2010 - Present
After the long hiatus, I found my passion for blogging and kpop again. I also got out of New York and moved back to California to be with friends and family. I started playing sports again and got back into shape.
I wasn't exactly sure what to do with Bjunkyard, but I knew I wanted to bring it back to life. I was certain that traffic would be flat, considering Bjunkyard had lost most of it's visitors during the 2 year hiatus. There were also other sites that had consistently updated their sites and surpassed Bjunkyard in terms of traffic and members. Instead of trying to compete - I wanted to do something for me.
Hence, it's current morphed version of Bronx's Junkyard. Forums and gallery were reopened and my personal blog was transitioned into a hybrid news reel. I don't know what future will hold. Considering how many changes this site has faced, who knows what will happen. While it lasts, I plan on keeping it a place where people from all over the world can visit and leave with a smile on their face.