NYPD teamed up with K-Pop boy band Big Ocean Tuesday to surprise students at St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf to empower children living with impairments.
Big Ocean are K-Pop’s first hard-of-hearing act who have dedicated themselves to sharing their story of resilience while also spreading awareness on hearing impairments and breaking through barriers. After learning about the NYPD’s initiatives in working with the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, and vice versa, both the boys in blue and the performers banded together to spread a message of hope.
“Here we practice American sign language, but [Big Ocean] gets to bring a different insight which is Korean Sign Language (KSL) and they incorporated International Sing Language (ISL) into their performance. I think it’s a great engagement piece with the students here, just letting them know that the deaf community can be involved in musicals, performances or dancing, and just arts and craft. They bring a spotlight to that,” NYPD Detective Angel Familia said. He also admired that Big Ocean utilizes vibrating watches and other metronome technology that enables the group to stay on rhythm.
Big Ocean’s members Hyunjin, Chanyeon, and Jiseok are hard-of-hearing musicians. At three years old Hyunjin lost his hearing after a severe fever. He underwent cochlear surgery and began to find solace in music. Chanyeon was 11 years old when he too suffered from a fever and lost his hearing. He underwent cochlear implant surgery and is now the group’s main rapper. Jiseok, the youngest member was born hard-of-hearing and became passionate about K-Pop music thanks to his love for dance.
Each of these young men have persevered through stereotypes and social stigmas that attempted to dictate their future. They were constantly told that they would only lead a life of limitation by society, but they were not discouraged from their dreams. They found a kinship between each other and music and spent about two…
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