Episode 68: Inside D.B. Entertainment with Jessica Jung’s Shine and Bright

A meeting of the K-Pop Book Club convenes with Old R of the K-Pop Sunbaes and Ellie! We read Jessica Jung’s Shine (2020) and Bright (2022) and dive into Jessica’s story as well as S.M. Entertainment, the inner workings of the K-Pop industry, graveyard witchcraft, and much, much more!

As I state in the episode, I remain a fan of S.M. Entertainment (at least for the time being) due to the consistently high quality of their output. You can listen to my four part series on TVXQ starting here and I don’t shy away from their hardball business tactics. Many of things discussed (such as the lawsuit from TRAXX’s No Min-Woo) should be linked from there, as well. But at the end of the day, I don’t have much recent K-Pop in my regular rotation but what I do have is from S.M. Entertainment—

Some of the things we mention are:

• Being suspicious about vanity credits from major artists. I’d misremembered the focus of the article but it still adds to the discussion. And Old R was remembering this incident where an S.M. employee listed his wife a songwriter.

• Shannon Williams talks about her experience at MBK.

• Big Tech owns your patents.

• The Aaron Carter-Hilary Duff-Lindsay Lohan “Love Triangle.”

• Justin Bieber’s origin story as a possible inspiration for “Jason Lee.”

• Jennie is strongly rumored to be friends with Jessica.

• Xia Junsu from TVXQ, whom we mentioned, is thriving on stage. And he also continues to put out new music. But it has been nice seeing him return to mainstream Korean consciousness with appearances like this absolutely charming (and English subtitled!) episode of 빨아삐리뽀 (Palabilpo).

• Bekah from After School is one of the better known idols from Hawaii. And Hawaii is also home to their very own idol group—Crossing Rain—which features ex-TOKIO member Yamaguchi Tatsuya’s son, Shotaro. (Throw these guys a stream! They’re adorable.)

• Tiffany Young wins an iheartradio award in 2019; a certain fandom pretends it didn’t happen and then gets out the callipers.

• Amber from f(x) talks about the struggles of being an Asian-American in the K-Pop industry.

• The false rumor about K’Pop which has become “fact” due to constant repetition and the K-Pop Sunbaes episode on the group.

• Explainer on the Larry Stylinson “BabyGate”

• Interview with Josh, Nayeon’s stalker.

• The WannaOne flight delay incident.

• BTS V’s stalker is arrested.

• VIXX is kidnapped in Kazakhstan.

• The circumstances surrounding the death of Kim Sung-Jae from Deux are still extremely contentious. The K-Pop Sunbaes have a “Just the facts, ma’am” episode on Deux if you’d like a primer. To be clear, the circumstances referenced in the episode were not grave robbery but rather vandalization of the gravesite because of… witchcraft. (And Old R says there is an episode on Kim Sung-Jae and the circumstances surrounding his death coming soon!)

• Unfortunately DNA evidence at the time of Sung-jae’s passing (1995) was likely treated like this. (Side note—watch Totally Killer!)

• Kakao executives arrested.

• Korean movie theater box office rigging.

• N.Flying Kwon Kwang-Jin leaves the group; then marries girl—his girlfriend at the time—that he had allegedly been “harrassing”. An example of an idol pushed out for rumors of sexual harassment where no sexual harassment had taken place. K-Pop stans may be able to think of other idols punished for rumors with very shaky evidence behind them. Whether that’s authorities fishing for evidence of things like drug use or anti-fans spreading fake rumors of sexual harassment, take every accusation with a grain of salt. Remember these idols are innocent until proven guilty. Do some idols do bad things? Absolutely. But also remember that many bad things are also covered up. TL;DR don’t take every scandal at face value.

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The songs played are:

1. “Fly (feat. Fabolous)” by Jessica (Official MV)

2. “Forever 1” by Girls Generation (Official MV)

3. “Twinkle” by TTS (Official MV)

4. “I Want Candy” by Aaron Carter (RIP; Official MV)

5. “Run For Your Life” by Tiffany (Official MV; Stan Tiffany!)

6. “The Rumor” by Billie

7. “Catallena” by Orange Caramel (Official MV)

8. 그림자 by K’POP (Check them out in action!)

9. “Grim Grinning Ghosts” (Haunted Mansion soundtrack)

10. “Peek-A-Boo” by Red Velvet (Official MV for some Spooky Season vibes)

11. “Bad Alive” by WAYV (Look, we’re all here for the Princess Dance Practice. Come back, Lucas!!!!!)

12. “Into the New World” by Girls Generation (Official MV)