The K-Pop Kiss of Death
I started writing a post on the latest entry of the K-Pop clickbait files—this ridiculous piece from NBC News titled “A K-pop star was photographed kissing a woman. Fans decided he should be fired for it.” (And just to be clear, I have no investment in whether or not Seunghan is returned to RIIZE, I’m only looking at the reaction to it. The specifics of the Seunghan fans’ corrections to the NBC article are available here.)
That article was published on October 22, 2024.
And then the plot thickened.
On October 24, 2024, Kim Tae Ho, COO of Hybe/CEO of Hybe subsidiary Belift, testified in front of the Korean National Assembly regarding the findings of an audit of Hybe. (Hybe Chairman Bang Shi-Hyuk didn’t attend, presumably because he was at the Asia Society “Game Changer” Awards in New York City that day. Totally unrelated hypothetical: is enshittification game changing?)
A lot of provocative stories have emerged in the wake of that hearing—including speculation that it was Hybe behind the initial leaks of Seunghan’s photos—but none seem to have made it to any of the English language mainstream entertainment news outlets or even the music clickbait outlets like Rolling Stone (although Billboard did post about Bang Shi-Hyuk at the “Game Changer” awards). Koreaboo and AllKpop have been burning up the web on this story but it’s absolute crickets from other places.
Does the absence of stories that makes Hybe look foolish mean anything? Are these outlets just waiting to publish sober and well researched articles or—and hear me out because this might be crazy—is it possible that those types of music “news” outlets don’t actually care about K-Pop but are happy to print a pre-packaged story on K-Pop if it’s served to them as free content by a PR team from, to take a random example, Hybe?
I’ll be keeping an eye out for any coverage by the financial press but I’m not holding my breath for NBC News to cover the Hybe audit.
Just some food for thought.
Anyways, for those who haven’t been following this Seunghan saga, here’s the TL;DR:
July 2023, SM Entertainment announces the debut of a new seven member boy group called RIIZE for September 2023.
Early August 2023, photos were spread online of member Sohee allegedly at a “hunting bar” (a place to go when you’re looking for casual hookups). This eventually blew over as nothing.
Late August 2023, intimate photos began circulating online of member Seunghan allegedly first posted by an account claiming to be the girl in the photos and a minor. The original post was deleted; the general consensus among fans seems to be that the original poster was not the girl in the picture nor was she underage. But I haven’t seen that confirmed anywhere and if she wasn’t the poster, it is unclear how the photos—which appear to be taken by Seunghan himself—were obtained by the original leaker. (Again, the Hybe dossier may reveal something here.)
August 30, 2023, Seunghan issued an apology saying he had been reckless.
September 4, 2023, RIIZE debuts with “Get A Guitar.”
November 16, 2023, a private Instagram live was leaked on X, showing Seunghan and TXT’s Soobin bantering crassly, including a mention of Le Sserafim’s Eunchae. Soon after, footage of Seunghan smoking was leaked with the promise of more scandalous leaks to come.
November 22, 2023, Seunghan is announced to go on indefinite hiatus.
October 11, 2024, Seunghan is announced to be returning to the group; controversially, some fans responded to this news by sending funeral wreaths to the SM building.
October 13, 2024, Seunghan is announced to be leaving the group and fans opposed to the fans who sent the funeral wreaths kick up a righteous fuss.
But let’s dig into this article [emphasis added].
K-pop star Seunghan was banished for almost a year from his boy band, RIIZE, amid backlash over leaked photos showing him kissing a woman when he was a trainee — behavior considered unacceptable by some fans who expect their idols to remain single and have wholesome images.
Now a different group of mostly international fans is pushing back, expressing support for Seunghan and condemning what they see as corporate caving to bullying by toxic fans.
At the top of the article we have the main theme: K-Pop fans in Korea are hysterical prudes who want to control every aspect of an idol's life. This is directly contrasted with the international (read: non-Asian) fans who are more open-minded and gracious.
We can already tell how this story is going to be framed because the author describes what’s happening in the photo as “a kiss” when context clues from one of the photos appear more like it’s pre-sexual encounter at a love hotel. Seunghan is also kind of smirking at the camera, which he’s holding. This isn’t an innocent couples photo from a photo booth or something where they’re wearing silly hats like in a romantic K-drama. Seunghan is about to fuck and he is capturing that moment in a selfie. You may find it hot or you may find it kind of crass but I think “kiss” is severely underplaying what was leaked.
[Edited to remove the photo—you may check them for yourself at various K-Pop gossip sites.]
The NBC article then diligently goes through the greatest hits of English-language K-Pop coverage. The only thing missing is a gratuitous “unlike other K-Pop groups…”
We have the journalist who appears to have seized on the story because it had generated some heat on X. A quick scroll through her X feed shows her asking users for content for various other viral stories.
There’s also the complete lack of Korean cultural context. For instance, Korean women are very sensitive to things like intimate photos taken and shared without consent because of the rampant problem with molka--illegal hidden cameras meant to capture women in intimate situations with the footage used for pornography (and blackmail). That seems like an important flag to raise when discussing why female fans in Korea might be upset that an idol was taking selfies during sex that he was careless enough with that they were leaked, even if we assume that Seunghan had innocent intentions, I think it’s understandable that some fans would be upset at his recklessness.
Then there’s the use of “expert sources” of dubious expertise. Making an appearance is Stephanie Choi, who has previously written for the BTS fan run magazine Rhizomatic Revolution Review.
Here’s Stephanie on why BTS isn’t K-Pop:
* if we point out that the term K-pop is generalized by the West as “manufactured, voiceless, and agency-free machines”;
* because unlike other Korean idol groups that eschew using politics as marketing strategies, BTS actively uses political themes in their production and promotes them as part of their identity.
Also making an appearance is Hye Jin-Lee who lists a quote in a Refinery29 post on an official faculty bio page [emphasis added]:
“When singers [in the U.S.] drop an album, the core content is the songs that are contained in the album,” Dr. Hye Jin Lee, a clinical assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism whose research concerns cultural meanings of pop culture, tells Refinery29. “But in K-pop, which is so visually-oriented, it's about the concept. It's about the total package, including the visuals. So, for the album, it's not just about the music — it's about conveying the ideas and interpretation of the songs and the intention of the artists as well.”
So that’s the level of “expertise” that we’re dealing with here. An academic who thinks BTS is not K-Pop because they “actively use political themes” and one who thinks that the American pop industry doesn’t use concepts or convey ideas and interpretations of the songs.
Quick! Somebody tell Lady Gaga that American singers don’t use concepts!!
“Funeral wreaths are part of a tradition for actual deceased people, and to my knowledge are generally filled with messages of sympathy to the bereaved and the deceased,” Tarryn McMurray, a British fan of RIIZE since their debut last year, said in an interview last week. “To turn something that is meant as a sign of respect into a tactic for bullying someone is incredibly egregious.”
We also hear from a British K-Pop fan who is seemingly unaware that this isn’t some novel concept thought up by RIIZE fans specifically as some kind of death threat. Famously, in 2014, fans of the Lotte Giants set up a giant protest with funeral wreaths to protest a particularly dire run. Giants fans even publicly shaved their heads in front of the wreaths—something I haven’t seen K-Pop fans attempt…yet.
Lotte Giants fan at the infamous 2014 funeral wreath protest.
In fact, as an old timer, funeral wreaths as an organized protest, while an extreme choice, are certainly better than what anti-fans have done in previous years, including the infamous poisoning of TVXQ’s Yunho or suicide petitions being circulated or when H.O.T.’s Moon Heejun was rumored to be dating a member of Baby Vox and an anti-fan sent her razor blades. At least as far as I know, nobody has claimed the wreaths were a threat of potential violence.
“If you want to be an artist, you should have virtue. I don’t think a person who speaks ill of sunbae has good manners,” RIIZE fan Yuki Shu told NBC News via a messaging app last week, using a Korean word that means people with more working experience.
Fans spend a lot to support their idols, “and I am not paying money to see you dating other girls,” she added.
The author does give us one representative of the faction that’s pro-removing Seunghan from the group, a RIIZE fan of indeterminate nationality but who is heavily implied to be Korean even though “Yuki Shuu” reads as a Japanese name.
But this gets deep into the cultural divide between Asian fans and fans in the “global” fanbase—an artist insulting his seniors is not seen positively; nor is being so indiscreet with his romantic relationships. We have become very used to musicians and other celebrities using their romantic entanglements as publicity that we take it for given. I.e. Taylor Swift has based a large part of her public persona on who she is dating (or “dating”).
For idols who craft a fantasy world for fans, that stuff is generally kept private, both to preserve the fantasy and I think for the sake of the idol’s own private relationships. It’s kayfabe. Heels and Faces may get together for a friendly beer after the show but they keep up the charade in public. Once a group is past the first few years, fans are generally quite supportive of their favorites getting married. You often hear of idols marrying an unknown private person who isn’t in the public eye and who stays that way. That kind of thing would be next to impossible for American pop singers. It’s simply two different ways of young women engaging with male celebrities.
In 2018, K-pop soloist HyunA and her then-boyfriend Dawn, a former member of the boy band Pentagon, were removed by their company, Cube Entertainment, after they announced that they had been dating for two years.
The author gives HyunA and Dawn as an example of this alleged culture of not wanting idols to date but the situation surrounding them was very different to Seunghan. HyunA suddenly announced on social media that she and Dawn were in a relationship, something that ended up with Dawn getting removed from his group, Pentagon. HyunA and Dawn appeared to want to use their relationship as a promotional tool, to be a music power couple, much more like the American model. It did not work. HyunA recently married another musician, Yong Junhyung; Dawn’s solo career never really took off and he’s currently performing his mandatory military service.
There had been rumors that HyunA and Dawn were together well before she announced it. Some fans may have been annoyed or upset at this but I think that if HyunA hadn’t made the big public announcement out of nowhere on social media, it’s likely that Dawn would have simply continued in Pentagon.
International fans are less invested in K-pop stars both emotionally and financially, said Stephanie Choi, a faculty expert on K-pop music at the University at Buffalo.
Many Korean and Chinese fans “actively participate in the idol-fan relationship by purchasing hundreds of album copies and meeting idols in person at events, heavily investing their time, money and effort into the partnership, which increases the idol’s brand value,” she said.
That investment, she said, can translate into power over the stars.
And here’s the money quote from our “expert” army-academic: International fans are “less invested” emotionally and financially than the (specifically called out) Korean and Chinese fans.
I suppose that’s why we just saw a flood of foreign fans and foreign money unleashed over at the Hybe building this past week to protest the fans who had sent funeral wreaths demanding Suga be removed from BTS over his drunk driving incident.
If that’s “less invested” then I’m scared to consider what “invested” looks like.
Allegedly “less invested” foreign fans manning a counter protest outside the Hybe building.
This entire article is context-free nonsense, written as classic “Dark Side of K-Pop” click bait.
Sending funeral wreaths to a K-Pop company building to demand the removal of an idol from an idol group is over-the-top, yes, but it’s also a lot better than things that have gone on in the past. This deep emotional investment in a group is also not unique to K-Pop fans in Korea and China (why the author leaves out Japan is unclear). Does anybody remember a little British group called One Direction? I don’t recall fans of that group taking news of the members dating and having children calmly and supportively. One word for our author here: BABYGATE.
AND, on top of everything else, the author fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics of the K-Pop fandom at play. It’s not just that fans don’t want to see their favorite idol fucking. Many of the fans who support things like sending the wreaths and who demand the removal of idols—like Seunghan and Suga—from their groups are fans of the other members of those groups and who don’t want the stink of scandal potentially tanking the group’s future success.
That is a HUGE thing to glide over and just points to the engagement with this topic not being all the deep from NBC News.
It is interesting how global fans and domestic fans have reacted to these types of scandals and I’d love to see a good analysis of that but this NBC article is not it.