Thank you for writing about this! I feel so strongly about it because, as a K-Pop and K-Drama fan, I support the actors/actresses and artists, but I feel so bad when they get into dating "scandals" (why is having a relationship a scandal in the first place?). And then people start throwing them under the bus, getting mad at them, calling them traitors for dating.
For example, Chen from EXO. I know even now, fans are still demanding that he leave the group, stating that his role as a husband and father may be getting in the way of his duties as a K-Pop idol, and I'm like...how???
I always talk about celebrities having actor/singer/artist as their daytime job. In short, they're professionals, just like the rest of us. When they're off work, they're themselves. It's not like we demand our banker or doctor never to marry either so why can't celebrities date in peace without people demanding apologies left and right?
Very well said! I've been following K-dramas and K-pop since 2012 and this "apology" mania in Korean pop culture has always driven me crazy. I have a question. Does it also apply to sports figures, classical musicians, fine artists, and politicians? Is it something left over from Confucianism, under which each person had to know and maintain their place in society? Or is it purely a product of the young k-pop culture where celebrities have to be "Pure" to have any intrinsic value? It is certainly confusing for us Westerners to understand or appreciate since egregious behavior like sending protest trucks seems sadly ineffective and laughable. Thank you, Christina Olds
This “ownership” that fans have towards their favorites is something I could never truly understand. If you truly liked and supported an artist why wouldn’t you want them to have a life after they’ve found stardom? These fans know what their faves had to go through to get where they are. Why continue to be gatekeepers to their lives? It’s disheartening to watch.
I'm so glad you wrote about this. It is baffling to me. I began watching kdrama a few years ago and am still enthusiastic about it. I'm noticing so much about the culture, including a level of courtesy we don't see much in the west. The contrast with the implied ownership of celebrities is jarring, to say the least. It seems to me to even be insulting to the hard-working human beings who make the dramas possible. B Haines
Mar 22·edited Mar 22Liked by K-Culture with Jae-Ha Kim
I feel all this apologizing for dating, joking around, minor drug use, etc. is causing extremely stressful lives for K-Pop idols and celebrities. No wonder so many are "taking breaks" or worse (death by suicide) to deal with their mental health. During your interviews, I'm sure you have heard many tales that you just cannot print. Perhaps some of the younger celebrities who are dating are testing the waters to see how their fans will react or just have the courage to be honest. Gail Lamotte
Thank you for bringing this up. The whole phenomenon is so strange to me. Some of what you cited borders on emotional abuse to me by these so-called fans. These celebs and idols are real people who want to live real lives. As long as they are not committing crimes, people should leave them alone.
When you mentioned public apologies, I immediately remembered what Lee Sungkyun went through before his death. I wish we could remove this pressure from them :(
It is sad. Even sadder because there are some other places that do like Korea. Even Celebs are people with normal needs and they already pay a high price for being well know. It is really unfair and sad.
My first experience of this was when Twice's Tzuyu was forced to apologize for displaying the flag of her own country (Taiwan) due to pressure on JYP from Chinese fans. Not to mention she was a literal child at the time!
In 2020, I wrote about that incident and had inserted it into this piece before I went to bed last night, along with a bit about HyunA and Dawn! (I think you commented as I was editing!) The man who instigated that whole thing was a 52-year-old entertainer who had been born in Taiwan, but hated the country and attacked prominent Taiwanese celebs regularly. He saw an easy victim in a 16-year-old child! So gross.
Living a normal life is not something you apologize for. I really feel sorry for Korean actors and idols when they feel the need to apologize for doing something normal which fans see as a disgusting behavior. This remains to be an issue which has never been addressed. The artists are human beings just like the fans who want to live normal lives because everyone is meant to do just that. Fans in Korea cause so much stress to these artists by creating an "ideal" type of idols that fans love and those who fall short are harassed, disowned, insulted, maligned, which they do not deserve. The cancel culture practiced by fans seem to grow affecting stock prices which is ultimately blamed on the artist. This has to stop. Fans should support and respect the artists they love by being just that, fans. We do not "own" our favorite idols/actors, we admire them for their talents, looks, character, etc. and respecting their choices is something we can do as a means of showing support. Their personal lives are their own, the least we can do is respect that and give them the privacy that is due them.
Mar 24·edited Mar 24Liked by K-Culture with Jae-Ha Kim
My goodness -- I did not know about any of this, Jae! I don't know whether to laugh or cry (I guess both?). Our homeland can be a rather strange place. My personal beef has always been the slavish level of respect automatically given to older people. I mean if you're an ass as a young person, there's a fairly good chance you'll be an even bigger ass as an older person, since you've had all those years to hone your ass-craft. So by the time this person is in his or her elder years, look out!
"Don’t even get me started on the messy love triangle between actors Han So-hee and Ryu Jun-yeol, who are accused of being the mistress and cheater, respectively, after the latter’s relationship with his “Reply 1988” co-star Hyeri ended in November 2023 after seven years of dating. Fans are out for blood, wanting Han and Ryu to apologize to Hyeri."
This one is particularly egregious by you. This is something that could easily have happened in a western context. I read people are still pissed as Simone Biles NFL player boyfriend because he said in a podcast or somewhere that he didn't know who she was when he first met her and Biles fans are mad because it was seen as disrespectful of her and are STILL mad even after her Gold medal wins. Fans get involved in the celebrities they like, notice all the insane support Johnny Depp got? The Hyeri, Junyeol, Sohee thing was not even that "Korean". At this point you're just looking for ways to make Koreans look stupid and orientalizing the whole thing.
The Tzuyu case was unfortunate but that was about Chinese nationalism and geopolitics which has nothing to do with Kpop or Korean culture.
As for dating in general: Kpop is basically like professional wrestling. You are a entertainer that not only sings and dances but feeds the fan a certain fake reality. Just like wrestlers pretended to grapple with a opponent and acted in a made-up or exaggerated persona Kpop idols have to sell a certain empathy to the Kpop fans, that they really do care about them. Most Kpop fans know the idols genuinely aren't their friends or wont date them or whatever but its the illusion or suspended belief that is important, just like wrestling. Notice nobody ever talks about how weird professional wrestling, which developed in a unique segment of low class American society? Because YOUR WESTERN. I'M WESTERN. We live in a Western world so stuff like professional wrestling doesn't feel weird to us or even people in Asia because America and the West are a cultural hegemon. Kpop and Korean celebrity culture isn't strange its just different. You notice the people who crow about diversity 24/7 don't react very tolerant when people in other countries do stuff they don't like. That's diversity, sometimes different cultures have different customs that may offend even sicken us. Like when a Jewish mohels do the metzitzah b'peh or oral suctioning on a baby's... thing after the bris. That seems kinda sick to me but I don't judge. What's so wrong with being a bit controlling to celebrities, most of whom especially in America are spoiled, privileged twerps who honestly deserve a humbling or two? Maybe you should ask why American celebrities can't act more like Korean celebrities. Polite and respectful.
"Minji from the girl group NewJeans had to apologize for joking that she didn’t know what the Korean noodle dish kalguksu was."
This requires a little background in Korean culture which you of all people should be aware of provide context for people who don't know. You didn't even have to do deep research its literally in the comments posted on translation sites like Pannchoa. A idol saying they dont know what kalguksu is gave off the vibe of a overseas Korean, a rich one, not the typical child of working class immigrants, who only eat fancy schmancy western foods and never korean staple foods like kalguksu or dwenjang stew because that's peasant food to those types of chaebol rich korean kids. That's what the Korean commenters (not "Netizens" which is basically a racist term against Asians now) were annoyed about. Now was there a element of trolling involved? Yes. Because Korean female Kpop fans are kinda nuts and love dragging idols. I get that's sorta your thesis and I can agree to a certain level. But you miss all these little critical korean cultural fault lines when as a journalists who writes about this stuff you should be writing context for not just reinforcing surface level often prejudicial observations of Kpop and Korean culture.
She didn't know what kalgusku was, of course she sorta whispered it so I wouldn't even have dragged her for that but it went viral. Then in a subsequent live she went and got pissy (which you're NEVER suppose to do as a idol) started barking in english saying rudely "Guys do I know what kalgusku is?" Why did Minji code switch to english in that live? Because she was passive aggressively showing the "peasants" that she's culturally superior to them by speaking english.
She shouldn't have been dragged for the kalgusku comment but she absolutely deserved to be dragged for being pissy to her fans and she rightfully apologized.
Simply saying "All this for noodles" is extremely dismissive when there was actually a lot of korean cultural nuances you could've imparted.
I expected a little more intellectual heft but you're just repeating what western K-pop fans say. First its their culture. Who are you to tell them to change it? Obviously when its K-pop its not all Koreans but a very small subculture of usually teenage Korean girls and even among them they will usually say they don't agree with it if you ask them point blank.
What you're doing is applying your western cultural views to Koreans. Its very common for Korean-Americans and other overseas Koreans to look down on Koreans in Korea. This was extremely prevalent in the past, slightly less so now but it still exists where you have to lecture your more primitive brethren in the homeland. Happens with almost every Asian group. Why should Koreans in Korea have to change their culture to appease westerners? Its already happened a lot but now you want to strip away the very little bits of unique Korean culture that's left.
Notice every single time this happens its a one way street. Koreans never tell Americans how to behave, at most they'll get mad if a American celebrity posts a Rising Sun flag out of ignorance. Chinese internet users will sometimes get angry over Taiwan but never is it something cultural like maybe American should take their shoes off when entering a home and stuff like that.
You also make the common mistake of relying on sources from Kpop sites which are just clickbait sites that source random posts from Nate Pann and Qoo. As a journalist aren't you curious how where the proverbial sausages come from? The Irene story was clearly sourced from either Pann or Qoo and those two websites are made up of mainly female users who obviously have a interest in making korean men look ridiculous. When the story of a korean men burning Irene photocards went viral nobody ever bothered to check the original post. Kpop news sites used plural to give the impression huge numbers of Korean men were burning Irene photocards when it was one user on I believe DC Inside, obviously to bring attention on himself like many people online.
In regards to Korean feminism in general, would you be happy if someone wrote to you on Twitter that you have small tits because your asian? What if the person who wrote that to you was a Korean man? Neither men or women especially Asians would be OK with insults about their body parts that play on crude racial stereotyping. So when korean feminist trolls literally have the "small" gesturing hand as their official logo (Megalia) as well as other nasty stuff they write about korean men the en naturally get angry. Do Korean men do bad things? Sure. But would you really generalize Black men or Muslim men based on what a small criminal or bad apple element of them do? Also why does nobody ever interview a man from the Korean Mens Rights or Meninist community? Even Trump supporters get interviewed and are allowed to state their grievances and points of view despite the media and many Democrats thinking they are akin to Nazi supporters. Many Korean feminists are like 4chan trolls driven by a desire for payback against Korean men (whether justified or not). Many Korean men, including a majority that have never harmed a Korean women in their lives resent that. What I've noticed from the western media and now you is that you'll cover the Korean female POV while ignoring the male POV and use a strawman to misrepresent Korean men opposed to feminism as irrational beings who simply don't want womens equality. Its not true in the West and its not true in Korea and its just very dishonest of you and I'm sick of it. Korean Men are one of the few men who have to do mandatory military service as you well know. Do they get any credit for that? No. I had a conversation with a Korean girl (from Korea) and she just joked men just went to the military and got fat. It hit me that's the casual indifference they have to men (perhaps thinking they're just paying them back for the chauvinism). There's this website KoreaBang or something like that where they had translated comments just like Netizenbuzz and it showed Korean men discussing feminism. They all had valid reasonable comments if a little understandably bitter. Its those types of Korean men whose views are never posted on western media (and I'm sure not even Korean media). That's what fuels a lot of the rage.
Thank you for writing about this! I feel so strongly about it because, as a K-Pop and K-Drama fan, I support the actors/actresses and artists, but I feel so bad when they get into dating "scandals" (why is having a relationship a scandal in the first place?). And then people start throwing them under the bus, getting mad at them, calling them traitors for dating.
For example, Chen from EXO. I know even now, fans are still demanding that he leave the group, stating that his role as a husband and father may be getting in the way of his duties as a K-Pop idol, and I'm like...how???
I always talk about celebrities having actor/singer/artist as their daytime job. In short, they're professionals, just like the rest of us. When they're off work, they're themselves. It's not like we demand our banker or doctor never to marry either so why can't celebrities date in peace without people demanding apologies left and right?
(I told you I feel strongly about this! 😅)
Very well said! I've been following K-dramas and K-pop since 2012 and this "apology" mania in Korean pop culture has always driven me crazy. I have a question. Does it also apply to sports figures, classical musicians, fine artists, and politicians? Is it something left over from Confucianism, under which each person had to know and maintain their place in society? Or is it purely a product of the young k-pop culture where celebrities have to be "Pure" to have any intrinsic value? It is certainly confusing for us Westerners to understand or appreciate since egregious behavior like sending protest trucks seems sadly ineffective and laughable. Thank you, Christina Olds
This “ownership” that fans have towards their favorites is something I could never truly understand. If you truly liked and supported an artist why wouldn’t you want them to have a life after they’ve found stardom? These fans know what their faves had to go through to get where they are. Why continue to be gatekeepers to their lives? It’s disheartening to watch.
I'm so glad you wrote about this. It is baffling to me. I began watching kdrama a few years ago and am still enthusiastic about it. I'm noticing so much about the culture, including a level of courtesy we don't see much in the west. The contrast with the implied ownership of celebrities is jarring, to say the least. It seems to me to even be insulting to the hard-working human beings who make the dramas possible. B Haines
I feel all this apologizing for dating, joking around, minor drug use, etc. is causing extremely stressful lives for K-Pop idols and celebrities. No wonder so many are "taking breaks" or worse (death by suicide) to deal with their mental health. During your interviews, I'm sure you have heard many tales that you just cannot print. Perhaps some of the younger celebrities who are dating are testing the waters to see how their fans will react or just have the courage to be honest. Gail Lamotte
The world is paying attention to Korean entertainment now and one thing that Korea doesn't want to be regarded as is "backwards."
Thank you for bringing this up. The whole phenomenon is so strange to me. Some of what you cited borders on emotional abuse to me by these so-called fans. These celebs and idols are real people who want to live real lives. As long as they are not committing crimes, people should leave them alone.
When you mentioned public apologies, I immediately remembered what Lee Sungkyun went through before his death. I wish we could remove this pressure from them :(
It is sad. Even sadder because there are some other places that do like Korea. Even Celebs are people with normal needs and they already pay a high price for being well know. It is really unfair and sad.
My first experience of this was when Twice's Tzuyu was forced to apologize for displaying the flag of her own country (Taiwan) due to pressure on JYP from Chinese fans. Not to mention she was a literal child at the time!
In 2020, I wrote about that incident and had inserted it into this piece before I went to bed last night, along with a bit about HyunA and Dawn! (I think you commented as I was editing!) The man who instigated that whole thing was a 52-year-old entertainer who had been born in Taiwan, but hated the country and attacked prominent Taiwanese celebs regularly. He saw an easy victim in a 16-year-old child! So gross.
Living a normal life is not something you apologize for. I really feel sorry for Korean actors and idols when they feel the need to apologize for doing something normal which fans see as a disgusting behavior. This remains to be an issue which has never been addressed. The artists are human beings just like the fans who want to live normal lives because everyone is meant to do just that. Fans in Korea cause so much stress to these artists by creating an "ideal" type of idols that fans love and those who fall short are harassed, disowned, insulted, maligned, which they do not deserve. The cancel culture practiced by fans seem to grow affecting stock prices which is ultimately blamed on the artist. This has to stop. Fans should support and respect the artists they love by being just that, fans. We do not "own" our favorite idols/actors, we admire them for their talents, looks, character, etc. and respecting their choices is something we can do as a means of showing support. Their personal lives are their own, the least we can do is respect that and give them the privacy that is due them.
Real relevant today...
I can't believe that some of the new couples have already broken up, no doubt due to pressure from fans and management.
My goodness -- I did not know about any of this, Jae! I don't know whether to laugh or cry (I guess both?). Our homeland can be a rather strange place. My personal beef has always been the slavish level of respect automatically given to older people. I mean if you're an ass as a young person, there's a fairly good chance you'll be an even bigger ass as an older person, since you've had all those years to hone your ass-craft. So by the time this person is in his or her elder years, look out!
"Don’t even get me started on the messy love triangle between actors Han So-hee and Ryu Jun-yeol, who are accused of being the mistress and cheater, respectively, after the latter’s relationship with his “Reply 1988” co-star Hyeri ended in November 2023 after seven years of dating. Fans are out for blood, wanting Han and Ryu to apologize to Hyeri."
This one is particularly egregious by you. This is something that could easily have happened in a western context. I read people are still pissed as Simone Biles NFL player boyfriend because he said in a podcast or somewhere that he didn't know who she was when he first met her and Biles fans are mad because it was seen as disrespectful of her and are STILL mad even after her Gold medal wins. Fans get involved in the celebrities they like, notice all the insane support Johnny Depp got? The Hyeri, Junyeol, Sohee thing was not even that "Korean". At this point you're just looking for ways to make Koreans look stupid and orientalizing the whole thing.
The Tzuyu case was unfortunate but that was about Chinese nationalism and geopolitics which has nothing to do with Kpop or Korean culture.
As for dating in general: Kpop is basically like professional wrestling. You are a entertainer that not only sings and dances but feeds the fan a certain fake reality. Just like wrestlers pretended to grapple with a opponent and acted in a made-up or exaggerated persona Kpop idols have to sell a certain empathy to the Kpop fans, that they really do care about them. Most Kpop fans know the idols genuinely aren't their friends or wont date them or whatever but its the illusion or suspended belief that is important, just like wrestling. Notice nobody ever talks about how weird professional wrestling, which developed in a unique segment of low class American society? Because YOUR WESTERN. I'M WESTERN. We live in a Western world so stuff like professional wrestling doesn't feel weird to us or even people in Asia because America and the West are a cultural hegemon. Kpop and Korean celebrity culture isn't strange its just different. You notice the people who crow about diversity 24/7 don't react very tolerant when people in other countries do stuff they don't like. That's diversity, sometimes different cultures have different customs that may offend even sicken us. Like when a Jewish mohels do the metzitzah b'peh or oral suctioning on a baby's... thing after the bris. That seems kinda sick to me but I don't judge. What's so wrong with being a bit controlling to celebrities, most of whom especially in America are spoiled, privileged twerps who honestly deserve a humbling or two? Maybe you should ask why American celebrities can't act more like Korean celebrities. Polite and respectful.
"Minji from the girl group NewJeans had to apologize for joking that she didn’t know what the Korean noodle dish kalguksu was."
This requires a little background in Korean culture which you of all people should be aware of provide context for people who don't know. You didn't even have to do deep research its literally in the comments posted on translation sites like Pannchoa. A idol saying they dont know what kalguksu is gave off the vibe of a overseas Korean, a rich one, not the typical child of working class immigrants, who only eat fancy schmancy western foods and never korean staple foods like kalguksu or dwenjang stew because that's peasant food to those types of chaebol rich korean kids. That's what the Korean commenters (not "Netizens" which is basically a racist term against Asians now) were annoyed about. Now was there a element of trolling involved? Yes. Because Korean female Kpop fans are kinda nuts and love dragging idols. I get that's sorta your thesis and I can agree to a certain level. But you miss all these little critical korean cultural fault lines when as a journalists who writes about this stuff you should be writing context for not just reinforcing surface level often prejudicial observations of Kpop and Korean culture.
She didn't know what kalgusku was, of course she sorta whispered it so I wouldn't even have dragged her for that but it went viral. Then in a subsequent live she went and got pissy (which you're NEVER suppose to do as a idol) started barking in english saying rudely "Guys do I know what kalgusku is?" Why did Minji code switch to english in that live? Because she was passive aggressively showing the "peasants" that she's culturally superior to them by speaking english.
She shouldn't have been dragged for the kalgusku comment but she absolutely deserved to be dragged for being pissy to her fans and she rightfully apologized.
Simply saying "All this for noodles" is extremely dismissive when there was actually a lot of korean cultural nuances you could've imparted.
I expected a little more intellectual heft but you're just repeating what western K-pop fans say. First its their culture. Who are you to tell them to change it? Obviously when its K-pop its not all Koreans but a very small subculture of usually teenage Korean girls and even among them they will usually say they don't agree with it if you ask them point blank.
What you're doing is applying your western cultural views to Koreans. Its very common for Korean-Americans and other overseas Koreans to look down on Koreans in Korea. This was extremely prevalent in the past, slightly less so now but it still exists where you have to lecture your more primitive brethren in the homeland. Happens with almost every Asian group. Why should Koreans in Korea have to change their culture to appease westerners? Its already happened a lot but now you want to strip away the very little bits of unique Korean culture that's left.
Notice every single time this happens its a one way street. Koreans never tell Americans how to behave, at most they'll get mad if a American celebrity posts a Rising Sun flag out of ignorance. Chinese internet users will sometimes get angry over Taiwan but never is it something cultural like maybe American should take their shoes off when entering a home and stuff like that.
You also make the common mistake of relying on sources from Kpop sites which are just clickbait sites that source random posts from Nate Pann and Qoo. As a journalist aren't you curious how where the proverbial sausages come from? The Irene story was clearly sourced from either Pann or Qoo and those two websites are made up of mainly female users who obviously have a interest in making korean men look ridiculous. When the story of a korean men burning Irene photocards went viral nobody ever bothered to check the original post. Kpop news sites used plural to give the impression huge numbers of Korean men were burning Irene photocards when it was one user on I believe DC Inside, obviously to bring attention on himself like many people online.
In regards to Korean feminism in general, would you be happy if someone wrote to you on Twitter that you have small tits because your asian? What if the person who wrote that to you was a Korean man? Neither men or women especially Asians would be OK with insults about their body parts that play on crude racial stereotyping. So when korean feminist trolls literally have the "small" gesturing hand as their official logo (Megalia) as well as other nasty stuff they write about korean men the en naturally get angry. Do Korean men do bad things? Sure. But would you really generalize Black men or Muslim men based on what a small criminal or bad apple element of them do? Also why does nobody ever interview a man from the Korean Mens Rights or Meninist community? Even Trump supporters get interviewed and are allowed to state their grievances and points of view despite the media and many Democrats thinking they are akin to Nazi supporters. Many Korean feminists are like 4chan trolls driven by a desire for payback against Korean men (whether justified or not). Many Korean men, including a majority that have never harmed a Korean women in their lives resent that. What I've noticed from the western media and now you is that you'll cover the Korean female POV while ignoring the male POV and use a strawman to misrepresent Korean men opposed to feminism as irrational beings who simply don't want womens equality. Its not true in the West and its not true in Korea and its just very dishonest of you and I'm sick of it. Korean Men are one of the few men who have to do mandatory military service as you well know. Do they get any credit for that? No. I had a conversation with a Korean girl (from Korea) and she just joked men just went to the military and got fat. It hit me that's the casual indifference they have to men (perhaps thinking they're just paying them back for the chauvinism). There's this website KoreaBang or something like that where they had translated comments just like Netizenbuzz and it showed Korean men discussing feminism. They all had valid reasonable comments if a little understandably bitter. Its those types of Korean men whose views are never posted on western media (and I'm sure not even Korean media). That's what fuels a lot of the rage.