not a dream
Just remembered that a K-pop idol completely lost his career seven years ago when he announced that he was getting married and his former fans dropped him, started slandering him to everyone who'd listen just because he dared to 'go against them' and still attack him in 2021 because they're that pathetic. In an industry where other fans defend idols committing DUIs, SA, domestic violence, etc., all sorts of crimes basically, the one who got the worst treatment is the person who did nothing but pursue his happiness in his personal life, while still working hard in his professional life, which apparently doesn't matter because "oppa betrayed us when he got married!" It's so weird to think that Lee Sungmin is still person non grata in K-pop in 2021. He just dropped a song and a lot of people are acting like he doesn't exist. He was crazy famous before this. You wanna know what those fans hold against him, besides the fact that he's married? Apparently he signed some albums with his nickname, that his wife allegedly gave him, and didn't invite his superfan fansite (person who followed him to all his schedules prior to this and took photos of him) to his wedding, and since that person had a whole lot of influence in the whole fandom, they managed to turn everyone against him with fabricated tidbits that made people resent him. I don't know how they, as adults, read the list of complaints that they wrote up against him and think those things are rational. Even if they were heated back then, how can they stand behind it now, still, seven years later, when they had some distance and time to think about it? The fans said they would boycott the group he was in if his company (arguably one of the biggest South Korean entertainment agencies ever, home to SHINee, EXO, Super Junior, SNSD, NCT, SuperM, Red Velvet, Aespa, BoA) didn't kick him out of it, so they decided to listen to them and made him sit out every comeback ever since, despite still keeping him under contract, thus allowing the fandom a power that it never should've had. You're not entitled to control somebody's personal life just because you got to their concert or buy their album. It's so weird, so weird. The guy who was accused of beating up his pregnant girlfriend and pressuring her to have an abortion still has fans, the guy who was accused of being a pimp still has fans, but the guy who got married and never harmed anybody and always treated his fans nicely (except if they crossed the line, which they did, many times, where upon he would only ask them not to do things like that again) is the one who still has a hate mob against him and has his projects boycotted to this day?
A few years later, an idol from the same company, Chen of EXO, announced his upcoming marriage and fatherhood and to this day people still want him out of the group for it and I can't help but to feel that if the company didn't allow that first group of bully fans to act the way they did and put Sungmin on the backburner in order to placate them, they wouldn't have cultivated a culture of entitled fans thinking they could dictate how the idols and companies act. Now their idols have to deal with their mental health being destroyed by, on top of everyone else, obsessive fans who always skirt the line of love and hate and are ready to destroy them if they ever do anything that they're not happy with. Those fans stalk them to the point of buying their phone numbers, addresses and even airplane numbers so they could follow them around, they collect information about them while they're stalking them, spread them amongst their toxic group of stalkers and hold those things against them for blackmail purposes.
They hold protests in front of the company building demanding things, like for example, this #ChenOUT protest, where they demanded EXO Chen be kicked out of the group for starting a family (he's also been sort of put on the backburner to placate these folks, despite how pathetic their protests have been).
These fans are so creepy that they'll find a way to sit next to their faves on their plane by buying info about their rides and bribing the staff to get those seats.
They'll crash idols' graduations and show up uninvited to their schedules in different countries, like it happened to NCT Mark (and how creepy it is that the poor boy had stalkers ever since his teen years, some of which were adults).
(MisteryStranger and "Mark in my Heart" are the names of the fansites run by those stalkers.)
There's a stalker fan (sasaeng in Korean), who even followed SHINee's Onew to the jungle!
IN BRAZIL!
It's not just this company whose artists are experiencing problems with stalker fans, sasaengs. The biggest group in the world, BTS, experienced similar things from stalkers. I'm pretty sure most groups go through experiences like that, just to different extent.
There's an idol called Jaejoong whose home was broken into while he slept and the sasaeng who did it took photos of him sleeping and posted it to the internet to brag about what she had done.
It's one of the worst invasions of privacy I've ever heard of and companies should focus less on pleasing stalkers and more on protecting their artists and that's that!
THIS, all of this, is cringe af. We also need to hold K-pop companies accountable for the "training" idols have to go through where they are instructed to romanticize their relationship with the fans. It's not the idols' fault that some deluded fans can't understand the difference between "fanservice" and reality, but K-pop idols would have better lives if the companies stopped with that "Save your ring finger for oppa" bullshit. I understand that the whole romanticized relationship with fans is a part of the idol deal but maybe that needs to go?
The companies really were the ones who started all this mess and continue perpetuating it! But then you have idols like U-Kwon who from debut refuses acting in a 'boyfriendly manner' with his fans because he has a girlfriend and what did that get him? Unfortunately, anti fans who still share made up stories about him being allegedly rude at fansigns (BY/FOR REFUSING TO PRETEND TO BE THEIR BOYFRIEND AND NOT WANTING TO CALL THEM GIRLFRIENDS) and you really can't win as an idol in the K-pop industry. Even when you draw a straight line, you're at fault somehow.
On a side note, this is my favorite gif of Sungmin and his wife Saeun from their wedding. I am sure it makes a lot of people seethe with rage.
It also doesn't help when companies like Cube kicks out two of their artists for dating,,, in 2018.
especially when you consider how big of an impact one of them had on the kpop industry and how much money she brought the company. The fact that she got so easily kicked out for a relationship must have increased the confidence and entitlements of those types of "fans"
Hyuna was so pivotal in putting Cube on the map and was their first trainee/artist - the founder of Cube Ent was the former president of JYPE who left JYP to start his own company and Hyuna was the only one who went with him from JYP to said new company. She was an extremely successful soloist who completely changed the game and was very popular in general and Cube let her go because she confirmed that she was dating her labelmate in 2018. They also let him go, despite that clearly not being what either him or his groupmates wanted. Cube Ent had terminated Dawn and Hyuna's contracts, citing that they were unable to maintain trust with them. Trust? For being in a consensual relationship as adults in their mid twenties? Companies have too much power over the lives of their idols. Don't get me even started on how controlling of their private lies they are. Dating bans (? your employer has the right to tell you not to date anybody?), taking them out of their homes as teenagers, putting them into tiny dorms where like 20 people share 2 rooms and not providing enough for them, training them to become idols from dusk until dawn while restricting their contact with other people, including their families! Taking their phones away and giving them phone privileges to contact their parents only when they meet certain goals (even weight goals and things like that). Restricting their diets and not providing enough nutrition to them. Creating a culture of eating disorders and putting them on diets of like 4 bananas per day, resulting in a lot of them having brittle bones and similar issues when they get older. Pressuring them to get plastic surgery. Pressuring them to get continuous plastic surgery, even. Basically creating vulnerable, sheltered, lonely, young people who are somehow supposed to deal with these obsessive fans, media criticizing them, hate comments online, stalking, abuse, overwork, and so on, despite having nobody but each other, and often even not that, to rely on. Not providing psychological help for them. Allowing toxic work environment and bullying to happen between group members, even allowing staff to bully the kids, but the staff also gets treated horribly and are severely underpaid. I could go on. These companies make teenagers sign unfavorable contracts and end up with most of the profits they make by overworking them. Most of the entertainment companies are not good places. Don't even get me started on sponsorship rumors. I'd like to believe that the companies protect their artist at least in that way and don't make them entertain sponsors, but there's always one case or another of a small company being exposed for doing things like that. It might seem like idols lead glamorous lifestyles, but I don't envy them at all, if anything, I feel sorry for them. They're under constant public pressure and abuse and money can only buy you so much. It can't buy you happiness.
I would also like to remind again as OP has said that these are mostly teenagers and the corruption and the abuse that happens in this industry is worse than we imagine.
That's why I would like to also remind everyone of the SOPA Scandal which started because a bunch of brave students of SOPA, which is an official idol school, posted this video
Which you can still find in YouTube in which they call out the school for the abuse they have suffered.
Also let's not forget that in the idol industry image is everything, so by speaking out about this they probably won't be hired to do the very same thing they have been training their whole lives.
You can turn the subtitles on.
You can learn more about the situation and the aftermath of the whole scandal explained in this video:
