The Sex Scandals K-Pop that is shaking and Reckoning Over How Southern Korea Regards Women

• Posted on Feb 23, 2020

An overall total of four Korean entertainers have suddenly resigned through the industry this week, in a scandal that is widening the glossy world of K-pop with a few seedy intercourse crimes. The greatest players — Seungri, regarding the influential group that is all-male Bang, therefore the 29-year-old singer-songwriter Jung Joon-young — have both apologized to your public for his or her involvement in double, interlocking instances of exploitation of females.

To catch you up: detectives scheduled Seungri on Monday on suspicion of providing prostitutes for entrepreneurs at certainly one of Seoul’s upscale dance clubs, leaving a media feeding frenzy that ensnared the next celebrity, Jung, and possibly more famous males in the future.

Seungri is doubting costs of brokering prostitution. However in statements towards the press, Seoul Metropolitan Police state an investigation into his Kakaotalk messages (Kakao is Southern Korea’s dominant texting platform) discovered proof of “pimping” — they claim he had been not just providing different sorts of females to investors, but he had been element of a split team chat with all the other celebrity, Jung.

That is where the facts get more sordid. Police say the near-dozen individuals into the Jung chatroom had been sharing concealed digital camera footage of intercourse with drugged and unconscious females. Korean broadcaster SBS showed the text that is leaked, including Jung answering a video clip of just one unconscious woman by texting in Korean, “You raped her, LOL. “

Korean cable Yonhap states Jung is under research for secretly recorded and provided videos of his or her own encounters that are sexual at minimum 10 ladies he filmed between 2015 and 2016.

Jung, whom rose to popularity on a Korean exact carbon copy of American Idol, is cooperating with authorities and released the following declaration:

“we acknowledge to any or all my crimes. We filmed ladies without their consent and shared it in a social networking chatroom, and while used to do therefore I did not feel an excellent feeling of shame. Significantly more than any such thing, we kneel and apologize into the ladies who come in the videos that have discovered of the truth that is hideous the event has arrive at light. “

The Record

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One other guys that have apologized and unexpectedly resigned from the industry after being implicated within the boards are Choi Jong-hoon, singer from FT Island, and Yong Junhyung, singer from Highlight, whom admitted which he was at the talk and saw the videos and failed to speak up.

K-pop is such major social export and financial boon for the Asian nation of 55 million that this scandal — or scandals, according to the manner in which you’re counting — has attracted international attention. (one of many genre’s most successful teams, BTS, had the # 2 and number 3 bestselling records global a year ago. )

Code Switch

Just How The South Korean National Made K-Pop Anything

Within Southern Korea, the company’ darker underbelly is well-known. Its three entertainment that is top — SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment — are notorious for operating their musicians through a militaristic system of rigorous dance and performing training, limitations on the private everyday lives and surgery treatment regimens that begin when they are teenagers. Whenever ladies music artists attended ahead with allegations of intimate abuse or harassment in the market, they have been rarely investigated. K-pop is really so interwoven with Korea’s soft energy identification that Seungri said on Instagram, “I’ve been branded as a ‘national traitor. ‘ “

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Their agency, YG Entertainment, dropped him on apologized for failing to “manage the musician more thoroughly” and has watched its stock shares tumble wednesday.

Celebrity involvement within these sex crimes threaten to taint the carefully-crafted image of this K-pop industry, yes, however for Southern Korea, it shines a worldwide light for an already-festering societal problem: hidden camera porn, understood in Southern Korea as “spycam, ” or molka, as well as its role in promulgating a culture that is misogynistic. Since just last year, outrage about police force’s uneven reaction to spycam has swelled in to the roads, leading 22,000 females to protest final June, marking the greatest ladies’ protest in South history that is korean.

Southern Korea is a country that is modern boasts of the advanced electronic devices and fast internet speeds, but from the way of measuring equality for females, it ranks at the end among developed nations. Once we’ve reported, college curriculum also shows that victims are to be culpable for intimate attack.

Jung Joon-young, coming to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on March 14, 2019. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Photos hide caption

Combined, these facets feed a extensive spycam porn epidemic that is gone on for many years. Small concealed cameras that appear to be lighters secretly film women in dressing rooms, restrooms, public venues like subway channels and during personal moments — as they’re making love. The footage of intercourse functions is regarded as a porn that is”natural that’s commonly distributed and profited off of on online platforms, minus the victims’ knowledge.

Formally, police estimate significantly more than 6,000 instances of individuals filmed on spy cams without their permission, each between 2013 and 2017 year. The victims are overwhelmingly females. But the majority for the time, individuals aren’t mindful their images are increasingly being exchanged: A 2018 study because of the Korean Women attorneys Association discovered 89 % of spycam crimes had been perpetrated by strangers.

“there has been a great amount of celebrity scandals before, including pretty severe costs like domestic punishment, but those often ended being remote incidents that faded through the consciousness that is public quickly, ” claims Jenna Gibson, a Korea columnist when it comes to Diplomat and a longtime K-pop watcher. “this time around, because Korea happens to be straight grappling with dilemmas like MeToo, spy cams, and women’s legal rights generally speaking, there isn’t any method they are going to allow these crimes get therefore effortlessly. What exactly these guys have actually presumably done struck right in the centre for the societal divisions that are biggest in Korea at this time. “

The justice system can be being put to your test, once the public that is korean questions regarding authorities complicity within the prostitution brokered at nightclubs. “we shall conduct a solid investigation that is internal and. We shall take stern measures regardless of these ranking, ” Southern Korea’s nationwide Police Agency Chief Min Gap-ryong told lawmakers on Thursday, in accordance with CNN, in reaction to questions about police searching one other means.

All this is forcing a reckoning in a number of layers regarding the general public sphere, but the majority notably for the entertainment motor that is K-pop, which churns out movie movie stars and teams that make the devotion of fans global. The packaging of the musicians is squeaky-clean, but can you continue to love something that is prepared in a exploitative tradition? And because it’s usually expected with this #metoo age: just what do we do using the art of monstrous guys? The fanbase that is k-pop now the most recent to be working these concerns out.

Modification March 15, 2019

This tale initially identified K-pop team BTS as having had the number 1 and number 2 bestselling records of 2018. They certainly were the # 2 and number 3 bestselling records of this 12 months.