Many k-pop fans and observers notice that k-pop idols are often embroiled in many scandals. Many of these people may also observe that the amount of fuck-giving Kpopalypse exhibits about various scandals often differs considerably from that of the general k-pop fan population. This post seeks to address the main categories of k-pop scandal and explain the Kpopalypse point of view on each one. Read on and enjoy the tea!

Generally speaking, I don’t get much into moralising on this blog, because I personally find that kind of content boring to read, therefore I don’t see why anybody would be interested if I were to write it. “This is my very important opinion on thing x that maybe happened or possibly didn’t” is honestly the most dull type of k-pop writing content out there, and it’s also one of the most common types of k-pop writing out there, right behind “I love my idol’s new hair” and “wow I didn’t know they could do the splits like that”. This however doesn’t stop people from asking me what I think about literally every single thing that happens or doesn’t happen to a k-pop idol ever, so I thought that a post breaking down the basic scandal types into categories, with descriptions of my own very important stances on each one might be helpful just so I don’t get asked questions about it all the time. Of course this post will probably completely backfire and I’ll get inundated with even more questions than ever before, but if you somehow get entertained along the way reading this garbage post then I consider that a positive outcome. Let’s get started!

DRUGS

Illegal drugs are basically defined as “any substance that you can put into your body that makes you feel good, and that the government hasn’t worked out a reliable tax system for”. Should you do illegal drugs? Maybe, that’s up to you – I personally don’t because they cost a lot more money than I have, and I need my limited income to pay for k-pop concerts that get cancelled at the last minute, plus the time and energy required to secure a steady drug supply could keep me away from doing other more interesting things like writing stupid posts like this one. Also I worry about the long terms effects after having met many people in the business who consume drugs like Jiyeon consumes eyeliner and have witnessed their gradual physical and mental fallout. However, should you do illegal drugs if you are a k-pop idol? Definitely – or at least I would for sure, if I was one. Nobody is superhuman, and after a solid year of dance practice every single fucking day with no rest plus a starvation diet, you could use all the help you can get to stay awake and perky during that fucking shit. Remember when you see an idol passing out on stage, which happens about once every few days lately, they might’ve been just fine on crack. Any idols doing or dealing drugs definitely could use your support, or at least your list of phone numbers.

SEX

Sexual activity is natural, healthy exercise and lots of fun. Both male and female k-pop idols are commonly marketed as sexual fantasy material, however paradoxically they’re often forbidden by both agencies and fans from actually experiencing any of that sexiness themselves, therefore having to resort to fapping over computer games. Of course there’s nothing wrong with fapping over computer games, but it gets a bit disheartening when that’s your only option. Fans wouldn’t be so freaked out about idols getting their sexy on if those fans were more sensible, and agencies wouldn’t then feel the need to cater to fans’ stupidity if they didn’t have it, so any consensual sexual activity involving idols should obviously be publicly supported and hopefully the fandumb can absorb some of this rationality via osmosis – but they probably won’t. Therefore the sensible response to an idol’s sexy concept is to hope that they’re getting some in real life, and the sensible response to an idol getting some in real life is to be happy because it’s probably one of the few actual pleasures that they get to experience.

CYBER SEX

Since most idols aren’t allowed to have actual sexy times, participating in cyber-sexy times may in some cases be their only release. When confronted with undisputable evidence of cyber-cybering, the correct reaction is therefore empathy and “I hope he/she’s also getting some in real life, or at least making bank off this”. The exception of course is if the idol is not of age, in which case the correct reaction therefore becomes asking the person who is so interested in talking about this “why don’t you take a seat over there“.

DRAMA

K-pop idols pretty much all watch drama, because they have to fap somehow. Some very lucky k-pop idols with Japanese origins also get to participate in drama, and I say lucky because income generation from the Japanese drama industry is sizeable and your average k-pop idol could potentially write off their entire company debt with only a few drama appearances, if they were allowed to make them. That’s not to say that being a drama star isn’t a tough job in many ways, but it’s also a highly valued community service and therefore anybody with the skills and talent to appear in drama productions should be supported for their efforts at bringing happiness to many people.

CLASSY SEXY SEX

The image above of Gain might look confronting to some because it’s so well-acted, but Gain enjoyed the classy-sexy roleplay so much during the filming of “Fuck You” that she actually began a long-term relationship with her co-star in the video. “Rape fantasies” where they appear in k-pop don’t bother me, because they are just fantasy, and regulating fantasy is just thought-policing, which I’m against. However I have a different view on “rape realities”. Sometimes sex gets too much like a Gain video for comfort and idols (and even more disturbingly, their managers) get into trouble for trying to get sexy in situations where it is not welcome. Kpopalypse does not condone such actions, even if “oppar didn’t mean it”, and supports idol dormitory remodeling to shrink the size of bathrooms to make idols safe.

PHOTOGRAPHY

K-pop idols take lots of photos. Sometimes they take a few too many photos, or share the wrong photos at the wrong time (or someone else does it for them) and those photos get them into trouble. However you’ve probably got worse photos on your own phone that you won’t admit to. Like Jesus said, “let thou who hast not examined thine crevasse with a selfie stick, cast thy first stone”. As for those cunts who share the private photos of idols without their permission, FUCK YOU because every time I’ve wanted to take nude pictures of any girlfriend I’ve ever had she won’t fucking agree to it and it’s because she’s heard of cunts like you and is worried that I’m gonna be just like one of those cunts. I can’t blame the girls, as the cynicism is entirely sensible and reasonable, if I were female I’d feel the same way. However I can blame Johnny Noh, so I will.

BULLYING

Bullying is adorable and everybody loves bullies, gosh they’re so sexy, Taeyong please steal my lunch money and scam me on eBay... oh wait, I forgot I’m not everybody on stan Twitter. Okay, let’s start again. So bullying is a big problem in Korean society and in fact it’s so big that the chances of your favourite idol being either a bully or a bullying victim are 100%. Even if they don’t either bully or get bullied in school, they’ll get a red hot serve of bullying for sure in either the army or during the trainee process, so by the time your fave has caught the public eye they pretty much have a doctorate in being a piece of shit. Since it’s therefore impossible to have a Korean pop idol who isn’t a bully (because bullying victims tend to absorb the “language of bullying” and bully others even lower on the social food chain), I’ve just accepted that they’re all cunts and it’s basically fine. Also girls scratching each others’ faces and pulling their enemies’ hair out by the roots is kind of hot, so when rumours fly about my favourite girl groups I just like to think about the sexy dorm fights. As a certified bullying victim I believe that if you’re going to bully someone at least make it hot.

SAJAEGI (CHART MANIPULATION)

Due to my music industry experience I can tell you that whether the actual artists are engaging in sajaegi or not really doesn’t matter that much because all charts are rigged as fuck anyway, just because of how the chart system operates. It’s a topic that I can’t really go into in any depth (for professional reasons ahem) but my advice to you all is don’t trust any music chart anywhere ever as anything more than “what some people wanted a list to look like”. This goes for sales, awards shows, contests – everything you can think of. Therefore if your idol has found a way to fix the system in their favour for a few bucks all I can say is that this is a good thing because rigging from below is better than the rigging from above that usually happens, and it’s all just one more small step towards people realising that all charts are in fact bullshit at all times and scrapping the entire stupid system.

THE OLDEST PROFESSION

I’ve never been one to pay for sex myself, even in the past when I’ve been single and without any action for years at a time. Partly it’s my own ego that’s always stopped me (“if I resort to this, does it mean that I don’t meet required standards?”) and partly it’s the fact that as I’m in the music business I know so many people who do sex work that if I went to any random brothel anywhere in a 1000km radius of my house I’d probably just meet one of my female friends and it would be really awkward. However it’s a popular line of work because while it can be occasionally unpleasant and risky it also makes a lot of money for relatively little time investment, and if there’s two things idols are short on it’s free time and money, so I’m all for it as long as they’re getting paid fairly and some k-pop CEO isn’t taking all the cash and leaving them with crumbs. Calling it now that I wouldn’t be surprised if income sharing rates of sex work is written into various female idols’ “360 deals“.

FAKE WOKENESS

It’s difficult as an idol to walk the path of “wokeness” because every idol operates in a system that benefits heavily from organised crime, government kickbacks and corporate sponsors. Your favourite k-pop star’s impressive Michael Jackson-ish speech about how they care for the children of the world is always just one weapons company contract or government-sponsored function away from being negated and looking as hypocritical as any other pop star ever was. It’s obviously better for these people to shut their mouths, but of course they don’t really get a choice in that either, if your favourite pretty boy is being paid to be the international representative for bike safety, that’s what he’s gonna do. Just like how idols can look sexy but aren’t actually permitted to be sexual, idols are allowed to advocate “speaking yourself” which simultaneously having their speech more heavily regulated than almost any other celebrity in any other country. Speak yourself, just watch what you say.

PLASTIC SURGERY

Sometimes it’s more obvious than at other times, but almost all your favourite idols have had plastic surgery of some description. You might as well learn to dig it, because they’re not going to stop doing it, what with Korean pop being such a competitive scene and everybody looking for that edge over the competition just to get a chance to participate at all. (I’ve been trying to acclimatise myself lately to a more plastic-surgery-friendly attitude by fapping to Tsukasa Aoi’s boobs in her more recent videos, but I keep feeling unsatisfied and coming back to Hitomi Tanaka, so I guess I have work to do yet on this.) Rather than being upset at your idol’s hyper-real face and body, maybe channel your angst at the system they’re in that makes them feel that living up to those hyper-real expectations is mandatory. You can help by stanning AKMU’s Suhyun like I do.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

All k-pop fans should be in favour of cultural appropriation, because the entirety of k-pop is one big-ass ongoing appropriation of (mostly) European reimaginings of American and English pop music, which is itself influenced by equal parts black blues and jazz musicians who died 70 years ago and stuffy Italian cunts in wigs who died 200 years ago. To listen to k-pop and pay it any attention at all to it is to say “I’m alright with things from different cultures being mixed together even if they don’t belong”. That includes all the things that you wish weren’t mixed together. As technology makes the world smaller and smaller, this type of thing is going to happen more and more, so not being a stuffy cunt about it is probably the way to go. On top of that idols are raised in a closeted environment which doesn’t prioritise cultural awareness and keeps them even more blundering and ignorant than the average stan Twitter user, and even on the off-chance that they did know and care about the bizarre cultural rules of your obscure boring country that they don’t live in, their CEO sure doesn’t, and if the boss-man thinks the girls look good wearing your king’s prized royal sacred hoop-earrings/hairstyle/orange toupee/etc, it’s tough titties for everyone else. Like it or not, superficial cultural reinterpretation is the admission price into k-pop’s global village.

BUSINESS DISPUTES

It’s already well documented in blog form (mainly by me, but also lately by several others) just how fucked k-pop contracts are from the artist’s perspective. Shit contracts are of course nothing new under the sun when it comes to the music business generally, but in k-pop the stakes are a lot higher, the competition is a lot tougher, and everything is coated with an extra layer of hyper-capitalist mean-spiritedness that almost ensures that your idol is never getting a fair deal if they’re anything less than the absolute A-list (and even then it’s far from certain). That’s not to say that everything is a one-way street, because the companies themselves often have their balls on the line and are taking huge risks, but the idol definitely gets the rawest part of the deal in terms of risk vs potential reward, with fame considered by many to be an adequate compensation for lack of income, and there’s no insurance policy that will cover a failed music career.

DANGEROUS DRIVING

It’s well documented that Korean driving is absolutely fucking terrifying. Don’t believe those crappy cheap nugu videos where they pair smooth coffee-shop music with footage of trees and lightposts moving by in the distance on the freeway to make you feel all “relaxed” and shit, Korean roads despite being very modern and well-maintained are a murder city hell ride because of people’s driving habits and it’s a wonder any of your idols are still alive at all. Just researching this post and driving habits in South Korea I think I saw about 150 people die on YouTube and it wasn’t fun and I’m not going to link any of it because watching people die is not something I enjoy. What I did learn from these YouTube snuff videos, is that in order to survive on the roads there you gotta adopt a little of the crazy yourself (and it’s odd how YouTube censors consenting sexual relations but lets hardcore death footage through the gate but I guess that’s American websites for you). If you’re driving normal and everyone else is driving like a cockhead, it’s actually increasing the danger levels because you become an obstacle in the chaotic traffic flow with your boring, rigid rulebook-following and people will just run you off the fucking road. That’s why I could never drive in South Korea, I’m too much of a polite rulebook driver and I think I would get PTSD just from looking at Korean traffic for more than five seconds at a time. So rather than being judgemental, just be happy that your fave probably isn’t crushed under a bus yet (may change by the time you read this, better go check).

MENTAL HEALTH

All of the above should make it pretty clear that there’s going to be some heavy mental costs to being an idol, so it’s no wonder that every now and then some psychological cracks start to form. I know that I sure couldn’t be perfect all the time, or even for one day, or even for the entirety of one shitty blog post like this one with horrible takes on absolutely everything. Even a little bit of pressure to conform to what hideously uptight k-pop communities consider “acceptable discourse” would be enough to send me hopping straight along to the funny farm for a lengthy stay in the “maximum security problematic blogger” ward, so how the majority of idols keep themselves sane is anyone’s guess. You can help by not reacting like a massive cuntosaur when they do something inane and daft, which they do a lot, because nobody is out there helping them with any of this shit.

PLAGIARISM

I can’t say shit, I didn’t make any of these GIFs myself and the entire article idea is copied from everything that every other k-pop blogger has boringly posted at the bottom of their own articles over the last 10 years.

ANIMAL ABUSE

I’m not qualified to comment here so I’ll hand it over to someone with a more personal vested interest for this one.

That’s all for this post! Hopefully you enjoyed this completely dull trip inside Kpopalypse’s thoughts on generic k-pop scandal categories! Kpopalypse will return with more posts soon!