Summary

Criticizing kpop artists, disrespecting their journey, their trauma, their strength and their talents is garbage behavior from garbage people.

There are many TALENTED girls and guys in the industry … that want to be seen and heard and who have real RAW talent … just like artists here in the states. But the Korean music industry doesn’t work like ours does … it doesn’t have the same rules or opportunities or structure. Kpop is still a relatively new industry and currently a handful of companies have a monopoly on everything. Like Johnny’s in Japan that ran almost the ENTIRE pop industry and ruined it and was full of pedos.

The music industry in the U.S. is not everyone’s music industry.
Freedom isn’t available for everyone in the same way.
Your reality isn’t everyone’s reality.

These are PEOPLE … with hopes, dreams, desire, and talent and you know NOTHING about their world, their country, their hell … so you can’t possibly appreciate that any music even exists under these circumstances.

Sunmi

If you don’t know that Sunmi was forced to learn to play guitar while in the Wonder Girls because their management decided that they would STOP being a dance group and START to become a band … if you don’t know she had to leave the industry because of mental illness where there is a HUGE stigma in South Korea … if you don’t know the hell she went through to heal and come into who she was, who she wanted to be …

… then you can’t APPRECIATE this very much …

Maybe it just sounds to you like some mediocre song by some random girl playing a bass. If you don’t know how this girl came to be, what she has been through, the strength she has, the pain she has suffered through and all she has overcome then you really can’t appreciate seeing her freely STILL playing bass which she says she has some to love … singing in her own voice … solo .. quiet … coming into herself and being free and healthy and happy.

You don’t know what it took for her to get there … to create this …

These are people … in an industry that is terrible to them … these are artists … who have hearts and souls.

Chungha

Chungha almost left the industry entirely … she was so mistreated and so overworked and she is so insanely talented.

The girls around that table represent 2 generations of idols. All who knew each other in passing but weren’t close friends. They shared their pain and their stories and found strength together. They are … Chungha (solo artist), Sunmi, YooA, Chuu (who started a FIRE in the kpop industry the way she broke away from her agency), and Hani (from EXID). These aren’t nobodies in the industry, they are the top.

Listen to them and understand just a tiny bit of their hell before you judge their music …

This hell they have been through is the Korean music industry as much as it’s the Korean culture and the mentality of not dealing directly with mental health and expressing honesty. It’s a lot of things.

I grew up in an abusive space … surrounded by narcissists who didn’t see me as an individual at all. I know what abuse looks like. I recognize it instantly and all I ever see in kpop are artists suffering a ton of psychological and emotional abuse. I see pain and I see torment and I see people struggling to live.

Thinking too much means you’re not busy enough …

This kind of shit … this kind of grooming isn’t specific to Korean culture … it’s a huge part of American work culture and slave culture as well. Many should be able to easily understand and relate to Chungha running herself into the ground … trying desperately to pursue her dreams and trying to live.

When you understand what Chungha went through … how her agency abused and mistreated her … how she almost ended up in the hospital … how much she LOVES music, how TALENTED she is, how beautiful she is … and know that she left Korea in 2022 and almost didn’t return AT ALL … and you see her return with THIS … epicness, this fire, these LYRICS, this strength … on her OWN TERMS …

(Chuu) Kim Ji Woo

When you understand what Chuu went through (it’s way too long and complicated to explain here. Read this post to learn the details) … how she fought ALONE with no support from even her group members. She fought against her agency, she got blacklisted by them, they tried to sabotage her … she took all that on … for YEARS by herself (with her mother beside her) … and then you see this and hear her voice … single … not buried beneath 10 other girls …

This is why we support her.

Because she is so strong and so pure and so kind and she NEVER lost her brightness through all the hell she went through.

I admire these women so much.

Korean culture can be hell for a lot of reasons especially mental health … and when you have talent and a creative nature it can be CRUSHING because, similar to here, it is not valued very much. Seeing these artists try to pursue their dreams in such a brutal industry and a culture that doesn’t always value them … it is all about triumph and overcoming odds and obstacles.

If you cannot appreciate that … if you cannot hold that in your heart … you lack empathy. It’s just that simple.

If you think what happened to K$sha and Britney and other American artists was bad, you should try understanding what South Korean artists go through. With those two artists what happened to them was very specific to them, very personal, it is NOT the accepted standard of how artists are treated in the American music industry. In South Korea though … the abuse, the slave labor, the low wages, the bad management, the destruction of dreams and souls is the ACCEPTED STANDARD.

That standard is slowly starting to change … but not fast enough.

Kpop isn’t JUST about the music and if you say you hate Kpop its because you’re not LISTENING to what is at the heart of the music. You can’t listen to Rosé or Chuu or Ailee or Chungha or Hwasa or Lee Suhyun and say the music is BAD. It isn’t.

What you hate is the kpop machine that creates TRASH which is legit … but then you’re completely IGNORANT of what happens to real, raw, genuine talent trapped in that machine … and you don’t care to learn. You just want to say you hate an entire genre of music and the country that produces it …

The only way kpop will change as an industry is if more artists fight … if more artists find strength and stand up for themselves and their dreams … the only way things will continue to change thanks to the strength and honesty and sacrifice of people like Sunmi, Chuu, Chungha, Hwasa others in the last 2 generations is if people continue to support their individual efforts and support them pushing boundaries, pushing for change in Korean culture …

If you develop a full understanding of how things work and why and have an opinion on that, awesome. If you don’t understand it and don’t care to understand why it exists and how it came to exist the way it does and just want to criticize it, just don’t say anything and mind your own business.

People who truly understand kpop are fans of individual artists who they want to see succeed in an industry that is designed to grind them up and spit them out and replace them with someone else.

People who truly enjoy kpop are rooting for these girls and guys who are trying to make it doing something they love in a country that sees them as disposable assets and parts of a greater machine and not actual talent or individuals.

People who understand the industry want it to change.

So again … if you know nothing about Kpop, Korean culture, Korean music … that’s fine … but criticizing the artists, disrespecting their journey, their trauma, their strength, their talents … that’s just garbage behavior from a place of ignorance and lack of empathy.

You don’t know shit, so don’t say shit.