The K-Pop race has become more competitive than ever and as one netizen on Reddit noticed,
the number of groups debuting is increasing exponentially.
In 2019 alone, 69 groups had debuted and that means the chance to make profits was getting
super slim.
Because of this reason, many agencies, including big companies, are believed to have used desperate
tricks to garner attention from netizens at the expense of their artists.
NMIXX
While it’s undeniable that all members of NMIXX are the super competent idols of not
only JYP Entertainment but also the Kpop industry as a whole, they are constantly criticized
for not being able to produce a decent song to listen to, causing their reputation to
drop significantly.
JYP Entertainment, with a history of never failing with any girl groups, was extremely
bitter about this result.
That’s why instead of gaining back people’s love through carefully invested music products,
they were said to have opted for the media play shortcut in hope that more people would
notice their girls.
Probably to prepare for the negative reactions toward O.O because the song’s listenability
was apparently low, JYP first stole a bunch of iconic scenes in famous MVs and put them
in NMIXX’s teaser to ensure they make enough headlines.
Just within one week, multiple proof of plagiarism was found and according to netizens, NMIXX
has not only triggered one but up to three fandoms because the copied details were so
evident.
However, as all attention is good attention for a rookie, JYP never released any statements
to keep the debate heated.
To a certain extent, this hate actually served them well because they had managed to grab
lots of attention and directed it to the QUALIFYING series of NMIXX, quickly gaining back the
love since the girls were very talented.
Then, the MV was dropped and because many had already fallen for NMIXX, they turned
the blind eyes on the questionably melody and helped O.O debut at no.50 of MelOn.
However, as this result was still disappointing for a group coming from a big company like
JYP Entertainment, the company again tried to make another desperate attempt to gain
attention for NMIXX’s upcoming promotion: plagiarizing NewJeans’ fashion by letting
the girls wearing the same colorful sporty clothes as NewJeans, doing similar poses and
even pushing two members out of frame so that the line-up could have five members just like
NewJeans.
This copycat move was quickly picked up by eagle-eyed netizens and on Pann, many said
they only found NMIXX pitiful because their body proportions were too severe to pull off
NewJeans’ fashion.
Especially for Haewon, her figure was constantly made fun of and while netizens knew body shaming
was a toxic culture, they couldn’t help doing it differently because they believed
NMIXX was the first to start the beef.
Had they chosen to stick with their regular style or at least, copied in a selective way
so that they could both stay true to their colors while being in vogue, netizens wouldn’t
have said anything about it.
However, there were still defending opinions, saying that it was totally ridiculous to criticize
the girls let alone body shame then victim-blame them.
First, as a girl group who hasn’t even been in the industry for one year, it’s obvious
that they had no decision over what to wear and what style to pursue.
That’s why a sudden switch to a more hip-hop image was totally out of their control and
they should never be hated for that.
In fact, not even the coordies of JYP should be hated for that because NewJeans didn’t
own this style and teenagers, especially those in the West, have been dressing like this
for centuries.
Another thing fans found ridiculous about this criticism is that, the figure of NMIXX’s
members have never been bad and had netizens spent just several minutes to watch any stages
of the girls, they would have seen NMIXX could slay even the most eccentric outfits for the
top-notch ratio.
What people should have criticized in that photo was the odd camera angle that made the
girls look shorter and bulkier.
LE SSERAFIM
Even until now, LE SSERAFIM is still believed to be the group only managing to achieve a
great reputation due to the cheap media play of HYBE, and many believed that had it not
been for the explosive scandal of Kim Garam, the flop of LE SSERAFIM was really inevitable.
On big forums, there are countless threads calling LE SSERAFIM’s debut disappointing,
underwhelming and way too below the luxury model concept that they showed in the teasers.
Netizens even bashed their songs for the girls’ allegedly bad English pronunciation, saying
that they were forgettable.
According to some, the group’s styling was boring and even their visual was bland so
combining all factors together, LE SSERAFIM was said to seemingly hold a one way ticket
to the certain flop.
Basically, since everything about the group was apparently underwhelming while the gen4
Kpop race only got fiercer and fiercer, HYBE had seemingly predicted such negative reactions
from netizens so they desperately reached for dirty tricks.
Predebut, they used Kim Garam’s scandal for clout, continuously giving vague statements
making her look like a real bully while it’s recently proven that she wasn’t 100% a villain
as in the accusation.
Topics related to Kim Garam have been trending for months and since all exposure was good
exposure, they just did the bare minimum to put off the hate.
Then, when people cared about LE SSEARAFIM enough to get interested in their music, HYBE
straight up threw Kim Garam out of the window.
To hype up the debut song, HYBE and LE SSERAFIM were believed to have cheated on music shows.
Their win over Lim Young Woong was highly suspected and according to online detectives,
the fact that their ranking for both the title track and album was way behind the trot prince,
it made no sense that they have the broadcast score over over 5000 while Lim Young Woong’s
was 0.
Because of that, when NewJeans debuted, some so-called Fearnots even said they would leave
LE SSERAFIM’s fandom to stan NewJeans since there was nothing fun about the group for
them to love anymore.
GOLDEN CHILD
Debuting under a rather small company, Woollim Entertainment, GOLDEN CHILD has struggled
a lot to raise their popularity.
Unfortunately, the group’s hard work didn’t pay off well so after about two years trying
in vain, their company started to use dirty tricks in the hope of helping their artists
become more famous.
In 2018, GOLDEN CHILD was accused of blatantly copying the album packaging of GOT7, including
the luggage-inspired case, travel stickers, ticket photocards and even the CD itself.
When the accusation blew up bigger, Woollim didn’t bother to make any statements and
just went on promoting the design as if it was their original idea.
While some said it was probably another coincidence in Kpop as big brainers could clash sometimes,
Ahgases didn’t think so.
According to them, since the packaging of GOT7 was made based on the “flight” theme,
things like the flight ticket photocards and a CD looking like a compass made sense.
However, since the album GOLDENESS of GOLDEN CHILD was more about the regular love concept,
it was totally senseless for them to have an album packaging related to the airport,
travel luggage, compass or anything related to the sky.
However, as GOT7’s fandom didn’t want to push things too far, the plagiarism was
quickly a thing of the past.
Seeing things didn’t go their way, Woollim opted for the last resort to garner attention
and objectively speaking, they were really “brave” because this approach could have
destroyed GOLDEN CHILD’s career in a blink of an eye.
Can you guess what they did?
Well, they exposed the members’ romantic relationships and even let them go on dates
without covering their identity.
In 2019, Jibeom was said to have gone on a date with his girlfriend in North Seoul and
despite being an idol with a decent recognition, he didn’t bother to cover himself.
A fan who was there said both Jibeom and his partner not only walked casually with no masks
on but also kissed in the street.
Because of the strict privacy laws in South Korea, the person didn’t post their faces
but still gave a picture of Jibeom holding the same backpack to prove her words.
The company then tried to use this method again in 2021: letting Joochan self-expose
his relationship with his drama partner Jeon Ye Ji.
This time, the method was a little different and instead of blatantly dating, Joochan played
a little mind game with people to make things more fun.
The live sitcom he played was about the secret love story between an idol and an editor and
to watch them, fans must pay about 70.000 won for each episode.
There was a kiss scene in this series and while Joochan claimed that he neither actually
kissed his partner nor had any feelings for her, fans believed the opposite.
Two weeks after the series ended, they noticed Joochan was secretly hanging out with Ye Ji
as fans noticed Ye Ji followed an Instagram account named Hwang Chan Joon whose ID was
“so_gogie”, a nickname Joochan often used to play games, and also followed the Instagram
account of Joochan’s dog.
While Ye Ji quickly deactivated her account, the traces of their relationships were clear.
Joochan later also sent an implicit message to deny the accusation but considering how
obvious that lovestagram, the attempt of Ye Ji to publish their relationship, and the
way Joochan candidly used his game ID for his private Instagram, fans believed he was
just trying to play a mind game for clout.
In 2022, Woollim used another trick to gain attention for GOLDEN CHILD and probably due
to being so desperate, they even hired outlets to exaggerate their health problem, acting
as if one member was about to kick the bucket at an extremely young age.
Specifically on May 18, Tag was reported to have a severe liver failure and if he couldn’t
have an urgent liver transplant, he would die.
When the public went crazy over this news and expressed the extreme grief, GOLDEN CHILD
made a new statement, saying that Tag only experienced a minor problem with his liver
and just went to the hospital to have a health check-up.
This “plot twist” made many fans extremely angry because they felt cheated.
Giving it a thought, the whole thing was actually super fishy because had the group themselves
not talked to outlets about Tag’s liver problem, how could these outlets ever know
about it?
Simply put, many believed GOLDEN CHILD and their company have just been desperately trying
for clout ever since 2019 but as everything was also all in netizens’ head, you should
take these accusations into great consideration before judging the group.
So, do you think these groups were actually pulling cheap attention bait for money or
everything was made up by delulus?