Our comments will follow the article.
“What is the truth behind SNSD Jessica’s alleged sexual harassment?
An english-based Hallyu celebrity news site allkpop posted footage from the 12th Korean-Chinese Music Festival that was directly filmed by a Chinese fan. They titled it ‘Jessica Sexual Harassment’ because they thought a man was inappropriately touching Jessica during the goodbye ending stage.
allkpop stated, ‘In the video, right after Jessica says the ending speech on behalf of the group, she quickly turns to Hyoyeon and seems to whisper something into her ear. Hyoyeon then looks in the direction of the man to the right of Jessica (from the videographer’s vantage point) in apparent shock and disgust at something, while Jessica proceeds to move to the far left where Sooyoung is standing. Meanwhile, the man on the right slowly begins to remove himself from the scene, as he walks out of sight to the right.’
Along with this description, they provided a link to the video and posted a fan picture of Jessica’s unhappy face as if Jessica really was molested.
However it was recently confirmed their allegations were in fact false. First of all, the video the Chinese fan directly filmed themselves was shaky and it is impossible to tell whether the man next to her really did act inappropriately. A representative of SNSD’s agency, SM Entertainment, came forth to state, “The rumor is not true at all. If something like that happened at the scene, we would have taken immediate action. Please do not misunderstand the situation to be something it isn’t.”
With their malicious reports, allkpop has damaged the image of SNSD. To be honest, it is not the first time allkpop has scarred the Hallyu Wave. This site spreads rumor material in order to raise their viewer numbers for the site. In 2008, they described Big Bang’s ‘For the World’ album as ‘The biggest musical disaster in 10 years’, and more recently they stated, ‘Japanese girl group SND48 are not able to debut in Korea because of the negative remarks of Korean netizens’, and ‘Lee Da Hae belittled Filipinos’, thus intentionally spreading distorted truths and encouraging an anti-Hallyu Wave.
The problem lies with allkpop’s ripple effect. allkpop is the representative English-based Hallyu celebrity news site with over 1 million readers. It is a very famous site that many international fans visit, with a popularity so great that even the cyber diplomatic missions site ‘VANK‘ (Voluntary Agency Network of Korea) would post promotional news on their notice board. Therefore rumors such as “A famous singer getting molested at an international event” would be regarded as the real truth to international fans, which can potentially be harmful to Korea’s national image.
Netizens have been voicing out, ‘Why are they talking bad about SNSD’, ‘I don’t have an answer for allkpop. I think there’s a problem with the administrator,’ ‘Isn’t this a national disgrace’.”
To be honest, we debated even addressing this article, partially because of the sheer ridiculousness of it all, and partially because we have already written about these concerns in the recent past. However, this new attack has forced us to address the article because we feel disconcerted about two issues:
1) The fact that the ‘Sports Chosun’ writer has chosen to brush off these allegations about sexual harassment in order to attach an ‘anti-Hallyu wave’ sentiment to allkpop belittles the issue of sexual harassment to ‘Sports Chosun’ readers.
2) The fact that the minute allkpop posts a rumor or controversy, we become credited with demonizing Korea.
We’ll begin by tackling the first issue.
The suggestion that allkpop damaged the reputation of SNSD because we published a story about a man ‘allegedly’ touching Jessica in an inappropriate manner is borderline offensive, not only to the intelligence of every reader, but to every woman who has had to endure humiliating unwanted advances. In fact, we’re going to say the nonchalant attitude shown in the article is out-and-out warped.
Why in the world would a man inappropriately touching a woman damage the reputation of the woman? If the rumor were true, shouldn’t the writer’s outrage be turned against the man in question and not the reputation of the woman? Our issue with the writer has absolutely nothing to do with whether the rumor is true or false, but everything to do with the writer’s suggestion that a woman being inappropriately touched somehow reflects negatively on the female. Instead of investigating what actually did happen, the writer took the opportunity to launch a hate campaign against allkpop, which I suppose speaks to the true intention of covering the rumor.
She’s purportedly the victim of an embarrassing situation, and SNSD has become victimized as well by this writer’s idiotic swing at us. We’re seriously puzzled over how the writer can gloss over the sexual harassment situation in order to lash out and assert that, by reporting on it, allkpop causes fans to hate on Korea.
Which brings us to our second point.
In case you missed it the first time, here’s the first time allkpop got attacked with a ridiculous claim from the Korean media. We intended that to be the be-all, end-all bulwark against accusations of being an anti-Hallyu hate-mongerer.
Unfortunately, that maneuverer was clearly ignored in favor of more juicy stories to ’support’ the writer’s argument. From our view, there is a clear problem when the writer chooses to spin what is clearly stated as a rumor article into some grand scheme by allkpop to ruin the image of SNSD and Korea.
There are so many articles that promote K-pop on this site, an overwhelming majority, but the moment one article addresses a controversy or a rumor, we are anti-Hallyu wave again. It’s as if the only thing they can tolerate from an international site posting about Korean entertainment are positive, glowing reports about everyone and everything – as if we should pretend that nothing ever bad happens in K-pop.
Hilariously though, in the ultimate double standard, the Korean entertainment media apparently feels free to post about rumors and netizen comments all they want in order to sell papers and get hits on their site, but apparently we aren’t allowed to post up international rumors and international netizens comments. No, not an international site, because when an international site does exactly the same thing that the Korean media does, it’s apparently anti-Korea by their logic.
It’s offensive to us because K-pop has gone international, and we all have a deep love for it, but it’s frustrating to see that certain Korean media members do not seem to be able to come to terms with the fact that with the internationalization of their product will come international fans and international opinions.
As allkpop grows, we are certain that this is not the last time we will be criticized by the Korean press, but as our readers, you can be rest assured that these baseless attacks against our integrity and purpose will not lead to allkpop leaving our readers in the dark about any events just to avoid silly attacks such as this. We will continue to serve you as best as we can, and that’s a promise.
