don't be a kpop star

This is Tiffany Hwang -- member of Girls' Generation, one of the most successful girl groups that K-Pop has ever seen. She's 27 (28 Korean age), Korean-American, and the unfortunate focal point of K-pop's most recent "scandal". (pic credit to Maycicero)

On August 13 and 14, her company (SM Entertainment) held a large-scale, regular concert in Tokyo. (pic credit to Sone Source)

(Tiffany is an avid user of social media. She posts a lot of updates about her work, or just pictures of her dogs, on both her Instagram and her Snapchat. Here's an example from when she was filming a music video in LA.)

Back to the story. It happens that August 15 is Korea's National Liberation Day, a day celebrating the nation's liberation from Japanese imperial rule. Koreans (and many other Asian countries) still have very negative views towards Japan that stem from terrible atrocities committed by the Japanese army during WWII.

In the evening of August 14, Tiffany posted a picture that she took with two of her group members at the concert's afterparty. She later added the caption, as shown above: a Japanese flag and a heart.

The next morning, as she boarded the plane to return to Seoul, Tiffany snapped a quick picture and posted it to her SnapStory. She often uses geofilters whenever she travels to different countries, and this time was no exception. Here, you can see the "Tokyo Japan" sticker in use.

Another flag! This one is called the Rising Sun flag. It was flown as a war banner by the Japanese during WWII. Understandably, it is a much-reviled symbol in many Asian countries -- Korea included -- because of all the war crimes and violence that were committed under it. If you examine the previous photo carefully, you will notice that word "Tokyo" on the filter is actually made up of the Rising Sun's design.

Probably because of this, Tiffany took down her Snapchat image almost immediately and deleted the caption from her Instagram post. However, the damage was done. Screenshots floated all around the Korean interwebs and people got hella mad.

And this is where shit hit the fan. Korean netizens (knetz) were outraged, furiously calling for Tiffany to apologize, retire from her group, or even leave Korea. [To be clear: the point of this post isn't to say she didn't do wrong. She did; she posted an inappropriate sticker and emoji on a important Korean holiday, which is a terrible thing to do as a public figure. Especially in Korea.] Once her plane landed, Tiffany wrote and posted an apology letter on her Instagram, pictured above. (for a translation: https://www.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/4xscya/tiffanys_apology/)

To keep it simple, Knetz didn't like her apology because it was "too vague" (perhaps because she could not afford to offend the huge number of Japanese fans that she also has?). Either way, Korean media blew up with articles about her. Many such articles contained misinformation (regarding the timing and contents of her posts) and led to further rage. It got to the point where Knetz were blaming her for her mother's death -- which happened when she was 11 -- and posting up all kinds of threats on her Instagram.

Thing got worse. How, right? A news anchor from the station MBN finished up his report on the loss of the Korean Olympic badminton team by saying "Congratulations, Tiffany", implying that the loss was her fault. This caused an uproar as Knetz lauded the anchor for his jibe, which was later described to be "said with ironic intent" by the station's official statement.

At the same time, Knetz were also working to get Tiffany off a TV show that she'd recently been casted in. The show, "Sisters' Slam Dunk", is a 6-woman variety show created to challenge the male-biased Korean media. The members range from ages 27 (Tiffany) to older ladies in the early 40s and the show itself was a huge hit. However, more than 3000 posts were left on the show's message board by yesterday, demanding that Tiffany be removed from the show.

This afternoon, an official statement was released; in it, the show's producers explained that they had discussed at length with Tiffany's company and decided that it would be the best course of action for Tiffany to leave the show.

Now, there's been radio silence from Tiffany since she posted her apology letter. For three days the Korean netizens have had free reign to say anything they want about her online, backed by many Korean tabloids and news companies. And today they succeeded in bumping her off what was honestly a really refreshing show.

Finally, people have started to speak up. Oh Jieun, an actress, pointed out on her Twitter (@/heaventomorrow) that this hate would not have been cast at Tiffany if she had been a young male idol. JTBC News also ran a segment questioning the increasingly abusive comments seen on the internet. Pictured is their quotation of US First Lady Michelle Obama.

Now, I'm not saying not biased. I've been a fan of Girls' Generation for 3, nearly 4 years now, and my favorite member has always been Tiffany, the dorky kid who went to Korea alone at age 15 for a dream. I'm not trying to say she's a poor little angel who did nothing to deserve derision - far from that! She did make a mistake, a rather hefty one, at a bad time.

And I'm not saying I understand 100% the reasons why Knetz are so angry. I'm not Korean, and my (also Asian) country is not particularly pissed off when we see the Rising Sun. However, it's my opinion that the abuse Tiffany received was way beyond what she deserved; anger, I can understand. Threats? Insulting her deceased mom? Digging up false rumors and editing pictures to pin yet more blame on her? This, I cannot understand or condone.

It's really, really not my intent to say "oh ew Korean netizens are assholes". I made this post so more people can get the correct facts and hopefully make their own judgements. There's so much more that I -- or other fans -- want to say but: is it just me who feels horrified and heartbroken at how a honest mistake was turned into a witchhunt?

I just hope Tiffany stays safe and knows that there are still people out there who think she's pretty damn cool.

Cat tax

Thank you for reading.