An overall total of four Korean entertainers have actually suddenly resigned through the industry this week, in a widening scandal linking the glossy realm of K-pop with a few seedy intercourse crimes. The greatest players — Seungri, associated with influential all-male group Big Bang, plus the 29-year-old singer-songwriter Jung Joon-young — have both apologized into the public with regards to their involvement in double, interlocking situations of exploitation of females.

To catch you up: detectives scheduled Seungri on Monday on suspicion of providing prostitutes for entrepreneurs at certainly one of Seoul’s upscale dance clubs, triggering a media frenzy that is feeding ensnared the 2nd celebrity, Jung, and possibly more famous males in the future.

Seungri is doubting costs of brokering prostitution. However in statements into the press, Seoul Metropolitan Police say an investigation into his Kakaotalk messages (Kakao is Southern Korea’s principal texting platform) discovered evidence of “pimping” — they claim he had been not just providing several types of females to investors, but he had been section of a group that is separate because of the other celebrity, Jung.

This is where the facts get more sordid. Police say the near-dozen individuals when you look at the Jung chatroom had been sharing hidden digital camera footage of intercourse with drugged and unconscious females. Korean broadcaster SBS showed the text that is leaked, including Jung giving an answer to a video clip of just one unconscious woman by texting in Korean, “You raped her, LOL. “

Korean cable Yonhap states Jung is under research for secretly recorded and provided videos of their own intimate encounters with at least 10 ladies he filmed between 2015 and 2016.

Jung, whom rose to popularity on a Korean exact carbon copy of American Idol, is cooperating with authorities and released the statement that is following

“we acknowledge to all the my crimes. We filmed ladies without their permission and shared it in a social networking chatroom, and I didn’t feel a great sense of guilt while I did so. A lot more than any such thing, we kneel and apologize to your women that can be found in the videos that have discovered with this hideous truth as the event has arrive at light. “

The Record

BTS Would Go To No. 1 On Billboard’s Album Chart, A very first For K-Pop

One other guys who possess apologized and unexpectedly resigned through the industry after being implicated within the forums are Choi Jong-hoon, singer from FT Island, and Yong Junhyung, singer from Highlight, whom admitted which he was at the talk and saw the videos and would not speak up.

K-pop is such major social export and economic boon when it comes to Asian country of 55 million that this scandal — or scandals, based on the manner in which you’re counting — has drawn worldwide attention. (one of several genre’s most successful teams, BTS, had the No. 2 and number 3 bestselling records global this past year. )

Code Change

How The South Korean National Made K-Pop Something

Within Southern Korea, the company’ darker underbelly is well-known. Its three entertainment that is top — SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment — are notorious for operating their musicians via a militaristic system of rigorous dance and performing training, limitations to their personal life and plastic surgery regimens that begin when they are teenagers. Whenever females music artists came ahead with allegations of intimate abuse or harassment in the market, they truly are seldom examined. K-pop is really so interwoven with Korea’s soft power identity that Seungri said on Instagram, “I’ve been branded as being a ‘national traitor. ‘ “

Their agency, YG Entertainment, dropped him on apologized for failing to “manage the musician more thoroughly” and has watched its stock shares tumble wednesday.

Celebrity involvement in these sex crimes threaten to taint the carefully-crafted image of this K-pop industry, yes, however for Southern Korea, it shines a worldwide light for an already-festering societal issue: concealed camera porn, known in Southern Korea as “spycam, ” or molka, and its particular part in promulgating a misogynistic tradition. Since this past year, outrage about police’s uneven reaction to spycam has swelled to the roads, leading 22,000 females to protest final June, marking the biggest ladies’ protest in South history that is korean.

Southern Korea is really a country that is modern boasts of the advanced electronic devices and fast internet speeds, but regarding the way of measuring equality for females, it ranks at the end among developed nations. Even as we’ve reported, school curriculum also shows that victims are to be blamed for intimate attack.

Jung Joon-young, coming to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on March 14, 2019. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Photos hide caption

Combined, these facets feed a spycam that is widespread epidemic that is gone on for a long time. Small cameras that are hidden seem like lighters secretly film women in dressing rooms, restrooms, public venues like subway channels and during personal moments — as they’re sex. The footage of intercourse functions is regarded as a porn that is”natural that’s commonly distributed and profited away from on online platforms, with no victims’ knowledge.

Formally, police estimate a lot more than 6,000 instances of individuals filmed on spy cams without their permission, each 12 months, between 2013 and 2017. The victims are overwhelmingly females. But most for the right time, folks aren’t mindful their pictures are increasingly being traded: A 2018 research because of the Korean Women attorneys Association discovered 89 per cent of spycam crimes were perpetrated by strangers.

“there has been a lot of celebrity scandals before, including pretty severe charges like domestic punishment, but those frequently ended being remote incidents that faded through the consciousness that is public quickly, ” claims Jenna Gibson, a Korea columnist when it comes to Diplomat and a longtime K-pop watcher. “this time around, because Korea happens to be directly grappling with dilemmas like MeToo, spy cams, and ladies’ legal rights generally speaking, there is no method they will certainly allow these crimes get therefore effortlessly. What exactly these men have actually presumably done struck right in the middle for the societal divisions that are biggest in Korea at this time. “

The justice system can also be being placed to the test, once the Korean public raises questions regarding police complicity when you look at the prostitution brokered at nightclubs. “We are going to conduct a very good interior research, and. We shall simply just take stern measures irrespective of these ranking, ” Southern Korea’s nationwide Police Agency Chief Min Gap-ryong told lawmakers on Thursday, based on CNN, in response to questions regarding police searching one other means.

All this is forcing a reckoning in many layers regarding the general public sphere, but the majority notably for the activity motor that is K-pop, which churns out movie movie stars and teams that earn the devotion of fans global russian bride. The packaging among these designers is squeaky-clean, but can you continue to love something which is prepared within an culture that is exploitative? And we do with the art of monstrous men as it is often asked during this #metoo era: What do? The fanbase that is k-pop now the newest become working these concerns out.

Modification March 15, 2019

This tale initially identified group that is k-pop as having had the number 1 and number 2 bestselling records of 2018. These people were the number 2 and No. 3 bestselling records of the 12 months.