So the other day I got this message in my inbox:
“What if ji and ksoo were to see the sexual and erotic stuff you shippers write/post about them? Just imagine how it makes them feel. As two men who are just friends it could make them really uncomfortable and they probably think its disrespectful too smh”
Rather than replying straight to this person and being petty, throwing shade and ready to fight like I usually am….I figured I’d reply with this nice and calm well thought out post since this subject comes up often with Kaisoo and I feel like this possibility needs a bit of exploration. :)
*****DISCLAIMER******: As everyone should know by now, I am a kaisoo supporter and this post is mainly to break down misconceptions in relation to them only. In other words, I am not speaking for other pairings/ships that arent Kaisoo. This is solely my perception and view on this so no shade will be tolerated. I edited this both on my laptop and my phone so idk if the “read more” shyt appeared…dont shoot me. The names of Kaisoo have been abbreviated to eliminate appearing in their respective tags. This post is also not to condone or promote the sharing of sexually explicit forms of shipping directly with the artists involved. (i.e messaging it to them on social media, mailing it to them, shouting things like “how hard does ji f*ck you” to ksoo in person, etcetera etcetera blah blah yada yada)
This makes about 4 years since they have been active in the industry.
Kaisoo shippers began noticing their interactions way before EXO’s debut.
Then, this airport photo that was released to the public was one of the first ones that showed how intimate they were with one another:
This pre debut photo was also leaked along with others, some of which were noted to have been much more intimate:
Eerily, these intimate photos vanished after EXO’s debut and are currently nowhere to be found online.
So we know that the kaisoo ship began its first stages of sailing around 2010-late 2011, before EXO’s debut.
Throughout all 4 years of EXO being active, both JI and KS have maintained steady and intimate interactions with one another. There were only two major periods during these 4 years of which the two seemed to be more distant around each other than usual. (There are many theories about this, research more if you’re interested.)
Simultaneously within these 4 years, the kaisoo pairing grew to become one of the longest and most popular pairings in EXO, to the point where it not only became one of EXO’s main pairings but one of the most popular pairings within the Korean idol industry as a whole.
That’s a lot of popularity, right?
I hope you are following along.
“Kaisoo” is what international fans use to refer to “KAI” and “KyungSOO” being paired.
However, in Korea, they are referred to as “KADI”
“KADI” is written as “카디 ” in hangul.
Below is a screencap from an interview for EXO’s 2nd box dvd that included both JI and KS, released in 2015:
As you can see, they both seem to be well informed about their Korean couple name, “Kadi”.
Okay, so what does this mean? Just cuz they know the name doesnt mean they’ve seen what fans draw of them! It should be kept private!
This brings me to my next point.
Again, KADI written in hangul is 카디.
One of Korea’s most popular search engines is “NAVER. It is Korea’s equivalent to GOOGLE in the US. More than 25 million people in South Korea have used NAVER.
NAVER has also collaborated with and sponsored many EXO related things both past and present.
I searched for 카디 in NAVER, and this is what came up:
On almost every page, there were drawings of JI and KS that were intimate and very erotic.
So, this leads me to my final point.
If we look at the timeline and how the kaisoo ship started before debut, it grew to be one of the most popular ships, they both know about their ship name and that erotic images show up when you search their name on NAVER (we could even factor in that JI has had an instagram in the past and that KS has been rumoured to have a private one)…then one could only conclude that the chance of them already having seen and possibly even read what fans have created about them is pretty high.
In short, I know a lot of you want to protect JI and KS and make sure that things like this stay private and out of their reach, but I am 99% sure that its too late for that and they have already seen these things.
I also don’t feel like protection is needed, though, and its because of this reason. If we can conclude that within 4 years they had to have been exposed to “erotic kaisoo fanart/fiction” then we can also conclude that there is a possibility that they aren’t bothered by it too much.
The reason for this once again goes back to the timeline. We know that the kaisoo pairing has been around since 2010. We also know there is a possibility they both knew about their pairing.
Hypothetically, lets say that I am and idol and found out that fans were looking at my interactions with another idol and creating sexual imagery out of these reactions and I don’t like it. My first reaction to limit this would be to reduce how much I interact with this person in the public eye. Less touching, less whispering, less laughing and being seen together. Whether fanservice or just normal interaction, if me being shipped with this person made me uncomfortable, the interaction with them would slow down.
But Kadi’s interactions with one another didn’t slow down until almost 2 years after debut, which would lead one to come to the conclusion that A.) They are not bothered by being paired with one another, and B.) The reactions slowed down for a reason other than them being uncomfortable with shipping.
I’m pretty sure they’re bothered and just feel like they can’t say anything cuz of SM!!
This is a possibility, but again not very likely. Remember not too long ago when Chanyolk put up that long post on instagram after people found out he started following a specific female idol? And we all know about how vocal Amburr has been lately about ef ex as well. KS was able to politely communicate that he no longer needs gifts from fans, so its safe to say that if shipping him with JI was an issue that would have been conveyed somehow too.
There is also so much evidence from Kaisoo themselves clearly showing how shipping doesnt seem to make them uncomfortable.
We have the sticker set that JI used on his phone. This sticker set was made by and given to him by a fansite:
In this sticker set there were drawings of JI by himself, JI with animals and KS drawings, but not any other member/idol. This also shows that, once again, kaisoo had been shipped by the public for a long time, giving them the likely hood of knowing about it.
There are also lots of videos in which you can see both JI and KS smiling at banners of which their ship name had appeared:
And then there is the eery coincidence of JI mentioning that one of his favorite songs was “Montreal” by the weekend, 4 years after it was used in a FMV for a kaisoo fanfic called “Arbitrage”:
Has he read the actual fic? Most likely not. But its possible he may have seen seen the FMV which included clips of him with KS as well.
I want to reiterate agian that this post is not to say that its okay to post sexual works of idol pairings in places that they will see it. Of course it should stay among shippers only. What Im saying is that on a website like tumblr, an idol from south Korea is not likely to see what shippers post and even still, because there are shippers who share things externally and search engines exist…there is the possibility that an idol has already seen what you’re trying to keep from them.
Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, shipping is and always has been apart of the kpop industry. We know it, the companies know it and idols know it too.
With the internet being such an open way of communicating and sharing things for so many people, its only a matter of time before some nsfw shipping art is leaked on a platform that makes it more accessible to idols. But this is not something that you can blame shipping itself(especially when it is encouraged) or the MAJORITY of shippers for. The majority of us are not sending our NSFW kaisoo art and fics directly to KS and JI themselves. It was even Kaisoo shippers themselves who used our voices to stop the film adaptation of Anterograde Tomorrow in an effort to protect Kaisoo. The majority of us are just talking among ourselves on exclusive and private platforms and sharing our imagination in the form of art.
Every now and then someone may leak things that should have been kept private. But that is an issue for THOSE shippers, not shippers and shipping as a whole. There are good and not so good people in all fandoms, and there is nothing wrong with artistic expression among fans.
So in short, to answer your question…I (clearly) wonder sometimes if Kaisoo has seen what things shippers post about them all the time. I do acknowledge the possibility that they also may have seen these works. I do wonder how it makes them feel, but I also know that they are adults and if they do feel uncomfortable or if they feel its disrespectful they will tell us/show us in their own way and we don’t have to worry about protecting them from things like this. :)
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