omg not again

thats right, youve stumbled upon yet another offensive kpop blog. why is kpop so problematic. FAQ for mobile they / them / theirs

[problematickpop-blog]

Please Read This

This has been a hard decision to make, one I’ve been debating with for a good while now, but I’ve decided I think it’s best for me to take a break from this blog. I never thought it would gain the traction that it did and I don’t feel comfortable running it at the moment, I’m sorry.

There are multiple reasons but a large one being I’m just not educated enough. There are many areas where I am still ignorant and I think I have a bit of an issue with talking over people, a bad habit I really need to break. I feel like stepping back will give me more time to learn and expand my horizons and less time to speak on topics I don’t actually know much about. I’m not trying to run away from anything, if you have issues with any of the things I say or do (because I am privileged in certain aspects) please don’t feel afraid to bring them up! 

I know I’ve answered questions on things like racism, colorism, cultural appropriation, etc. when in retrospect it really wasn’t my place to do so and I want to say I’m really, sincerely sorry about that. I always try to reblog posts made by the people who are affected and include links in my responses but I haven’t been so good at keeping my mouth shut when it doesn’t involve me, which is something I am going to change in myself.

Another thing is my mental health. As much as I have enjoyed running this blog, there are lots of aspects of it which have purely been a source of anxiety and distress for me. I suffer from lots of different mental health problems (I don’t want to go too into detail but I have ADHD and also struggle with BPD, bipolar + other issues) and this blog really does not help. My anxiety and paranoia are bad enough as it is but they shoot up every time I post on here, leaving me feeling sick when I can’t check my inbox (or when I have lots of messages) and paranoid that everybody hates me/this blog. It also means I respond to criticism poorly.

I’m ironically bad at dealing with conflict, which might make some people question why I started this blog (it was actually an accident, long story), but I’ve tried not to let it affect my running of this blog. That obviously didn’t work too well. I’m glad that people find this blog useful and I’m glad some of the posts have helped raise awareness and educate people about the offensive things idols do, but this blog requires a lot of time and energy and knowledge that I just don’t have. 

I’m also scared of spreading misinformation and making mistakes (both of which are things I have done), and I don’t like the idea of people feeling too intimidated to call me out when I mess up. It’s quite a big responsibility looking after this blog and I’m not sure my wellbeing can take that on top of my workload and personal problems. Again I apologise for any of the harm I have caused with this blog, it was definitely unintentional, but that’s no excuse.

I’m going to leave this blog up so people can still refer to some of the posts and look through the tags. My hiatus is indefinite, but it’s unlikely I’ll be running it again any time soon. Thank you everybody for everything! A lot of my followers have been a huge help and I’ve learned a lot myself. I encourage everybody to keep general discussion going, but for now, I’m stepping out. Goodbye!

[problematickpop-blog]

I’m just quickly posting to clarify that while I really, really appreciate the kind messages and support, please do not excuse the problematic things I did on this blog. Id prefer it if people acknowledge that I was talking over people and wasn’t always providing the right context. If you’re confused about whether or not things are offensive (especially racist/colorist), there are plenty of better resources out there, and plenty of people on this website willing to help you out.

I didn’t talk about my mental health to gain pity, I was explaining why I made my decision, so while I’m very grateful that people care, also don’t erase the other reasons I stopped running the blog. 

Also I’m moving the blog to a side account so I won’t get any of the messages sent in my inbox, which means I probably won’t be replying to anything. Thank you!

[problematickpop-blog]

Please Read This

This has been a hard decision to make, one I’ve been debating with for a good while now, but I’ve decided I think it’s best for me to take a break from this blog. I never thought it would gain the traction that it did and I don’t feel comfortable running it at the moment, I’m sorry.

There are multiple reasons but a large one being I’m just not educated enough. There are many areas where I am still ignorant and I think I have a bit of an issue with talking over people, a bad habit I really need to break. I feel like stepping back will give me more time to learn and expand my horizons and less time to speak on topics I don’t actually know much about. I’m not trying to run away from anything, if you have issues with any of the things I say or do (because I am privileged in certain aspects) please don’t feel afraid to bring them up! 

I know I’ve answered questions on things like racism, colorism, cultural appropriation, etc. when in retrospect it really wasn’t my place to do so and I want to say I’m really, sincerely sorry about that. I always try to reblog posts made by the people who are affected and include links in my responses but I haven’t been so good at keeping my mouth shut when it doesn’t involve me, which is something I am going to change in myself.

Another thing is my mental health. As much as I have enjoyed running this blog, there are lots of aspects of it which have purely been a source of anxiety and distress for me. I suffer from lots of different mental health problems (I don’t want to go too into detail but I have ADHD and also struggle with BPD, bipolar + other issues) and this blog really does not help. My anxiety and paranoia are bad enough as it is but they shoot up every time I post on here, leaving me feeling sick when I can’t check my inbox (or when I have lots of messages) and paranoid that everybody hates me/this blog. It also means I respond to criticism poorly.

I’m ironically bad at dealing with conflict, which might make some people question why I started this blog (it was actually an accident, long story), but I’ve tried not to let it affect my running of this blog. That obviously didn’t work too well. I'm glad that people find this blog useful and I’m glad some of the posts have helped raise awareness and educate people about the offensive things idols do, but this blog requires a lot of time and energy and knowledge that I just don’t have. 

I’m also scared of spreading misinformation and making mistakes (both of which are things I have done), and I don’t like the idea of people feeling too intimidated to call me out when I mess up. It’s quite a big responsibility looking after this blog and I’m not sure my wellbeing can take that on top of my workload and personal problems. Again I apologise for any of the harm I have caused with this blog, it was definitely unintentional, but that’s no excuse.

I’m going to leave this blog up so people can still refer to some of the posts and look through the tags. My hiatus is indefinite, but it’s unlikely I’ll be running it again any time soon. Thank you everybody for everything! A lot of my followers have been a huge help and I’ve learned a lot myself. I encourage everybody to keep general discussion going, but for now, I’m stepping out. Goodbye!

[ourbridgeisforever]

actually seriously if you have twitter, tweet the hell out of choi, link to the fucked up RT, and tell him it’s fucked up and to un RT it. what are the chances he’ll miss a barrage of tweets when he could immediately address being called out for something like stealing a photo and then being careful in the future, yeah he gets like thousands of tweets a day but i can’t do this anymore, surely he’ll see some of them???

[problematickpop-blog]

Why don't u do a Masterposts of girlgroups?

All girl groups? Or specific ones? Mostly because nobody has asked me to. I considered doing an SNSD one but nobody has ever expressed a desire for it. I’ve only made 2 (EXO & Bigbang) because there was a high demand for them, so yeah.. If you’re looking for girl group posts though, you can check tags, and theres a sort of pseudo-masterpost for Girls Day here

[mu-zi-yang]

so….remember when everyone thought siwon said some homophobic shit bc some students said do but then that was disproved?

well, looks like siwon decided to clear up the “is siwon homophobic” issue himself (x):

[problematickpop-blog]

hi, i was going through the exo masterlist and i saw something about tao saying what his 'type' is. i wanted to say is that he did an interview about it the gift set is here ztaohs(.)tumblr(.)com/post/128142007183 (i;m still trying to find what interview it is from, i'm having trouble finding it subbed)

Thank you for this! I’m glad to see Tao has changed his opinion :-) It was thoughtful of him to try and make sure his fans didn’t feel insecure about their weight (if you do find the video, though, please send it my way!)

[ztaohs]

while talking his ideal type, tao is afraid that fans will misunderstand his words and start to starve themselves, so he immediately makes it clear

[problematickpop-blog]

Sorry for ranting. But how do I control and change my preference for fair-skinned guy then? That's like saying how gays can control their gayness or whatsoever.

As somebody who isn’t straight I definitely would not make that comparison, although I see where you’re coming from. The difference is, orientation is a natural attraction (or lack thereof) to gender identities, whereas skin color “preferences” are something that is learned and often comes from social constructs and beauty standards. Im not going to go into beauty standards in Korea or any of that jazz because, frankly, I cant speak on it as I dont really know anything about it, but something I think is really important is to question yourself. Why do you find pale skin attractive? What do you associate with it? What makes pale skin more aesthetically pleasing than dark skin to you? I definitely don’t think it has anything to do with natural preferences, it’s largely historical racism & classism in the form of eurocentric beauty standards. Like when people say they prefer thin people, that’s only because society automatically deems being fat/chubby as bad and unhealthy, even though that’s often not the case, and so people view being chubby/fat in a bad light and find it less attractive.

TL;DR I think it’s something people have to unlearn to be honest, and if you can’t be bothered to do that, the least you could do is not talk about it I guess? There’s not really any reason to say you find pale skin more attractive if all it does is harm. That’s my opinion on the topic anyway, I hope that helped!

[recoloring-exo]

Sorry if I’ve misunderstood this entire thing, but here’s my two cents on this depending on what I’ve gotten from this ask: Skin preferences are usually set thanks to colorism/racism. The reason you find a certain skin tone attractive is either because you fetishize a group of people (like Asians) or because you’ve been conditioned to assosciate a certain skin tone (like dark) with something negative. You can control the preference of a skin tone because colorism is a social contruct, sexual attraction is not.

Sexuality isn’t something you choose. It’s who you are. I can certainly confirm you aren’t born with the ability to favoritise. Your sexuality is who you are and you can’t change that (if we were conditioned to believe straight is the central sexuality we’d all be straight, but we can’t. You know why.)

One is conditioned, the other is determined at early stages of life. 

[problematickpop-blog]

Sorry for ranting. But how do I control and change my preference for fair-skinned guy then? That's like saying how gays can control their gayness or whatsoever.

As somebody who isn’t straight I definitely would not make that comparison, although I see where you’re coming from. The difference is, orientation is a natural attraction (or lack thereof) to gender identities, whereas skin color “preferences” are something that is learned and often comes from social constructs and beauty standards. Im not going to go into beauty standards in Korea or any of that jazz because, frankly, I cant speak on it as I dont really know anything about it, but something I think is really important is to question yourself. Why do you find pale skin attractive? What do you associate with it? What makes pale skin more aesthetically pleasing than dark skin to you? I definitely don’t think it has anything to do with natural preferences, it’s largely historical racism & classism in the form of eurocentric beauty standards. Like when people say they prefer thin people, that’s only because society automatically deems being fat/chubby as bad and unhealthy, even though that’s often not the case, and so people view being chubby/fat in a bad light and find it less attractive.

TL;DR I think it’s something people have to unlearn to be honest, and if you can’t be bothered to do that, the least you could do is not talk about it I guess? There’s not really any reason to say you find pale skin more attractive if all it does is harm. That’s my opinion on the topic anyway, I hope that helped!

[problematickpop-blog]

In regards to the non-Asian kpop star thing, what about someone like Brad from Busker Busker? Just curious since Busker Busker is also more just like "k-band" and not really an idol group.

Hmm I don’t know much about Busker Busker or Brad (I think I remember watching an ASC episode with him, Amber and Peniel?) so I’m not really sure… I guess it is slightly different though. From what I know I dont think he went to Korea with the intention of becoming a musician? I’m pretty sure he was asked to join the band by one of the Korean members? (Sorry if any of this is wrong!) As I said I’m not from Korea or Asian so my thoughts on this topic aren’t very useful, sorry… But yeah I think, since it’s not an idol group, I’d say it’s a bit different to non-Asian people wanting in on K-pop

[fladoodles]

I know this post must be from a long time ago, but in case anyone is still wondering what the difference between Brad and Chad is:

The thing about Brad from Busker Busker is that he did not enter the Korean music industry with the intent to use his privilege as a gateway to change the cultural aspects of Korean music to make it a more accessible industry to white people. Which is exactly what Chad Future’s intent is, despite him fervently denying it and using “I love kpop and I just want to do what I love and I’m learning Korean to make better music and hiring people in the industry to feature in my music” as his argument. While that’s a great sentiment, he has completely disregarded a system of privilege and oppression that’s already in place, and is using this system, knowingly or not, to garner his own success.

Brad’s just a drummer for a band.

There is proof from Chad’s old social media accounts that he has yellow fever.

And don’t even get me started on what would happen to the very little Asian representation we have in the media if Kpop were suddenly overrun with white people.

[problematickpop-blog]

Thank you for this information!

[problematickpop-blog]

I’m gonna head off of here before my anxiety gets real bad, but I want to reiterate that I have a lot of work to do this week so I wont be online as much. It might take me a while to get back to your messages so please don’t assume Im ignoring them

[problematickpop-blog]

Somebody told me there are people saying Im faking being Hyorin biased because I didn’t know the screencap was from Dark Panda, and I dont particularly care because people can think what they like, but I’m not caught up with all of my biases’ current activity (plus I like to steer clear of Z*co but that’s a separate issue) so I hadn’t watched the Dark Panda music video. I only wanted to clarify this because I’m constantly accused of “fake biasing” idols in order to somehow justify criticising them, which will never be the case. If I dont like an idol Im not going to claim I do, I dont think I need to like somebody in order to criticise what they do. But again I am actually sorry for not fact-checking properly and I didn’t mean to make Unpretty Rapstar seem more controversial or anything like that, so thank you for letting me know I was wrong!

[problematickpop-blog]

More cultural appropriation in Hyorin’s UPRS pictures :-/ 

[iamhyorintrash-deactivated20201]

That’s a screenshot from the MV, Dark Panda. It actually has nothing to do with Unpretty Rapstar.

[problematickpop-blog]

Thank you for letting me know! I was told by somebody else that it was for UPRS so I just assumed that it was and didn’t check properly, I apologise for spreading misinformation

[problematickpop-blog]

Offensive Big Bang Masterpost

Okay so I might regret this but I feel as though Big Bang do a huge amount of offensive things and often get away with it, especially among VIPs. I used to be a massive Big Bang fan but felt myself finding it increasingly more difficult to continue supporting them. Especially in comparison to some other groups, I often see Bigbang’s offensive actions excused by fans or completely brushed off. I feel like this post will be a useful resource for people who want to know what Big Bang have done and will also help people stop ignoring the problems. Before contacting me about this post please read this, otherwise your message will be deleted.

Overall

Imitated US blood gangs for a performance

G-dragon / Kwon Jiyong

Deliberately pronounced 네게 differently to make it sound more like the n-word (x, x)

Said the n-word (around 20 seconds)

Did blackface and posted a picture on his instagram

Did blackface again when dressing up as Andre 3000 for a Vogue photoshoot

More blackface in his ‘Coup D’etat’ video

Cultural appropriation

More cultural appropriation

A load more of cultural appropriation

Appropriation in ‘Good Boy’ video

Appropriated cornrows (multiple times)

Appropriated the afro hairstyle (multiple times)

Too much appropriation of black hairstyles to keep track of

Posted a photo on instagram of Maikol from a Korean cartoon called Dooly, Maikol’s character design is considered very racist/offensive/anti-black

Wore a straitjacket and pretended to be a mental patient in the Oh My Friend video

More ableism in the ‘Crayon’ video

Posted a picture on instagram of The Jackson 5 but with Big Bang’s faces edited onto the group members

Used black children as props in his videos

Appropriates and perpetuates stereotypes against Black and Latinx people, while glorifying prison and “gang life”

Romanticized gendered violence in the ‘She’s Gone’ video (the concept idea was his)

((this is a pretty good post at summing him up, though it misses a few things))

Taeyang /  Dong Youngbae

Did brownface and appropriated cornrows

Used Black caricatures as twitter icons (twice)

Used the n-word on his cyworld account

Cultural appropriation

More cultural appropriation

More appropriation of Hip Hop and black culture

Had dreadlocks in the ‘SOBER’ video

Appropriated more black hairstyles than I can keep track of

Did blackface when dressing up as Michael Jackson for Vogue photoshoot (it’s undecided if this is blackface or just the lighting of the photo)

Seungri / Lee Seunghyun

Culturally appropriated the Native American headdress in the ‘Bang Bang Bang’ video

Said something on the radio about being scared of black guys shooting him/beating him up (the subbed video has been deleted so Im not sure of the direct translation)

Was violently misogynistic (nsfw link, sex & potential violence)

Allegedly touched a fans butt without her consent (warning, fanaccounts might be false)

Daesung / Kang Daesung

Did blackface in order to impersonate Snoop Dogg

T.O.P / Choi Seunghyun

Said “I’d like a woman that knows how to dress herself. Not only her physical appearance, but her manner of speech as well. Someone that’s respectful to adults. Ah, I hate women that swear!” despite constantly being around men who swear

Appropriated cornrows predebut

Appropriated bantu knots

If I missed anything please do not feel afraid to message me about it, I’d really appreciate knowing so I can make the list thorough :-) Equally, if anything on here is wrong (and you have sources) please let me know! Thank you for reading, and don’t forget, nobody is perfect.

[black-kpop-fans]

This is the gurupop video. Le from exid using the nword and Daniel from dmtn/Dalmatian apologizing. Gurupop was a live streamed show.

She says it around  13:45

[problematickpop-blog]

i really want to thank you for being an unbiased source for information. the way you respond to hate comments with a level head and how you keep a polite and informative attitude really means a lot. we all appreciate it <3

Thank you so much!! Sometimes I feel like I’m overly rude when I answer messages and I’m always scared that I sound biased and stuff so it makes me really glad that you think that!