REASONS WHY SUNGMIN WILL NEVER REGAIN KOREAN FANS
“I know all the international ELF’s don’t understand why Korean ELF has turned their backs against Sungmin after his marriage. I’ll just simply explain reasons why Sungmin isn’t welcomed by Korean ELF and just a reminder that this is not a post to tell the international fans to hate on him too. I just personally found it frustrating to see international fans not being able to understand the korean fans and vice versa because I see the valid reason for them to be angry I don’t plan to be a supporter of Sungmin until he apologizes to his fans.”
January, 2014, Leeteuk’s family members passed away from a car accident and Leeteuk suffered a lot (he even mentioned about how he became suicidal). He was completing his military service during the time; however, it was around this point of the year that Sungmin started to ask for marriage approvals to Leeteuk as well through letters. He even bought a condo for Saeun and himself (on February). He clearly didn’t consider the situation of his members and he was being selfish.
The members and even his family didn’t approve of his marriage to be held on December. They didn’t mind him getting married, but it conflicted with SJ’s schedule and they wanted him to push his marriage back several months (around March). His mother said to a Chinese fanbase owner, “There is no parent that beats his child” which meant that his family didn’t want the marriage to be held so soon. The reason Sungmin and Saeun wanted to get married on December 13, 2014 was because it was exactly a year since they’ve met. I suppose it was a special date to them, but Super Junior members were having a concert in Japan a week before the marriage and the week after which meant that they would have had to perform, fly back to Korea for the wedding, and then fly back to Japan to perform which would have been physically straining for the members, considering the fact they need to prepare and rehearse for the concerts. As well, Sungmin missed concert rehearsals to go on a date with Saeun.
On September,2014, Sungmin’s dating rumors came up. Fans actually knew about them dating in advance but they decided to keep it quiet for the sake of Sungmin. When marriage rumors came up, fans started to ask for feedback from Sungmin. They just wanted to know what was happening and were nervous. As you remember from Radio Star, Leeteuk and Heechul said that fans wouldn’t want to hear dating/marriage news from the music industry, they wanted to know through Sungmin’s words. However, during fan sign events Sungmin would never speak of this and ignored his fans who mentioned anything about the marriage rumor. He even hired bodyguards/managers who would threaten the fans “Do you not want Sungmin’s autograph” if they asked anything about the marriage rumor. To his fans, he started to sign autographs with his wife’s nickname “MIMI” on the autographs, which was replaced from a star. Fans don’t want love symbols on their autographs, that’s Sungmin’s personal life that they don’t need to be involved in.
You guys might know that Sungmin runs a naver cafe (kinda like a blog) and when marriage rumors came up, there were a lot of comments from his fans regarding this rumor. One fan wrote, “Let the fans who want to leave Sungmin, leave. It doesn’t matter anymore” and Sungmin liked this comment. As well, he blocked the word, “Korean Fans” on the cafe, shutting korean fans out. He blocked blog accounts and deleted the comments of a koreans fan who wrote, “Wouldn’t it be possible for you to keep your marriage rumors quiet for the rest of SJ and for the sake of yourself?”. The fans wanted him to keep big rumors like this relatively quiet because it was right before the announcement of THIS IS LOVE repackaged album and it was an important time of the year for the fans and SJ (back then, it was thought that this could have been the last album before majority of the members will go serve for military service. It was the only chance that Korean ELF can help win the annual award for SJ). Because of Sungmin’s marriage rumors, THIS IS LOVE repackage promotion lasted only for a week and the repackaged album only became a special album.
All the gifts that were given to Sungmin, now is basically in Saeun’s possession. Fans probably spent lots of money in buying a gift for Sungmin, not for Saeun to keep and use. (Ex. the couple hat that they wore during their honey moon.)
Super Junior members were pretty disappointed with Sungmin. As you might know, on the date of Sungmin’s wedding, SJ members tried to console Korean Fans and I heard that they left the wedding as soon as they can and ate somewhere else. I don’t trust SJ’s words from Radio Star fully because it was broadcasted on television, they wouldn’t say anything bad about each other on a show. It is definitely true that they had a miscommunication but the miscommunication wouldn’t have occurred if Sungmin tried to be considerate towards his members. Super junior is an idol group, and making individual actions did trouble the members quite a bit. It was the members like Ryeowook, Heechul, Leeteuk, and Kangin who expressed an apologetic attitude towards ELF when it wasn’t their fault.
He told his Chinese fans about proceeding the marriage, and how he felt comfortable around Saeun. But he lied to Korean fans saying he isn’t getting married. (One of the main reasons that Korean fans felt betrayed by Sungmin more than the international fans out here rn)
Korean fans don’t oppose to marriage of their idols. They may be temporarily upset and those of the minority may leave Sungmin but we all know that Super junior is a grown up man (many are in their 30s now) and they need to date and eventually get married. Korean ELFs joke around to Heechul saying that he should stop loving 2D characters and find a real 3D women and get married. At first when news on his marriage was released, Korean fans were congratulating Sungmin, until they started to find about everything Sungmin did to his fans. In Korea, ALL OF HIS FANBASES CLOSED DOWN and many of the ELF is supporter of SJ except SUNGMIN.
It wasn’t the announcement of the marriage that Korean ELFs were upset about, it was the fact that Sungmin betrayed Korean fans. Seeing korean community pages, I strongly believe that Sungmin won’t be welcomed back into SJ from korean fans. Tbh I don’t understand why he would get married so quickly (barely met a year) when he was going to go to the military right after. Well it is his decisions in the end.
The only reason I made this posting now was the fact that Sungmin doesn’t seem to care about Korean fans anymore and he isn’t apologetic about his actions. This was the reason that angered me the most. I just hope he realizes what he has screwed up on and makes an effort to fix it. His personal life is important, but if it wasn’t for his fans, he would not have made it this far with his career. If you guys still can’t relate, try to think of your position as a Korean ELF. If you have any questions I guess I’m free to accept questions, but I hope they aren’t quite harsh (don’t try to fight me back) ._. This will be my first and last post on Sungmin though.
Me: He already apologized in his letter & in other ways. I think he was in love & scared. He knows how the Korean fans react to changes & also he wanted to protect Saeun, so he was impulsive & in a rush. So eventually it escalated & their reaction was much harsher.
