First of all, sorry for not posting this yesterday. It is such a complicated matter that I decided to make a bigger research on the facts and ended up not finishing the post on time... Well, here it is!
K-Pop fans must have noticed that this week has been full of hatred and fuzz over some people's tweets. In fact, it's another part of the DBSK/TVXQ! Epic that has dominated netizens and korean news sites for almost a year now.
Junsu, Yoochun and Jaejoong // Yunho and Changmin (credits to whoever made this photo)
I won't go over all the problems since the lawsuit as this post is dedicated to more recent events, but for those who don't know anything about this, a little explanation:
Last year, three members of the almighty, super popular boy group DBSK (also written as TVXQ! or Tohoshinki in Japan) filed a lawsuit against their agency, S.M. Entertainment. The reason for this was that they considered they were under a slave-contract and wanted to make a new, fair one. After halting the group's activities and not being able to reach an agreement, SME filed a lawsuit against the 3 members.
Many thing happened since that time, but what matters most in this very brief explanation is that the remaining two members, Yunho and Changmin, continued the group even with the same name and came back this week with a new album, while the three other members formed JYJ and are currently expanding to America as well as preparing a korean album, waiting for more results on the lawsuit.
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| DBSK(Yunho and Changmin)'s album "Keep Your Head Down" |
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| JYJ's album "The Beginning" |
While JYJ's first album really disappointed fans for Kanye West's exaggerated presence on the songs and lack of the boys' beautiful voices, the "New DBSK" album "Keep Your Head Down" was received with much success. Well, that's not really a problem to discuss, right? I mean, sometimes artists get it wrong, sometimes they make hits. Where is the polemic?
It all started with the "Thank to" section of KYHD. In this part of the album, member Yunho expressed his gratitude to SME's CEO, Lee Soo Man. It didn't take long until Junsu from JYJ tweeted about it, revealing his deep thoughts. Junsu couldn't accept that his ex-bandmate was thanking the man that was their "enemy" and that eventually caused the separation. The full translated tweets (credits to allkpop.com):
“Until now, I kept believing that it wasn’t true, I believed that (it) was the enemy of all five of us, but I guess it wasn’t really the enemy of all. To see that (they) expressed their gratitude to something I thought was both our enemies.. I guess a lot of things happened in the time we weren’t together. This is so tiring.”
“I keep wanting to think, hear, and see only good things, but it’s very hard to do that today. Even though we’ve been apart, you know that wasn’t right, hyung. We thought the same. Why are you being like this.”
It is certainly interesting to read the tweet and think about all the implications. While it shows how tiring the sepation experience has been for the members (for both sides), it also demonstrates where things are heading. Many people are arguing about those statements and it's funny to see how blind a person can get when defending their favorite band or member.
Just to get started on my arguments, Twitter is a public space and Junsu should never have posted such things on it. If you're having a nervous breakdown, write about it on a diary, don't make a tweet, especially when you are a celebrity and a bunch of stalkers watch you on the internet 24/7. I don't know if thought about it, but it was obvious that it would cause hell on forums and even among celebrities. It already did.
After only a day or two, it seemed as all artists from SMEnt decided to write about the controversies. BoA, the choreographer Sim Jaewon, SuJu's Shindong and Sungmin and later TRAX's Jungmo all expressed their thoughts, defending Yunho and saying that Junsu is "ungrateful". Of course, these artists write about Junsu's rudeness, but in the end one question remains in my head: why did they even get in the middle of this mess?
With all the confusion, some people say that SM is forcing them to write the tweets, fuelling the hate against JYJ and looking for a way to gain more support for DBSK's comeback, considering that many fans are boycotting the album and even talking about separating the fanclub. Chances of separating the world's biggest fanclub are slim, but it is certainly enough to scare SMent. Still, I don't believe this rumour is true as the statements are just making the idols look bad and I'm sure that LSM is smarter than this.
Le Soo Man - look at his face, he is obviously smarter than this!
It has been only two days since Junsu's emotional attack and it's already too much. The fanwars seem to be infinite since each person defends one group. Facts get distorted every time they're mentioned. It also doesn't help when more idols tweet about it. It's just such a useless fight, IT WON'T TAKE JYJ OR DBSK ANYWHERE.
In the end, this idol showdown is just ridiculous. Everyone is getting hurt, especially the fans. And I say, there's nothing more important than the fans. You can be born talented, you can have the money from your company, you can have fair contracts or slave-contracts, but you don't get famous without fans. Artists should NEVER forget that. I don't know if it's true, but I heard that a girl suicided this week because of the controversies. I know, if she did that because of an idol group she obviously had some problems, but still, we all know some fangirls can get really crazy, so why give them more reasons to do so?
I just hope that this Twitter hell ends soon and that JYJ's album can be released without any problems. They chose their paths and that's what matters! If they're are going to reunite one day, let it be decided by the 5 members and not by other people. For now, let's calm down and stop raging on forums when we don't even know what's true or false. Support BOTH groups if you liked old DBSK and there won't be a problem, at least not one that involves fans.
Good Ol' DBSK - If you liked them, keep supporting!
Well, this is it for now. If you want to read the translated tweets from the other artists, here are the links (once again, thanks to allkpop.com):
- http://www.allkpop.com/2011/01/super-juniors-sungmin-and-shindong-defend-tvxq-on-xiah-junsus-tweet
