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    NewJeans Asks U.S. Court for Help Finding YouTuber in Defamation Case

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    The request by NewJeans is the latest effort by the K-pop industry in its struggle to stem rumors on platforms based outside South Korea.NewJeans, one of the biggest K-pop acts, has asked a federal court in California to order Google to release the identity of the person behind a YouTube account that the members say is spreading defamatory statements about them.The group said that a YouTube user with the handle @Middle7 made the statements in dozens of videos that were viewed more than 13 million times, according to the court filing. The group’s lawyer, Eugene Kim, wrote that the account had also engaged in “name-calling or other mocking behavior” targeting NewJeans. The videos “continue to inflict significant reputational damage,” according to the filing.The move, made on March 27, is the latest example of K-pop stars responding to the pressures they face from the fervid online fan culture in South Korea. The request, if granted, would allow the group to sue the YouTube user in South Korea for defamation and insult, which are criminal offenses in the country.“We regularly take legal action for violations of artists’ rights,” Ador, the management agency for NewJeans, said in a statement, confirming that it was pursuing a case against the videos.Mun Hui Kim, a lawyer representing NewJeans in South Korea, declined to comment. Google did not respond to requests for comment. The YouTube account’s owner could not be reached.NewJeans, which has five members, reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 list last year with its second album, “Get Up,” as part of the newest generation of South Korean girl groups dominating K-pop.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jaap van Zweden, New York Phil Maestro, Takes Podium in Seoul

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      The conductor officially began his tenure as the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra’s new music director, months before he is to step down in New York.In New York, Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, is preparing to say goodbye: Farewell concerts under the banner “Celebrate Jaap!” are planned over the next few months before his brief, pandemic-interrupted tenure ends this summer.But in Seoul, where van Zweden officially began a five-year term as the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra’s music director this month, a new chapter is taking shape. Last week he led sold-out performances of Beethoven and Mahler with the ensemble, his first concerts as music director.“We had this feeling of trying to go to the next level,” van Zweden said in an interview from Seoul.Van Zweden was greeted as a celebrity, his face plastered on advertisements that declared the start of a new era. Fans snapped photos in front of his portrait in the lobby of the Seoul Arts Center. His inaugural concerts drew high-profile figures in culture and politics, including the mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, who appointed van Zweden, and the former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.Critics praised van Zweden’s intensity and focus. The Korea Economic Daily, one of the country’s large business newspapers, said his music was as “impactful and engaging as an IMAX movie.” Another writer said he was “elegant and skilled, as if dancing.”Taking a snap at the Seoul Arts Center with an image of van Zweden and the South Korean phenom Yunchan Lim.Chang W. LeeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      If It Isn’t Perfect, Is It Still K-Pop?

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      Musical acts like Balming Tiger are challenging the idea that K-pop is nothing but polished, perfectly synchronized boy bands and girl groups.What comes to mind when you hear the word “K-pop”? Is it the global boy band phenomenon BTS, wearing studded jackets and dancing in perfect sync? Or the girl group Blackpink, performing at Coachella in trendy fashions and perfectly curled hair?How about an “independent music collective” of casually dressed people, crowded around a mixing board in a one-room studio, across the street from a Seoul restaurant specializing in fried chicken?“Give me some more bass,” said Omega Sapien, a vocalist with electric-green hair and grills, swaying his hips and grunting to the beat. The studio was cluttered with art, vinyl records, dumbbells and other odds and ends. Another singer lay prone nearby, nursing a bad hangover.For Balming Tiger, this is daily life as an alternative K-pop band. Their music, a fusion of diverse genres from electro to hip-hop, is funky and edgy. Their look, unkempt and grungy, is far from the professional styling of the groups that most of the world associates with K-pop.“Even if we wanted to be like idols, we can’t,” said Chanhee, far left, a vocalist with Balming Tiger. Other members are, from left, Mudd the Student, Unsinkable, BJ Wnjn, Omega Sapien and Sogumm. Woohae Cho for The New York TimesBut they claim that label, too. K-pop is any music that comes out of South Korea, according to Omega Sapien. “Everything in that realm is K-pop,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Parasite’ Actor Lee Sun-kyun Found Dead at 48

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      Mr. Lee, a familiar face on Korean television and movie screens, rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film.Lee Sun-kyun, the award-winning South Korean actor who rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” was found dead in Seoul on Wednesday. He was 48.Mr. Lee had recently been under police investigation on suspicion of illegal drug use, and he denied the accusations. The police said they were investigating the death as a suicide.The police found Mr. Lee’s body in a parked vehicle in central Seoul just before 11 a.m., said Jeon Yu-deung, the chief detective at Seongbuk police station, which is investigating his death. After Mr. Lee’s manager reported him missing earlier in the day, the police found his body using the location signal from his phone. Mr. Jeon said that Mr. Lee had also left what appeared to be a suicide note.Mr. Lee is survived by his wife, two sons and siblings, Mr. Jeon added. His talent agency, Hodu&U Entertainment, said in a statement that a funeral would be held privately and attended by his family and colleagues.Mr. Lee, who was born in Seoul in 1975, studied acting at the Korea National University of Arts and made his first professional appearance in a 1999 music video. He became a familiar face on Korean television when he starred in the dramas “Coffee Prince” and “Behind the White Tower” in 2007. He also played lead roles in the 2010 romantic comedy series “Pasta,” the 2012 thriller “Helpless” and the 2018 psychological drama “My Mister.”Mr. Lee received worldwide recognition for his performance in “Parasite,” a 2019 thriller in which he played the head of a wealthy family in whose house much of the movie takes place. That film won four awards at the Academy Awards in 2020, including for best picture, becoming the first non-English movie to win the award. He and his castmates won a Screen Actors Guild award for their roles.In 2022, Mr. Lee was nominated for best actor at the international Emmy awards for his role in the sci-fi thriller “Dr. Brain.”Police officers investigating a vehicle in which the body of Mr. Lee was found in central Seoul on Wednesday.Yonhap, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Lee had been repeatedly questioned by the police in Incheon, a city west of Seoul, since October on suspicion of taking illicit drugs. He denied the accusations in several public statements and said he was the target of a blackmail effort.“I ask that the police make a good judgment about whose side’s statements are credible between me and the blackmailers,” he told reporters this week following a 19-hour interrogation.South Korea’s entertainment industry has recently been shaken by drug abuse scandals amid a nationwide antidrug campaign. The police in March raided the home of Yoo Ah-in, famous for his role in the 2021 Netflix series “Hellbound,” after he tested positive for propofol, marijuana, ketamine and cocaine. South Korea has a strict approach toward drugs. Convicted offenders face six months to 14 years in prison. Citizens can be prosecuted for using illicit drugs even if they do so abroad.The authorities have recently ramped up enforcement, warning that the problem is growing. Drug arrests have surged since President Yoon Suk Yeol declared a “war on drugs.” More than 17,000 people were arrested on drug charges nationwide this year, an increase from about 10,400 in 2019, according to the National Police Agency.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States. More

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      QI.X, a Queer K-Pop Group, Wants to Change South Korea

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      In conservative South Korea, few L.G.B.T.Q. entertainers have ever come out. The young members of QI.X don’t see the point of staying in.At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower.But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice.“I don’t want to forget about my old self,” he told the 50 or so people at the performance, a fund-raiser for a group that supports young L.G.B.T.Q. Koreans. “I love myself before I started hormone therapy, and I love myself as who I am now.”jiGook performing at a bar in the Euljiro district of Seoul.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesLike many other South Korean singers, jiGook, who considers himself gender fluid, transmale and nonbinary, wants to be a K-pop star. So do Prin and SEN, his bandmates in QI.X, a fledgling group that has released two singles.What makes them unusual is that they are proudly out — in their music, their relationship with their fans and their social activism. They call themselves one of the first openly queer, transgender K-pop acts, and their mission has as much to do with changing South Korea’s still-conservative society as with making music.In the group’s name — pronounced by spelling out the letters — Q stands for queer, I for idol and X for limitless possibilities. Park Ji-yeon, the K-pop producer who started QI.X, says it is “tearing down the heteronormative walls of society.”Very few K-pop artists, or South Korean entertainers in general, have ever been open about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Though the country has become somewhat more accepting of sexual diversity, homophobia is still prevalent, and there are no legal protections against discrimination.The bandmates saying goodbye after a livestreaming session in Seoul. “Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” Prin said.For entertainers, coming out is seen as a potential career killer, said Cha Woo-jin, a music critic in Seoul. That applies even to K-pop, despite its young, increasingly international fan base and its occasional flirtation with androgyny and same-sex attraction.“K-pop fans seem to accept the queer community and imagery so long as their favorite stars don’t come out explicitly,” Mr. Cha said.That’s not a compromise that QI.X is willing to make.The bandmates’ social media accounts, which promote their causes along with their music, are up front about who they are. So are their singles, “Lights Up” (“The hidden colors in you / I see all the colors in you”) and “Walk & Shine,” which Mx. Park says “celebrates the lives and joy of minorities.”“Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” said Prin, 22.SEN dancing before the start of a recording session in Seoul for Q Planet, an online show, as jiGook and QI.X’s producer, Park Ji-yeon, watched. As a producer, Mx. Park, 37, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, has worked on hits for well-known K-pop acts like GOT7 and Monsta X. But she wanted to make music that spoke directly to people like her, with “an artist who could encapsulate our lives, love, friendships and farewells.”She met some of the QI.X members through a K-pop music class she started in 2019, designed with queer performers in mind. (In other classes, she said, “It was assumed that female participants only wanted to learn girl-group songs and male participants only boy-group songs.”)SEN, 23, said that when Mx. Park asked her to join QI.X, “it was as if a genie in a bottle had come to me.”SEN had been a dancer and a choreographer for several K-pop management agencies, including BTS’s agency, Big Hit Entertainment, now known as HYBE. The people she worked with knew she was queer, and they were welcoming.Mx. Park, leaning against the mirror, with SEN and other QI.X members during a rehearsal in June. In the red shirt is Maek, an original member who has since taken a break from the group. But whenever she auditioned to join an idol group, she said, she “never fit the bill for what they wanted.” People would say she was too short or boyish, or comment about her cropped hair.That’s not an issue for QI.X, which doesn’t aspire to the immaculately styled look of the typical K-pop act (and, in any case, couldn’t afford the ensemble of stylists those groups have). Individuality, they say, is part of the point.QI.X often performs at fund-raisers, for L.G.B.T.Q. and other causes, and sees its music as inseparable from its activism. Maek, for instance, an original member who sang on both singles but is on hiatus from the group, works for the Seoul Disabled People’s Rights Film Festival and volunteers for a transgender rights organization.With no support from a management agency, Mx. Park and the group do everything themselves. They handle their own bookings and manage their social media presence, recording videos themselves to post on TikTok and Instagram.Many of the videos are shot at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul that often serves as QI.X’s studio and rehearsal hall. Myoung-woo YoonKim, 68, who has run LesVos since the late 1990s, grew up at a time when lesbians were practically invisible in South Korea. “I would often think, ‘Am I the only woman who loves women?” they said.Rehearsing at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul, as its manager, Myoung-woo YoonKim, and Mx. Park look on.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe QI.X members adore Mx. YoonKim, whom they call hyung, a Korean word for older brother. During a recent video session at LesVos, after dozens of increasingly comical lip-syncing takes of “Walk & Shine,” Mx. YoonKim started to join in. Before long, everyone was bent over with laughter.To a casual observer of K-pop, it might seem surprising that so few of its artists are out. As Mr. Cha, the music critic, notes, L.G.B.T.Q. imagery has been known to surface in K-pop videos and in ads featuring its stars.Some critics see this phenomenon as “queerbaiting,” a cynical attempt to attract nonconformist fans — or to deploy gender-bending imagery because it’s seen as trendy — without actually identifying with them. To Mr. Cha, it suggests that K-pop has a substantial queer fan base, and that some artists might simply be expressing their identities to the extent they can.From left, SEN, Prin, Maek and jiGook livestreaming on YouTube in June. Many of QI.X’s fans live outside South Korea and follow the group online.Mr. Cha thinks the taboo against entertainers’ coming out reflects a general attitude toward pop culture in South Korea: “We pay for you, therefore don’t make us uncomfortable.” (Similar attitudes seem to prevail in Japan, where one pop idol recently made news by telling fans he was gay.)QI.X’s fans, who call themselves QTZ (a play on “cuties”), love the group for charging over that boundary. Many are overseas and follow the group online, leaving enthusiastic messages. “I’m so happy I can finally have an artist in the K-pop industry that I can relate to on a gender level, on a queer level,” one said in a video message to the group. “I’m so excited for you!”The band also gets hateful messages, which its members do their best to ignore. Prin, 22, is optimistic that attitudes in South Korea are changing. (Joining QI.X was Prin’s way of coming out as gender queer, but friends were much more surprised by the news that Prin was in an idol group.)The biggest show of QI.X’s career, so far, was in July at a Pride event, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival. In recent years, it had been held at Seoul Plaza, a major public square. But this year, the city denied organizers permission to hold it there, letting a Christian group use the space for a youth concert instead.QI.X onstage at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in July.Activists saw that as discrimination, though the city denied it. Conservative Christians are a powerful force in South Korean politics, having lobbied successfully for years to block a bill that would prevent discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. Organizers held the festival in Euljiro.For its set, QI.X had about 20 backup performers, some of whom were their friends (Mx. YoonKim was one of them). They had rehearsed only once together, on the festival stage that morning, because they hadn’t had the money to rent a big studio.Christian protesters were picketing the festival, some with signs that read “Homosexuality not human rights but SIN.” But fans were there, too. As QI.X sang “Lights Up” and “Walk & Shine,” hundreds crowded in front of the stage, many wearing headbands that were purple, the group’s color. There were Pride flags, and signs that read “We only see you QI.X.”A Pride parade was part of the festival. Hours later, the excitement still hadn’t faded for QI.X. “I felt alive for the first time in a while,” SEN said. More

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      A 19-Year-Old Pianist Electrifies Audiences. But He’s Unimpressed.

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      Yunchan Lim’s victory at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition last year made him a sensation. He says the attention makes him uneasy.After six hours of sleep and a breakfast of milk and curry rice, Yunchan Lim, the South Korean pianist, was in a rehearsal studio at Lincoln Center on Tuesday morning working through a treacherous passage of Rachmaninoff.“A little bit faster,” Lim, in a black sweatshirt and sneakers, said casually to the conductor, James Gaffigan, as they prepared for Lim’s New York Philharmonic debut this week. Gaffigan laughed.“Usually pianists want the opposite!” the conductor said.Lim — shy, soft-spoken and bookish — stunned the music world last year when, at 18, he became the youngest winner in the history of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas. His victory made him an immediate sensation; a video of his performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the finals has been viewed more than 11 million times on YouTube. (He will play that piece with the Philharmonic this week, under Gaffigan’s baton.)Still a college sophomore, Lim has inspired a devout following in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has become a symbol of pride in South Korea, where he has been described as classical music’s answer to K-pop. Like a pop star, his face has been printed on T-shirts.Lim at the Van Cliburn competition, playing with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.Richard Rodriguez/The Cliburn, via Associated Press“He’s a musician way beyond his years,” said the conductor Marin Alsop, who headed the Cliburn jury and led the Rachmaninoff performance. “Technically, he’s phenomenal, and the colors and dynamics are phenomenal. He’s incredibly musical and seems like a very old soul. It’s really quite something.”But Lim is uneasy with the attention. He does not believe he has any musical talent, he says, and would be content to spend his life alone in the mountains playing piano all day. (He limits his use of social media, he says, because he believes it is corrosive to creativity and because he wants to live as much as possible as his favorite composers did.)“A famous performer and an earnest performer — a true artist — are two different things,” he said in an interview this week at the Steinway factory in Queens, where he was shopping for a piano.Born in Siheung, a suburb of Seoul, Lim had a childhood filled with soccer, baseball and music. He began studying the piano at 7, when his parents enrolled him in a neighborhood music academy. He was drawn to the piano, he said, because he had grown up hearing Chopin and Liszt on recordings that his mother had purchased when she was pregnant. He was also taken by the majesty of the instrument.Lim was taken by the majesty of the instrument when he was young. “The grand piano looked shiny and most impressive,” he said.Ayesha Malik for The New York Times“Technically, he’s phenomenal,” Alsop said of Lim, “and the colors and dynamics are phenomenal.”Ayesha Malik for The New York Times“The grand piano looked shiny and most impressive,” he said.At 13, he enrolled in a prep school at Korean National University of Arts in Seoul. His teacher, the pianist Minsoo Sohn, was impressed by the sensitivity of his interpretations.“At first he was a little bit cautious, but I immediately noticed that he was a huge talent,” he said. “He’s very humble, a student of the score and he isn’t over expressive.”Sohn initially steered his student away from competitions, worried about the pressure. But when the pandemic delayed the Cliburn competition, which is held every four years, making it possible for Lim to qualify, Sohn suggested he give it a try, telling him to treat it as a performance, not a competition.“I thought the world needed to listen to what Yunchan could play in his teenage years,” Sohn said.When Lim arrived in Fort Worth for the competition, which took place over 17 days, he said he felt the spirit of Van Cliburn, the eminent pianist for whom the contest is named.Lim sometimes practiced as much as 20 hours a day, he said, sending recordings to Sohn, who was in South Korea, for guidance. He existed on a diet of Korean noodles and stews prepared by his mother, who had accompanied him, as well as midnight snacks of toasted English muffins with butter and strawberry jam made by his host family.“I knew it was like Russian roulette,” he said of the competition. “It could turn out well, or you could end up shooting yourself in the head. It was a lot of stress.”As he prepared to walk onstage to play the Rachmaninoff concerto, he said he thought of Carl Sagan’s idea of Earth as just a “pale blue dot” in the universe.“When the stage doors open and the audience applauds, when I nervously sit down at the piano and press the first key, that moment is like the Big Bang for me,” he said. “I’m nervous, but the image of the pale blue dot gives me courage. I just think of the moment as something occurring in that small little speck.”His Rachmaninoff won ovations, but he was dissatisfied with the performance, believing that he achieved only about 30 percent of what he had hoped to accomplish. Since the competition, he said he had been able to watch just the first three minutes of the YouTube video before growing dispirited.When he returned to South Korea after the Cliburn, he said he was unchanged. “I just want to say that there’s nothing different with me and my piano skills before and after the win,” he said at a news conference with his teacher.“I just want to say that there’s nothing different with me and my piano skills before and after the win,” Lim said at a news conference with his teacher.Ayesha Malik for The New York TimesLim, who is still enrolled at Korean National University of Arts, plans to transfer this fall to the New England Conservatory, in Boston, where Sohn now teaches.As a student, his international career has taken off, with a recital at Wigmore Hall in London in January and an appearance with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in February. This summer, he will reunite with Alsop to perform the Rachmaninoff concerto at the Bravo! Vail festival in Colorado and the Ravinia Festival in Illinois. Next year, he will make his Carnegie Hall debut with an all-Chopin program.The New York Philharmonic booked him soon after Deborah Borda, its president and chief executive, saw YouTube videos of his performances at the Cliburn — a Beethoven concerto as well as the Rachmaninoff.“I was blown away by how fluent he was in both styles,” Borda said. “He was just brilliant.”Ahead of his debut in New York, Lim has been fine-tuning his interpretation of the Rachmaninoff. In preparing the concerto’s somber opening notes, he said, he imagines the “angel of death” or cloaked figures singing a Gregorian chant, following his teacher’s advice.This performance is especially meaningful, he said. On his commute to and from middle school, he often played a 1978 recording of the Rachmaninoff concerto by Vladimir Horowitz and the Philharmonic. He said he had listened to the recording at least 1,000 times.Lim said he felt nervous to follow in the footsteps of Horowitz, one of his idols, and that he would always consider himself a student, no matter how successful his career might be. He said artists should not be judged by the number of YouTube views they received, but by the authenticity of their work.“It’s a bit hard to define myself as an artist,” he said. “I’m like the universe before the Big Bang. I’m still in the learning phase.”“I’d like to be a musician with infinite possibilities,” he added, “just like the universe.”Jin Yu Young contributed research from Seoul. More

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      Omega X Members Say Their K-pop Agency Mistreated Them

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      A public dispute between band members and the head of their agency has revived concerns about whether South Korean entertainment agencies exploit young musicians.Members of the K-pop group Omega X seemed to be riding high a few weeks ago when their first international tour ended with a successful gig in Los Angeles.But that feeling of triumph was short lived.After the October show, an executive from their management agency screamed at the group at an L.A. hotel and pushed one band member to the ground, footage of the encounter appeared to show. The band members then flew home to Seoul at their own expense and later took their entertainment agency to court.At a hearing on Wednesday, a South Korean judge will consider the request of the group’s 11 members to be released from their multiyear contracts with the agency, Spire Entertainment. Lawyers for the band have said the executive’s behavior in Los Angeles was the latest episode in a yearlong pattern of verbal, physical and sexual abuse. The executive, Kang Seong-hee, resigned last month but has denied any wrongdoing.“I took care of all of them like their mother,” Ms. Kang told The New York Times in a phone interview, adding that Kim Jaehan, 27, the band member who fell at the hotel, had collapsed on his own. She said she hoped the band would resume its normal activities with the agency.Experts on K-pop say the band’s accusations against their agency, if true, would be consistent with other stories from industry insiders and whistleblowers. They say some management companies, especially smaller ones, routinely exploit young artists who are desperate to become K-pop idols by imposing strict controls on their behavior and in some cases subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse.Since the 1990s, “the level of exploitation has been systematized and also normalized because the K-pop industry has become dominant” and more ambitious young people have been drawn to it, said Jin Lee, a scholar of Asian pop cultures and a research fellow at Curtin University in Australia.“Everyone wants to be an idol,” she said.The Fine PrintWorkers in South Korea, a deeply hierarchical society, are increasingly speaking up about bosses who abuse their authority. But experts say that most working K-pop artists don’t publicly criticize their agencies because they fear the consequences of violating their contracts.Omega X onstage during their international tour in October.Omega XKim Youna, an entertainment lawyer in Seoul, said smaller agencies in particular have tended to sign rising musicians to contracts that don’t define work hours or set limits on what the artists can be reasonably asked to do.Regulations governing contracts between artists and their agencies have been around for only about 25 years in South Korea, Ms. Kim said. Other industries in the country have robust labor laws. “In this context, it seems that idols, considered the less powerful parties, have no choice but to suffer a little loss,” she said.Some of the losses are financial. It is common, for example, for agencies to ask artists to pay back the costs of the training they received, such as dance lessons, vocal coaching and other preparation. But there are often questions about how transparently those debts are calculated, said Lee Jongim, a scholar of South Korea’s entertainment industry and the author of “Idol Trainees’ Sweat and Tears.”Aspiring K-pop stars “debut in their teens, but entertainment agents are adults,” she said. “So they start out in a structure in which it is difficult to establish an equal relationship.”Speaking OutSome K-pop musicians have waited until their contracts ended to accuse their agencies of mistreatment.In one example, Heo Min-sun, a member of the former group Crayon Pop, told the YouTube channel Asian Boss in 2019 that the band’s agency had withheld band members’ salaries for a year and half after their debut. She said it had also forced them to go on diets and prohibited them from socializing without the agency’s permission.“Our private lives were strictly controlled. Even if I wanted to make a new friend, I couldn’t,” Ms. Heo said in the 2019 interview. Crayon Pop’s agency, Chrome Entertainment, did not respond to a request for comment.In a 2019 criminal case, two K-pop musicians successfully took legal action against their agency before their contracts had expired.Those musicians — Lee Seok-cheol, now 22, and Lee Seung-hyun, now 20 — are brothers who performed in the boy band The East Light as teenagers. They accused their producer, their agency and its chief executive of assaulting and verbally threatening them. A court fined the agency, Media Line Entertainment, about $15,000 and sentenced the producer to 16 months in prison for child abuse. The chief executive received eight months for aiding and abetting child abuse.Another case, though technically successful, is widely seen as a cautionary tale.Three former members of the group TVXQ struggled for years to appear on television after ending their contract with SM Entertainment, one of South Korea’s most powerful agencies.. The country’s antitrust regulators eventually ordered SM Entertainment to stop pressuring cable channels to blacklist members of the band from appearing on TV.The agency denied the commission’s findings. But CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University, said that the band members had been “unofficially blacklisted from the K-pop industry.” The episode sent “a chilling message to younger idols that crossing a powerful company could be the end of their career, even if they achieve a legal goal,” she added.‘A Lot of Anxiety’After Kim Jaehan’s altercation with Ms. Kang at the hotel in Los Angeles on Oct. 22, a South Korean television network published blurred-out footage of the episode that a bystander had filmed. When the band returned to Seoul, its members took the rare step of creating an Instagram account without permission from their agency, as would normally be required. In another rare step, they aired their allegations of abuse at a news conference.“Every one of us is experiencing a lot of anxiety,” Mr. Kim said at the news conference last month. The band members say that a few months after Omega X debuted in June 2021, Ms. Kang, Spire Entertainment’s chief executive at the time, began habitually making sexual remarks, touching their thighs, hands and faces against their wishes, and regularly forcing them to drink alcohol after rehearsals. Lawyers for the band have also said that Spire, a small agency founded in 2020, ordered each band member pay the agency about $300,000 in debt incurred from their training. ‌So far the band’s lawyers have not filed a criminal complaint or presented any physical evidence to corroborate their accusations, citing concerns that doing so would suggest they were trying to influence the civil proceedings that begin on Wednesday. They said their current focus was on getting the band out of their contract, not pressing charges.In an interview last week, Ms. Kang denied the band members’ accusations. Her request for them to cover her agency’s debts was justified, she added, and she believes that the band members have accused her of abuse in order to justify moving to a larger agency.“In their opinion, our company does not have enough to nurture them,” Ms. Kang said, referring to the company’s financial resources. “So they are conducting a witch hunt.”Looking AheadOmega X’s fate may depend on how the South Korean public reacts to the band’s side of the story, said Ms. Lee, the pop culture scholar. If the dispute escalates and its members can rally more public support, she said, Spire Entertainment may allow them to break their contract.At least two companies that work with Spire abroad have cut ties since the scandal broke: Helix Publicity, which had been responsible for Omega X’s public relations in the United States, and Skiyaki, the company that held the license for Omega X’s activities in Japan. A number of people who worked or volunteered at concert venues on its recent two-month, 16-city tour of the United States and Latin America have also spoken up for Omega X. Gigi Granados, 25, a cosmetologist who attended a show at Palladium Times Square in New York City, said she had witnessed Ms. Kang screaming at members of the band at their hotel after the performance. “No one deserves to be yelled at that way,” she said. More

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      Did Crush Snub Black Fans at a Concert in South Korea?

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      The singer Crush apologized for a “misunderstanding” after the exchange, which highlights what experts call K-pop’s uneasy relationship with Black culture.It happens so fast in the videos that you need to rewatch them to notice: As Crush, a South Korean R&B singer, high-fives fans during a recent performance, he avoids an area where some Black concertgoers have extended their hands.A fan on Twitter called the episode, at a music festival in Seoul this month, an act of discrimination. When others piled on, some of Crush’s supporters pushed back, saying that videos showed him skipping other parts of the packed audience and warning fans about overcrowding.Crush apologized last week for what he called a “misunderstanding,” telling his 2.7 million Instagram followers that he had avoided high-fiving some fans out of concern for their safety. He also told The New York Times that he loved and respected Black culture and had not meant to offend anyone.“I would never intentionally act in a way that would disrespect nor offend any individual,” he said.The debate over the episode has called attention to what experts call an old problem: the K-pop industry’s struggle to develop the level of cultural sensitivity that fans in the United States and elsewhere expect.The criticism also highlights resentment that has built up for years among many Black fans who feel that K-pop acts adopt their culture but do not respect them, just as earlier generations of white musicians appropriated Black music and reaped the riches.“There are Black fans who love K-pop so much,” said CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University in South Korea. “But they also do have a bone to pick with the way that their fandom has been ignored, and the way that their concerns about things like cultural appropriation have also been ignored.”The Big PictureCrush, 30, whose real name is Shin Hyo-seob, is an A-list K-pop star at a time when South Korea’s cultural exports are winning legions of new fans abroad. As the K-pop industry becomes increasingly international, more of its lyrics are being written in English, and agencies that promote K-pop acts are opening offices abroad.Crush’s record label, P Nation, was founded in 2018 by the singer Psy, whose breakout 2012 hit, “Gangnam Style,” helped K-pop carve out an international profile.The label’s chief executive, Lionel Kim, said it had always tried aggressively to scrutinize its artists’ content for cultural sensitivity.“We want to reach as many fans as we can around the world,” Kim said in an interview. “We’re extremely cautious to ensure that our artists and music videos do not disrespect any ethnicity or culture.”The K-pop group Exo performing at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018.Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto AgencyBut gaps in awareness have been frequent in South Korea, an ethnically homogeneous society that has generally been slow to welcome other cultures at home.“Some people don’t even know what counts as racist or not — and that includes artists,” said Gyu Tag Lee, a professor of cultural studies at George Mason University’s South Korea campus.Members of Exo, a boy band in Seoul, have been accused of making racist remarks during a live broadcast in which they applied makeup that resembled blackface. And last year, the Korean American rapper Jay Park removed the music video for his song “DNA Remix” after fans noted that some of the performers, who were not Black, wore hairstyles that included Afros, braids and dreadlocks.A Rising StarCrush has explored R&B, hip-hop, soul, jazz and other genres in his decade-long career. He began writing rap lyrics in middle school and listened to Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, James Ingram and other Black musicians in high school, he has told the South Korean news media. In 2018, he released a song that paid homage to Stevie Wonder.Last month, Crush released “Rush Hour,” a hit single with the rapper J-Hope of BTS. The lyrics are a mix of English and Korean, the style riffs on funk and hip-hop, and the music video was filmed on a New York City-inspired set.But frustration toward Crush has been building among Black K-pop fans since 2016, when he performed on a Korean television show wearing a mask with dark skin, big lips and frizzy hair — and did not apologize after the backlash that followed.Some fans were also disappointed when Crush removed an Instagram post two years ago about his donation to a George Floyd memorial fund in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Crush’s label, P Nation, told The Times last week that Crush had archived that post, along with dozens of others that were not related to music, later that year. The FalloutAfter the high-fiving episode at the 2022 Someday Pleroma festival this month, some Crush allies seemed to backtrack on their initial support.J-Hope “liked” Crush’s apology on Instagram. Devin Morrison, a Black singer in Los Angeles who has also collaborated with Crush, wrote on Twitter that he had been astounded to see criticism of “an artist who has treated me and my (Black) friends with nothing but respect and kindness.”But J-Hope’s like and Morrison’s tweet later disappeared. Neither artist responded to requests for comment.Some Black fans took a nuanced view of the episode, saying that they were frustrated less with Crush than with the culture of racial bias that they feel pervades the K-pop industry.Videos of Crush “skipping over the Black fans seemed unlike him, but it didn’t seem like it was unlike K-pop,” said Akeyla Vincent, 32, an African American public-school teacher in South Korea. Melissa Limenyande, 29, a Black South African who also teaches in South Korea, said she believed Crush’s explanation that he had acted out of concern for fans’ safety.At the same time, she said, she has struggled to reconcile her enjoyment of K-pop with what she sees as its creators’ insensitivity toward other cultures.“I like these artists so much and I love their music and their personalities,” she said. “But if I can take my time to learn about their culture or where they come from, why can’t they do the same?” More

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      BTS Performs Live in Seoul for First Time in Over 2 Years

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      SEOUL — Elated fans of BTS gathered on Thursday for the K-pop group’s first live concert in South Korea in over two years, an event that was expected to draw as many as 15,000 people — despite Covid restrictions that barred cheering, screaming or singing.“It still feels like a dream,” said Park Hyunjun, 40, a freelance video producer from the city of Incheon, west of Seoul. Outside Seoul Olympic Stadium on Thursday, she held a poster bearing the concert’s slogan: “Of course, nothing has changed between us.”It was the first large-scale gathering of BTS fans in South Korea since the band’s last concert in their home country, in October 2019. The multibillion-dollar act performed live in Los Angeles in November, but for most of the pandemic it has been livestreaming instead.In 2020, the group set a Guinness world record for attracting the most viewers for a livestreamed music concert. The pandemic did not only pause the band’s live concerts: Five of BTS’s seven members have been infected with the coronavirus. They have since recovered from Covid-19.The concert Thursday, the largest approved by the South Korean government since the pandemic began, was taking place amid an Omicron wave that has driven caseloads in the country to unprecedented highs. On Thursday, the health authorities reported 327,549 new daily cases. But the government, which says the country must learn to live with the virus, has been loosening some restrictions.In and around the stadium on Thursday, 750 safety personnel were enforcing virus protocols, muting the festivities somewhat.“Please get moving once you’re done taking pictures,” fans taking group photos in front of the stadium’s entrance were told. “Please keep your distance to prevent the spread of Covid.”Fans’ temperatures were being taken before they entered the stadium. Rapid antigen kits were being made available for people with high temperatures, said the band’s agency, Hybe. And concertgoers had to enter through designated entrances, and during specific time slots, so they would not flow in all at once.Fans were also prohibited from cheering, screaming or singing along during the concert, and they had to keep their masks on, except to drink water. And attendance at the stadium, which can seat about 70,000 people, was being limited to 15,000.“I’m curious what kind of atmosphere there will be with everyone masked and no one screaming,” said Yu Haram, 17, who has followed the band for four years and was about to see them live for the first time.Throughout the pandemic, Ms. Yu said, she had followed the band online, sometimes gathering with her classmates to watch livestreams together. “I’m finally seeing them,” she said, “and I’m nervous.”The concert was the first of a three-day series, with more scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. It was being livestreamed for people who couldn’t attend in person.Yang Ji-woong, 15, said he had listened to the BTS song “Mikrokosmos” throughout the pandemic alone in his room and was looking forward to seeing it live.“I’m frankly a bit worried about Covid,” he said. “But I want to enjoy this moment as much as I can.” More