Victims still reel from traumatic past, while bullies forget
Singer-actor Kwon Min-a, 27, a former member of the eight-member girl band, AOA, stole the show, Tuesday.
Unveiling several dazzling portrait photos of herself on Instagram, she let her fans know that she’s still on the entertainment scene, although she disappeared from the public eye last year, following her bombshell revelation that she had been bullied by her then bandmate Jimin.
In the newly uploaded photos, she’s provocative and flawlessly gorgeous.
Such stunning images, however, betray her true self. In a recent Instagram post, she admitted that she was still reeling from the consequences of her traumatic past. “I’ve seen psychiatrists since I was 20 or 21. It was five or six years ago when I realized I couldn’t stand that person (who traumatized her) any more… I changed my psychiatrist in March 2018… Now, medication no longer works,” she wrote.
In October last year, Kwon and Jimin were at the center of attention following the former’s announcement that she had been bullied for almost a decade by one of her bandmates. In two separate statements Kwon posted on social media, she detailed her traumatic experiences, caused by tensions with the bandmate. According to her, she wasn’t able to visit her dying father, who was then fighting the worst form of pancreatic cancer, and couldn’t even cry out because her bandmate forced her not to reveal her emotions, as her actions could “affect” the other group’s performances. She claimed she was forced to take tranquilizers. Jimin apologized, but Kwon refused to accept it.
She quit the popular girl band, ending her contract with her agency, FNC Entertainment.
Her recent social media post hinted at the lingering fallout of bullying on victims, who find it difficult to lead normal lives when their traumatic experiences keep replaying themselves in their minds. It is also a fresh reminder that not only ordinary people, but also some stars, fall prey because of bullies from within. Actress Seo Shin-ae was reportedly also a victim of school bullying.
K-pop has been increasingly caught in bullying scandals.
On Tuesday, fresh allegations erupted about the shady past of some K-pop stars. Soloist Hyun-ah was pointed to by an anonymous past classmate as a bully when she was an elementary school student, an allegation the singer flatly denied.
The name of a member of JYP Entertainment’s popular boy band Stray Kids, Hyunjin, emerged as another adolescent with a troublesome past. One Internet user wrote on a website that the singer was a school bully, claiming he was sexually harassed by him.
JYP was wary of the fresh allegation, saying that it was checking with related people about whether it was true or not. It warned of legal action against those responsible for spreading false information with malicious intent.
While several stars are facing allegations regarding their past, such as Kwon, for some, bullying is not just something that happened before they made their debut. It’s still happening in some K-pop bands, because of some troublesome members.
Last year, Irene, a member of SM’s girl band, Red Velvet, came under fire after an unnamed staff member disclosed what she had suffered at the idol’s hands.
The staffer wrote on social media that she had experienced a hell-like 20 minutes that day. “I’ve worked in this industry for 15 years and met various types of people… Before working with her in person, I’d heard a lot about her, and I thought I was fully prepared to deal with her… But I was wrong. I became speechless at the electric needles fired by her… I had 20 minutes of hell-like moments,” she wrote. She didn’t specify which star she was referring to, but used the hashtag of Red Velvet’s song, “Psycho,” and another song performed by Irene and Seulgi, causing people familiar with the band and each member’s character to conclude that it was Irene.
The star and her agency SM offered apologies to the unknown stylist, vowing that such inappropriate behavior wouldn’t happen again. Accepting them, the staff member deleted what she wrote.
“As for the bullying scandals that rock K-pop, I’m so sorry to see such things in the news,” said Paul Sneed, a professor at Seoul National University’s
Department of Hispanic Language and Literature. “The Korean entertainment industry is quite a unique climate in many ways. I have never heard of any such thing in other cultures. I think the vulnerability of the artists in Korea in such a hierarchical system perhaps fosters such a dynamic.”
Sneed is the author of the 2019 book, “Machine Gun Voices,” which summarizes his decades of experiences in Brazil and his exposure to local street culture, which affected the creation of the homegrown pop music genre called funk carioca.
Noting that he is not an expert on Korean music, he said that the problems of pronounced hierarchies make individual artists vulnerable. “With pressures and insecurities, as well as trauma, figures emerge that engage in bullying. It’s horrible and needs to be changed,” he said. Sneed, meanwhile, said that for some musicians, their traumatic past motivated them to express themselves through their music, and a certain music genre is created. He noted that gangster rap is an example, and some Brazilian musicians used it as a form of resistance.
“As for gangster rap, it’s important to remember that such musical forms arise as part of identity politics for marginalized groups. African American
communities and the residents of the favelas in which I lived, worked and conducted research in Brazil also have a very unique dynamic,” he said. “These communities have historically been victimized by oppression from the dominant sectors of society, by those who hold power (historically the whiter, more European descended folks in positions of power and authority in areas like politics, commerce and religion). The folks deeply involved in the culture of gangster rap are the ones who have been bullied and are now inverting their relatively powerless social positions on to the rest.”