Who Protects K-pop stars?

Tamar Herman

15 Oct 2024 — 9 min read

Bonus newsletter for the week! Because I may not have a chance to write next week, but also because I have a lot of thoughts on my mind.

This question, "who protects K-pop stars?" may seem facetious: K-pop stars, at least the ones at the top of the field, are rich people, richly invested in by major companies. They're accompanied by managers and security guards, and they often live in apartments owned or leased by their company.

Then there are the less fortunate K-pop stars, the "nugu" stars - a Koreanism that's popular among English-speaking K-pop fans, referring to the Korean word for "who". They have fewer degrees of separation between themselves and the rest of the world, but they're still typically managed by company, often living in dorms, and go where their contracts take them. Sometimes there are extreme situations, such as in the recent K-pop Idols documentary on Apple TV+, where trainees who eventually became members of BlackSwan spent time living in the house of the CEO of BlackSwan's company, a less affluent K-pop company.

On one hand, some of this is just economical and efficient. On the other hand, it's about power dynamics, and control. And I think we're at a time when K-pop's power dynamic imbalance is really being felt.

There's a stereotype in the U.S. that K-pop stars are controlled by their companies, and I always think it's kind of funny: isn't every worker?

If you haven't been paying attention to things amid an ever hellish newscycle in 2024, in K-pop and beyond it, here's a quick summary of three stories that caught my eye in the past day or so:

Seunghan rejoined and then withdrew from RIIZE, amid fan protests and fan support in the form of boycotts.
Hanni of NewJeans testified in front of a congressional body in South Korea's legislature about workplace abuses she previously discussed during NewJeans' sudden livestream. In the same hearing, it was revealed that at least one worker may have died while working at Hybe, potentially due to overwork. Rumors have since spread of multiple deaths.
Jimin of BTS was revealed to have been scammed out of nearly $75,000 USD (100 million KRW) by a comedian in the industry who targeted many around him to pay for his gambling addiction.

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In each of these cases, there is a lot flying, very little of which can or could ever have been controlled by the artist. Except one decision that perhaps feels like maybe it shouldn't have taken place, or a circumstance that they ended up in because companies are going to focus on their needs rather than that of their talent.

It's definitely my American-ism showing, but I always wonder when I hear these stories: where are the agents? Where are the hand-picked managers? Where are the lawyers? They have managers, but most managers are paid by the company where artists are signed rather than the artists themselves. Where are the people who don't care about the greater good of a company or even a group, but an individual?

These things are part and parcel for the U.S. entertainment industry, but in Korea they don't really operate, and I kind of think it's because the idea that companies are king dominates. But that really sucks for individuals when it comes to a tough decision or circumstance, if everyone in the room - except perhaps your parents- is concerned about the bottom line and not necessary You, or how they'll profit from you. Because, let's be real, it's still business, but at least it's business for You and not the shareholders.

That's not to say that these things are perfect: the highest profile situation where a star was taken advantage by the person who was supposed to be Their Person I can think of recently was Japanese baseball Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter who stole nearly $17 million from the athlete's bank accounts; this was the interpreter who acted as Ohtani's manager when it came to international moves. So no side of the fence is truly that much greener, but I feel like we're at the point where artists definitely want better treatment than they once were.

I have long said that the K-pop industry needs to do better by its artists, and assumed that a lot of this will have to come from talent taking their companies to court, the way it did to change Hollywood from the Studio System to they dynamics we have now.

With the recent situation around Seunghan, I feel like it's another wake up call that something needs to change, whether it's some sort of unionizing, or agents becoming players in the industry acting as middle men who are financially looking for the betterment of an individual rather than the company they're signed to.

South Korea actually has a pretty strong history of labor organizing, and is actually currently dealing with a major crisis due to doctors going on-strike under a president who is anti-unions.

Screenshots of Kevin of The Boyz on Weverse talking about "You know what I've been thinking about lately" "How this industry would finction if at all if idols unionized" "LOL"

While K-pop stars aren't unionizing (yet!) it does feel like the past few years have hinted to long overdue labor right changes, whether by movements within the industry or regulation.

I could go on about this forever, but this has been a conversation I've returned to many times in this newsletter. I honestly don't know if I have anything new to say, but wanted to re-up these articles with some of my ideas about standards of rights for K-pop stars and some related ideas in case anyone was interested.

If you got this far, you may be wondering still about this article's header: it's a promo photo of aespa's Winter imposed onto buildings. It's a stock photo here from the Ghost photo pool, and I think a K-pop star off to the bottom of the screen, relegated to the forefront but with half of her face missing while corporate buildings take up the majority of the frame feels like a really great metaphor for all of what I was talking about here.

If this newsletter needs updating for factual or typographical errors, please email me at tamarhermanwrites@gmail.com.