The K-Pop Industry Will Never Change

After Seunghan's removal from RIIZE, how at fault are K-Pop’s toxic fandoms?

Seunghan

It only took twenty-four hours for the bereavement wreaths to arrive. 

One day after SM Entertainment announced that Seunghan would return to RIIZE from a hiatus that lasted nearly a year, enraged fans sent scores of wreaths to the company’s headquarters in protest. The wreaths deployed a clear message from Korean fans: They would not support any comeback as long as Seunghan was involved. RIIZE, essentially, was dead to these fans. Within forty-eight hours, Seunghan reversed his decision and announced that he would permanently leave RIIZE, citing a concern that his presence would only harm the company and its members. 

Seunghan had not been accused of any crimes to warrant this level of harassment and rage. He had, instead, done something that nearly every teenager does: He dated. But in the K-Pop industry, where idol fanservice encourages delusional behavior from stans, Seunghan’s actions were a cardinal sin. 

Last year, after photos of him and his girlfriend leaked, SM turned to a familiar playbook used by K-Pop companies and came to a mutual agreement with the idol. Seunghan would go on hiatus. “I deeply regret that I have caused so much damage during a time when I should be working harder and striving for self-improvement,” he said in a handwritten apology letter released by SM in 2023. 

It was a disturbing but all too familiar move in an industry that was known to place dating bans on idols. A skeptical outsider might believe that music is secondary to the real product (idols) and evidence shows that this theory might be credible. Companies encourage fans to buy a lot and buy some more with store exclusive photocards, acrylic keychains, special photobooks and opportunities to win fancalls with their bias’. In 2020 when K-Pop was just beginning to become a phenomenon, Billboard reported on stans who felt extreme FOMO if they didn’t collect everything released by a company. Today, this feeling is the norm in fandom communities. 

As K-Pop has grown in popularity, so has a fan’s access to their favorite idol. Today, fans can pay a monthly fee to DM their bias on Weverse or receive private messages on apps like Fromm. Idols regularly livestream on Weverse or Instagram, typically after concerts or “on their day off”. Subscribing to an idol on Weverse can be an overwhelming experience as notifications fire off from the time the idol wakes up till they go to sleep. By the sheer volume of content available, fans are supposed to feel close to their bias, which in turn makes a profit for a company. 

Yet this level of illusion can become toxic. As fans are given more access to idols, they often become more entitled. There is no doubt that this entitlement is what caused Seunghan to be removed from RIIZE. The loudest blame is often given to Korean fans. They are, after all, the ones who sent the wreaths to SM and bullied Seunghan into leaving the group. They are part of the culture that promotes the unhealthy and unrealistic work environment idols find themselves in.

But let’s be clear, too, that Western fans also share a deep level of blame. Western fans might be more self-aware that their delusion is problematic, but self-awareness only takes us so far. Read any comment section on K-Pop TikTok and you will see Western stans joking about their idol not knowing how to talk to girls or being a nerd. But it’s not a joke: When idols are outed for being very bad people, stans are the first to admit that they thought their bias was a good person and point to a number of vlogs, livestreams and good deeds they know about to prove their point. Ultimately, they believed what the company sold them. 

These are the same fans who regularly comment on subReddits or X that they never want to hear their bias’ political views because it would likely turn them off. Yet they still mass buy albums, bring their photocards to dinner, and camp out for seventy-two hours before a concert to get barricade. 

American fans, particularly, have had a hard time standing their ground when it comes to morals over access. When RIIZE came to Los Angeles for their first fancon in May, several BRIIZEs sat out in protest for Seunghan. But the show sold well and filled up Peacock Theater, which has a capacity of over 7,000 seats.

This problem is much bigger than just a Korean fanbase. Fandom itself is a disease that is beginning to rot from the core. Fans don’t just enable companies to treat their idols inhumanely; they encourage it. They bluff at companies who send their groups on back-to-back world tours in one year, but still buy tickets to those exact tours. They complain that too many albums are being released but still buy the albums because they have been conditioned to believe they’ll miss out otherwise. 

This year I began to worry: What if a fan’s devotion is ultimately supporting a regime that punishes teens and young adults for being human?

In early 2020, right as K-Pop became a mainstream force, I noticed a new, chronically online trend surfacing: K-Pop vloggers. These vloggers - or at least the most popular ones - were often college-age fans who had come of age alongside K-Pop long before the industry became a capitalist force. Their videos, which ranged from unboxing new comeback albums to photocard sorting, met the moment of the pandemic when isolation was at its highest and introduced a new way for stans to engage with K-Pop. 

In album haul videos where fans would go to Target or Barnes and Noble to buy albums on release day, the K-Pop vloggers were like a bloodhound hungrily chasing down a scent. They wouldn’t buy three of the same album to get their favorite bias’ photocard, they’d buy fifty and simultaneously decide to collect the entire group. 

The collectors encouraged other fans to join in. Collection communities sprung up on Instagram and Reddit where photocards were traded or priced higher than an album. Sometimes, touching moments would find their way into videos. When the vloggers would open trades or gifts, they’d often read letters from fans who found comfort watching their videos. Many fans, they confessed, had few friends and the vloggers had become imaginary friends of their own. 

But this year, I began to notice a difference in their videos. What had once been a fun side hobby for many fans had exploded into collections that are difficult to manage. One night I watched with my mouth slightly ajar, as a vlogger theorized where she could move dozens of albums to make room for more that were on the way. Where are the walls, I thought? The once cozy videos suddenly began to feel claustrophobic. 

Some vloggers began to sell off their collections because they had no money left. Others doubled down and bought more than they ever had before, perhaps in search of views as well as completing a collection. Many lamented that what had once been a fun way to share their collection had dissolved into a tightening pressure to post their album haul videos first. 

Alone in their crowded rooms, the vloggers sleeved photocards and cooed over how cute their bias looked. They giddily talked about the next concert they would attend and spoke about their bias as if they were best friends. Rarely did I ever hear the vloggers mention meeting friends who didn’t share their fanaticism of K-Pop. Where are their friends, I wondered? What was the point of attending all of these shows or following these idols, if you have no one to share their stories with?  

“Let people have fun and stop telling others how to spend their money,” you might be thinking. 

But this extremism has consequences. I would argue that this level of fandom directly contributes to the culture that ruined Seunghan’s career. The cruelty of Seunghan’s dismissal lies at the hands of fans who feel safest pining for idols who they will never meet as much as it does the companies who won’t protect their young employees. For all of the hand-wringing I’ve seen in K-Pop communities about what the fans’ responsibility is moving forward, I do know one thing: As long as fans see idols as commodities, there is no reason for the K-Pop industry to change.