Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
The publishing company of ‘My Sweet Orange Tree‘ has issued an apology for its earlier statement dragging IU for the “Zeze” controversy and for attempting to give an official and final interpretation of a piece of literature.
After days of endless headlines about “Zeze,” Dongnyok Publishing issued its own apology today, stating through its official Facebook page: “We apologize for not respecting the diversity in interpretation. We had posted the initial post because we were thrown off by new interpretation that was different from the original author’s intention and ours, which we shared with the author. Please regard it as one opinion among many.” It concluded: “We will humbly listen to and strive to embrace the diverse opinions expressed to us. We thank you for the attention you have shown us, and we will continue to publish books that will contribute to making this world a better place.”
Does this justify my personal interpretation of the lyrics? Certainly not. It changes absolutely nothing, because a publisher doesn’t have the authority to lord over a literary work just because they published something.
That’s the whole fucking point.
It’s the point, in retrospect, that makes shit like this on Netizen Buzz absolutely comical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2L8yk376A
Well, they were right about a couple things: I did write another article and I did capture their comments. I was gonna leave this shit alone after my initial take on the scandal and write nothing more, but I sure as fuck am not gonna leave it alone now. And as far as capturing comments goes … well everybody always has the option to not be a fucking idiot.
But hey, sorry I couldn’t “just admit that I fucked up” despite so many international netizens insisting that I did. After all, admit what? That I interpreted a piece of art differently and didn’t inherently see a child seduction pedophilia anthem in this? Yeah, so fucking sorry for my thoughts, guys.
Oh yeah, if that wasn’t enough, something else that has recently emerged is a video defending IU against the witch hunt. The most interesting of the defenses presented is that there was always additional context to IU’s controversial interview about “Zeze”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTTWRbLMz0
The video also provides evidence that the context of IU’s explanation of “Zeze” was omitted in the initial reports of her interview about it. The video plays a recording of IU at her “Chat-shire” showcase on October 23 explaining the song, saying: “Just looking at his character, he has a lot of contradictions, so I was pulled to the character. I’m not saying this to the young Zeze. When just looking at Zeze’s temperament, I thought it was sexy.” The video claims that the initial reports left out the part of IU saying she is not talking about young Zeze.
So not only was “Zeze” never intended to sexualize the child, her much maligned “sexy” comment wasn’t even directly talking about the character from the book. Not only was IU just referring to personality traits that fit with her album theme, but she also wasn’t even speaking about any child, much less that version of “Zeze” that existed in the book.
Funny thing is that in recent days Lizzie Parker from Beyond Hallyu had pointed out to me that earlier media articles covering this IU interview about “Zeze” before it became a thing included all this context, but subsequent articles did not.
Could this possibly be the Korean entertainment media manipulating the public until they’re frothing at the mouth so they can get free clicks by writing any kind of article on IU? No no no, can’t be. They would NEVER.
