Red Velvet’s Irene read a feminist book and her male fans are extremely mad online

Recently, Red Velvet‘s Irene has admitted to reading a feminist book and the reaction from her male fans hasn’t been a good one.

The book in question is ‘Kim Ji-Young, Born In 1982‘ by feminist Cho Nam Joo, a read that’s been growing in popularity in Korea since it’s publication in 2016. The novel is about Kim Ji-Young and her experience growing up as girl and woman in South Korea, along with exploring a lot of the sexism that society tolerates. Many enjoy the novel for speaking up about many of the issues women experience in Korea.

During a fan meet, Red Velvet members were asked about books they’ve read, and Irene mentioned this book. Well, salty male fans didn’t take this news well and some of them have even took to burning and cutting up Irene’s photocards.

[Translation; fuck those hypocrites]Irene read "Kim Ji-young, born in 1982"
"That b**ch/wh**e, she's pretty but why be a feminist though"

R* read "Kim Ji-young, born in 1982"
"As expected, our N******n's got that sensation on human rights. He's studying again TT Respect^^" pic.twitter.com/gsXVDahZsZ

— janna` T1 Worlds 2023 Champions 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (@jannamojo) March 18, 2018

https://twitter.com/1968RVF/status/975344990883737600

One large fan account of Irene’s who uploaded the video of her admitting to reading the book, got a DM from a salty fan demanding that video be taken down for some reason, and their response was golden.

https://twitter.com/jwoyri/status/975349612092440576

This reaction is gross, but sadly not surprising. In K-pop, fans lashing out against idols for taking liberties for themselves is extremely common; especially when it comes to female celebrities, who are usually the main ones to get hate for the stupidest shit ever. I just hope that Irene isn’t too affected by this and that SM Entertainment won’t use this as another excuse to overly-police what idols say and do even more.

As this story has gained traction, Irene isn’t actually the first idol to speak about this book; back in January Sooyoung from SNSD talked about the book in her reality show ‘Sooyoung, Born In 1990‘, and one can see that she actually named her reality show after the book because she was very inspired by it.

Well, some fans spent time to “investigate” where Irene may have gotten the idea to read the book from, and eventually they pointed the finger at Sooyoung, as if she was the source of a drug habit or something sinister.

https://twitter.com/manghansaram/status/975347180713099264

Normal human stuff.

——

Oh, an important update!

https://twitter.com/AustralianSana/status/975878738092048384