TWICE‘s Jihyo came under fire recently for responding on V Live to rumors about her absence from the group at 2019 MAMA for a short period that wasn’t even the performances or red carpet.
Most readers on this site will take a look at that and probably ask, “What?” Right, I did the same, but that’s because you’re likely a normal person and saw somebody frustrated that people were wildly speculating while they were just sick.
But since Jihyo is a female idol, she got a lot of hate from shitheads about how she was rude and a misandrist or something (or god forbid, a feminist).
— KnetTranslate (@KnetTranslate) January 5, 2020
The controversy is supposedly over her attitude, which also happens to dovetail with those who have problem with her usage of “웅앵웅”, which is online slang like “blah blah blah”. Korean male communities are claiming that’s toxic feminist slang or something — from what I can gather, it’s just slang that everybody uses, which does include feminists — and thus Jihyo’s “controversy” has grown over the past few days to the point where she felt the need to clarify (Via @TWICE_GLOBAL).
It’s a great clarification, honestly. Jihyo addresses the issues at hand and is direct in explaining her side, but lets fans know her sass wasn’t addressed to them.
That said, these are the kinds of issues that really shouldn’t become a thing and is definitely rather unique to K-pop. I wasn’t even going to write about it until she addressed it herself because it honestly felt like an asinine “controversy” to have. Yet in the end she’s essentially forced to open up on this level about her mental health and what not because … I mean, why? It’s hard to see anything she did that was offensive to anybody who wasn’t already looking for a reason to be mad.
Glad she handled it, but I guess it’s just disappointing that she has to at all, and it just feels like this is the exactly kind of “scandal” that feeds the pressure that puts idols in a constant negative space.