Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
In a forum held for Korean-Chinese music relations, SM Entertainment CEO Kim Young Min decided it would be a good time to whine about Tao, Kris, and Luhan.
“Super Junior, EXO, and f(x) all have Chinese members. This year, an EXO concert will be held in Japan. It is expected to mobilize around 52,000 concertgoers. However, some of the Chinese members (Kris, Luhan, Tao) will not be present for the concert in Japan due to their lawsuits with SM. What I’m mentioning isn’t just a story between SM and EXO or a story between the agency and the artists. I just wanted to state that depending on how the management rules are formed, the scale and area that the synergy impacts could change.”
“Using the weaknesses in the legal systems of Korea and China, they could pursue their personal, economic, short-term gains. They only followed their ‘selfs,’ without any communication with the fans who have been with them from the beginning and with the music market. This can all be seen as their personal matters. However, for personal gains, they are not attending the concert that will mobilize over 50,000 people as part of a group that unites Chinese and Koreans. In the Asian market, and as Chinese-born artists, I wonder what honor they have. I think it’s something to consider.”
In short, the CEO basically called the trio selfish, money-grubbing traitors and questioned their “honor” under the guise of strengthening bonds between Korea and China or something. Fans can argue about all that and get pissed at him, but he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. We all knew how SME is and how they felt about these “undesirables”, as their modus operendi has been known for years and years already.
But the quotes were still interesting, specifically the part where he bags on these so-called “weaknesses” in the legal systems of Korea and China for allowing Kris, Tao, and Luhan to happen. It’s interesting because it appears like (publicly, at least) SME thinks the legal systems of two countries in regards to corporate contract law is the root of the problem here, and not the company policies or contracts themselves. And most importantly, he seems to believe the real problem with the law is that it isn’t stricter on the labor, in terms of compelling them to support companies.
It’s striking to me in how deluded it would sound in any other context but this. I really never thought that in a system that churns out idols like machinery and reigns supreme over the personal lives of children, that the law would need to be slanted further in the favor of the conglomerates’ rights and not the people/kids employed by them. For me, if there is a problem with the contracts and their validity, it’s allowing these contracts to be signed in the first place and under the conditions they’re signed in.
But hey, why address any of the internal problems when you can blame the help, right?
