iKON has recently come under fire after an iKON fan posted a video clip and subtitles from the ‘iKON GROUND’ portion of their Japanese ‘SUMMERTIME’ DVD on Twitter. As a part of a game attempting to get her to say ‘heol‘, the clip shows BI calling his mother and playing a “prank”, coming out to her as gay as the rest of the members go into hysterics due to the apparent amusement of the prospect.
The fan’s translation of this clip brought down even further criticism, as they assigned Bobby credit for worrying about the mental stability of BI’s mother. However, the best/friendliest explanation of the events puts that comment onto whatever YG Entertainment staffer captioned this mess, and explains the whole thing quite well.
I followed the drama for a bit so I get the complaints that it was stans of other groups blowing this up. However, it was an iKON stan (a BI stan, no less) that decided to put the clip up for everybody to see and then translated it, and furthermore, does it even matter what the source was? As somebody who has gone through the process of coming out to family/friends and thus knows how hellish that process can be, and factoring in the reality that the situation in Korea/Japan for people who aren’t straight is worse than in America, it’s disappointing (and potentially damaging to fans watching) to see people play it off as this hilarious thing.
But as in most cases, I’m not going to act like it’s the end of the world and cancel everybody or pretend they’re the only idols who would ever do some shit like this, it’s just that this ‘joke’ hits home a bit and deserves the criticism it’s getting from others, and I don’t think it needs to be or should be defended.
molinitor on November 15th, 2018 at 09:51 UTC »
I feel so sorry for South Korea's lgbtq+ youth. The older generations is one thing, South Korea was in a completely different place just 15-20 years ago. But people as young as iKON's members doing stuff like this? Not cool.
salotsalipunan on November 15th, 2018 at 09:14 UTC »
The level of ignorance still out there in this world about homophobia is just so terrible. YG and iKON better address this fast. The fact that this was shot, edited and published without anyone raising an issue shows there's ingrained homophobia (whether conscious or unconscious) within YG.
They should apologize right away without any reservations. Acknowledge the wrong done. Use their platform to make reparations somehow. It doesn't excuse the wrong done but they should at least do something about it. It might even raise a bigger discussion on homophobia present in Korean culture as a whole.
stormoflions on November 15th, 2018 at 09:07 UTC »
There goes another contribution to the ignorance of the actual existence of gay people living in Asia who are mostly closeted and live under constant suffering and fear of losing everything beloved because of being themselves.
Sincerely, a closeted gay guy constantly under fear and anxiety of having to defend myself in front of my parents if i have to come out someday soon.