It all started with a kiss.
K-pop star Seunghan was banished for almost a year from his boy band, RIIZE, amid backlash over leaked photos showing him kissing a woman when he was a trainee — behavior considered unacceptable by some fans who expect their idols to remain single and have wholesome images.
When the South Korean entertainment company behind the band, SM Entertainment, tried to bring him back to the band earlier this month, fans still weren’t ready to forgive him, sending white funeral wreaths to the company’s headquarters in Seoul and organizing online campaigns in protest.
Within two days of his return, SM Entertainment said Seunghan was out again, leading fans to post triumphant videos showing them dancing in front of the funeral wreaths.
“I think leaving the team is the best decision for everyone,” Seunghan, 21, said in a letter posted on social media. “I don’t want to cause more confusion or hurt to the fans, and I don’t want to cause more harm to the members or the company.”
There has been no official comment from the remaining six members of the group: Shotaro from Japan, Anton from the United States, and Eunseok, Sungchan, Wonbin and Sohee from South Korea.
Now a different group of mostly international fans is pushing back, expressing support for Seunghan and condemning what they see as corporate caving to bullying by toxic fans.
“Funeral wreaths are part of a tradition for actual deceased people, and to my knowledge are generally filled with messages of sympathy to the bereaved and the deceased,” Tarryn McMurray, a British fan of RIIZE since their debut last year, said in an interview last week. “To turn something that is meant as a sign of respect into a tactic for bullying someone is incredibly egregious.”
Arianna, a 14-year-old RIIZE fan in Wisconsin, said she planned to boycott SM Entertainment “until it announces he is back and he is well.”
“Just because they want to entertain people, doesn’t mean they should give up all their freedoms,” said Arianna, who declined to be identified by her full name for fear of backlash from other K-pop fans.
Videos and photos circulating online in recent days show rented trucks in front of the SM Entertainment building carrying messages of support for Seunghan from fans from all over the world. Hashtags such as #JusticeForSeunghan or #SMSupportBullying have also appeared on social media.
As of Tuesday, almost 300,000 people had signed a petition on Change.org demanding the young star’s reinstatement.
“He had a promising future, but because of horrible ‘fans’ of RIIZE, it all led up to this unfortunate fate,” the petition says. “Many fans, mostly international fans, want him back in the group.”
SM Entertainment did not respond to an emailed request for comment. In statements posted on X on Thursday, the company said it would take legal action over what it said were malicious, slanderous and inaccurate posts and comments about Seunghan as well as his former bandmates.
Launched in September 2023, RIIZE received negative publicity right before its debut when the photos of Seunghan kissing a woman were leaked, irritating fans who believe their idols should not date.
The singer further came under fire after an anonymously posted video appeared to show him criticizing the singing and dancing skills of another boy band member and making comments about a female star that some fans considered disrespectful.
Another video allegedly showing him smoking in Japan as a minor was also leaked online.
“If you want to be an artist, you should have virtue. I don’t think a person who speaks ill of sunbae has good manners,” RIIZE fan Yuki Shu told NBC News via a messaging app last week, using a Korean word that means people with more working experience.
Fans spend a lot to support their idols, “and I am not paying money to see you dating other girls,” she added.
In response to the allegations and criticism, SM Entertainment put Seunghan on indefinite hiatus in November, though it said that the videos posted online had been reproduced and were not accurate.
‘No dating’ policy
Part of the reason Seunghan has faced such hostility from fans is because he is relatively new to the multibillion-dollar K-pop industry, experts said.
“When you are just starting out, there’s an expectation that they would just work their ass off,” Hye Jin Lee, a clinical assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, said Wednesday.
The fans’ perspective is, “We want you to be successful, and for you to do that, we’re going to spend a lot of money, stream your music 24/7 and we are going to do everything to elevate your status,” Lee said. “We’re going to work hard, and why don’t you?”
“And, of course, it’s like benign,” she added. “He made those teenage mistakes.”
This is far from the first time that K-pop idols have fallen afoul of fans for having personal relationships.
In March, Karina from Aespa, another SM Entertainment group, apologized for letting fans down after Korean media revealed her relationship with actor Lee Jae-wook. The couple broke up the following month.
In 2020, K-pop sensation EXO’s Chen apologized after announcing his engagement to his current wife. Fans have been urging him to leave the group ever since.
In 2018, K-pop soloist HyunA and her then-boyfriend Dawn, a former member of the boy band Pentagon, were removed by their company, Cube Entertainment, after they announced that they had been dating for two years.
“In general, Korean fandom expects idols, or celebrities in general, to be role models as they are so visible to teenagers,” Lee said. “Not only that, there’s this expectation of individuals not being a burden to a collective, and this is a very ancient cultural thing.”
More money, more power
Seunghan’s international supporters are now calling on K-pop fans and companies to respect idols’ right to have personal lives.
“They are still humans and they deserve to be in relationships because that is a necessary part of the human experience,” McMurray said.
“Unfortunately, many K-pop companies also don’t see their artists as people but rather a way to gain wealth, and that is incredibly problematic as many artists are mistreated and suffer greatly because of it,” she added.
International fans are less invested in K-pop stars both emotionally and financially, said Stephanie Choi, a faculty expert on K-pop music at the University at Buffalo.
Many Korean and Chinese fans “actively participate in the idol-fan relationship by purchasing hundreds of album copies and meeting idols in person at events, heavily investing their time, money and effort into the partnership, which increases the idol’s brand value,” she said.
That investment, she said, can translate into power over the stars.
International fans, by contrast, “consume idols as media figures from a distance, without investing in the idol-fan relationship.”
Lee, from USC, said the status quo in the K-pop industry is unlikely to change in the short term despite the growing popularity of K-pop worldwide.
“You cannot detach Korean culture from K-pop,” she said. “You can never change a culture in a short period of time.”
