Redditor translation
Title: The "Korean" context of the Fifty Fifty incident
Author: Yoon kwang un
There are two contexts in the Fifty situation, which has been triggered by the court battle over the termination of the exclusive contract between the girl group Fifty Fifty and the agency Attract. One is the confrontation between Attract and Fifty members and the outsourcing agency The givers, who is pointed out as being behind Fifty, and the other is a public opinion trend that amplifies the reaction so loudly that this situation has become a social topic. If the former was caused by interests between the parties, the latter is at stake within the K-pop scene.
The synopsis of the incident is well known. Attract entrusted the production of Fifty's music to an outside agency, The givers, and after Fifty's song "CUPID" became a hit abroad, it was revealed that The givers was trying to "rob" the group. The givers denies this claim, but if you look at the timeline of the situation, there is an aspect in which the The givers's and Fifty's behind-the-scenes movements lead to a correlation. This is the case with the circumstances in which The givers arbitrarily rejected the advertisement proposal that came to the group in May before the exclusive contract termination lawsuit was filed. Many media and dominant public opinion seem to understand this situation according to a narrative,as in, 'as a small and medium-sized agency group gains popularity, outsourcing agencies and members try to change agencies'.
Given the context of the case, it seems plausible. Factual errors and lack of logical probabilities have already been pointed out in various reports as the reasons for terminating the contract that Fifty is claiming. Rather, if there is one part that is full of probability about the current situation, it is that 'CUPID''s overseas popularity is too great compared to the size of the agency. The desire to move this group onto a larger capital is enough to intervene. ‘CUPID’ ranked 17th on the Hot 100 chart, which leads to the main Billboard chart, and has been on the chart for more than 16 weeks. It is the best performance among all K-pop girl groups, and even if you look at the entire K-pop group, there is no other group other than BTS that has achieved better results. There is no precedent comparable to 'CUPID' after 'Gangnam Style' in terms of the pure popularity of the song itself without the support of a global fandom.
In the current controversy, it seems that mainly the existing K-pop fandom is unanimous in criticizing Fifty. Compared to the achievements achieved on Billboard, Fifty was not mentioned much in Korea. It may be because of the lack of awareness, but some kind of discomfort was detected in the K-pop fandom community(as in the other idol fans). The logical contradiction of calling a group that just debuted a “one hit wonder” (a singer who ended his career with a single hit song) was followed around like a modifier in the comments section. I think it stemmed from the displeasure of seeing "a stone rolling from nowhere"(This is a reference to a korean saying where a stone that rolled from somewhere else replacing the stone that was in the place before, often used to describe a total newcomer) taking a foothold in the road where even girl groups from large entertainment companies couldn't achieve,and large fandoms(of other fandoms) are disliking and disregarding that achievement.
After BTS, the US market was recognized as a new continent for K-pop and the ultimate destination to gain cultural hegemony. The
Billboard chart performance was the best publicity material to prove it. Let's recall that after New Jeans entered the Billboard Hot 100, there was a publicity article saying "they did in 6 months what BTS did in 8 years". However, soon after, the group(refering to fifty fifty) received rave reviews from overseas media that they were writing a new history of K-pop, recording a much higher Billboard chart than New Jeans. As long as Fifty survives, the overseas results achieved by other groups will inevitably fade, and it is impossible to save face in Korea when they bring the news and report on them(as in newjeans or others). It seems that this dynamic is the background for the current controversy to be expanded and reproduced through bellows around a certain community.
One of the widely circulated critical posts about the Fifty scandal reads: “The Fifty members did everything the Koreans hate.” It is the storytelling of the narrative that the members betrayed the grace of the CEO who supported the unknown group. There is a hint of an intention to attract general public opinion that is not interested in talking about idols by appealing to the 'noble anger' of the Korean public sentiment. In any case, given that the situation has grown to this extent, it can be said that there were many people who were interested in responding to that frame.
A group that achieved unprecedented public hits overseas was left out in Korea, but it was only after being placed on top of the Korean gossip structure that it became a hot topic and was able to gain “popularity.” This irony is the gap between domestic and overseas socio-cultural trends that cannot be filled because of the globalization that still remains even in the era of K-culture globalization, or because of globalization built around large-scale cultural capital(as in money) and the fandom that supports them. If a fandom in a certain field fights for an issue through a certain community specialized in spreading issues, it can create social public opinion, and the code of the agenda through which the issue is conveyed can also be set by the highly involved public opinion, not the media. This is a certain aspect of Korean society and the Korean public sphere that can be confirmed through the Fifty incident.
