Lana Interview (2024)

If you don't remember, a few years ago an aspiring idol named Lana attempted to debut:

But she faced tons of backlash from western fans as a foreigner (specifically a white-passing Asian woman) debuting in K-pop. She's recently done a long sit-down interview with KPC that some may find interesting:

I plan to watch it later tonight, but in case anyone else was interested in it.

I liked some of her music, and she recently released a song "Circus":

I always thought the anger directed at her was underserved for the record. Foreigners jealous of a non-Asian (well, she's Asian, but I guess not stereotypically Asian for those back then) debuting while trying to dictate to Koreans who is allowed in the K-pop scene.

It's been so long that I forgot that she's a white-passing Asian instead of actually white. Time does fly

I have watched it.

I looked around K-pop Twitter and Reddit to see if anyone was talking about this interview that came out two whole days ago, and there was a whopping one comment about it from two spaces that helped perpetuate what were blatantly racist attacks towards someone based on American-centric views of race. Of course, people from these spaces would never own up to these types of things, but anyone paying attention will remember. Which is a shame when you actually hear her side of the story because it really just comes out as bullying a minority from debuting as a singer (since she never saw herself as an idol but merely a singer debuting in Korea).

It's crazy that Koreans supported her more than international fans, especially in a space where internationals have no problems with Japanese people entering it (the same group the colonized Korea less than 100 years ago). Probably because Japanese are Asians so this quarter-Asian lady, who happens to look white, is clearly not Asian obviously deserves more hate. Imagine being a quarter Asian and having people accuse you of having plastic surgery to look more Asian.

It was really interesting to hear her story of mismanagement by her company, liking comments aimed at hating her and even having her being seen as racist. She really had no chance with the western crazies that populated and still populate Reddit and Twitter. It sounds like she would've found a lot more success in China is she decided to stay there, but according to the comments there were some management issues (surprise, surprise judging from her history lol).

She's quite beautiful. I'm sure she can be successful in modeling or another field if given the chance (in China??). I listened to "Circus," and it's okay. I'll add it to the playlist, but I actually prefer some of her earlier releases.

Best of luck to her.