allkpop has been making news in Korea for a while now, but the new agreement to broadcast Mnet's "2010 MAMA" has put even more of a spotlight on the site, and that isn't always a good thing. We get a lot of hate mail, and most of it is predictable, lame, and repetitive. We usually brush it off, because frankly speaking, it's not notable enough for us to pay attention to. However, when an official Korean newspaper writes the equivalent of a hit piece on our dear site, and especially when that hit piece is full of inaccuracies and poor arguments, we feel that an elongated rebuttal is needed in order to defend ourselves and clarify the reality of the situation to our readers. Anyway, as some of you have likely heard by now, a Dong-a Daily News writer by the name of Jang Kwan Seok wrote an article about allkpop that was quite critical and dropped a ton of outrageous accusations. To summarize, he says: 1) allkpop is a "gateway" that foreigners use to take interest in the Hallyu wave, but the site makes foreigners think badly of Korea. 2) Korean netizens believe that allkpop spreads rumors and lies about sex scandals and plastic surgery; they refer specifically to a celebrity exposing herself on cam and teens being sold for sexual favors. 3) allkpop only writes negative or critical articles about Korean celebrities. 4) allkpop uses the Japanese names of Korean artists constantly. There is an inference here that alleges we do this to promote Japanese culture while slyly undermining Korean culture. Now since the Dong-a Daily News writer took so much time to write out his article, let's address these issues point-by-point, shall we? --- 1) In the article, Jang Kwan Seok cites the experience of one college student ("Bae Ki Hwan") and his English friend ("James Wilson"). From that exchange, he attempts to extrapolate the experience of a single individual ("James Wilson") to that of every foreign reader. In the short story that Bae Ki Hwan tells Jang Kwan Seok, no mention of allkpop is made by James Wilson, but the connection is inferred to the reader of the article nevertheless, as the next paragraph goes on to state that allkpop is the "gateway" that introduces foreigners to the Hallyu phenomenon. It's a rather sly subliminal tactic used by the writer to get his opinion across while still attempting to keep a shred of professionalism, but I believe intelligent readers can easily discern what was being attempted. Basically, it's a poor leap in logic by the writer, and an obvious manipulation in an attempt to invoke an emotional reaction. The two statements have no direct correlation to one another, but by including the two separate points side by side, he attempts to link them anyway, and he represents the scenario as if allkpop is the reason "James Wilson" has some negative perceptions about Korean celebrities (despite the fact that he does like them), when in fact our site is never mentioned by him. -- 2) At this point, the irony begins, because the writer is accusing allkpop of unnecessarily stirring the pot with rumors, but what the writer leaves out is how the articles he mentions came from Korean news sources themselves. Since all we did in those scenarios is take stories that were already published by the Korean media, he is essentially saying that allkpop is at fault for simply translating what Korean news is reporting. If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. A large reason we have sources cited at the bottom of every post now is because people can see that we're not just making up stories, but are actually drawing them from supposedly respectable Korean news sites or papers.  Therefore, for him to insult what we post on our site is to directly insult the job that his peers are doing, not only the rest of the Korean media, but at his own paper as well. What the writer of this article chooses to omit, and what critical Korean netizens seemingly fail to understand is, if these controversial stories are getting out to international audiences through allkpop, it's because they were first published in Korea by Korean journalists. We, the staff members of allkpop, can't believe that the writer is able to claim that allkpop is an anti-Korean site when we're simply translating what's already put out there by Korea. Unless he's arguing that Korean journalists, Korean media, and Korean netizens are unpatriotic to Korea, don't blame allkpop. --- As far as the specific examples go, the links to the story about the celebrity allegedly exposing herself on camera are here and here. Both have Korean sources at the bottom. The links to the story about the company allegedly selling their artists for sex are here, here, and here. The first two links are sourced to Korean media outlets, but the last one isn't. The only reason why the last one isn't sourced to the Korean media is because we decided to investigate further and attempt to get a full clarification from one of the alleged victims herself. Eventually, we were able to get her to talk about it and clear her name. So in this case, not only did allkpop simply report on what the Korean news had already deemed newsworthy, but we actually went the extra mile to try and get a better story and exonerate the girl from the accusations.

3) Nobody here is denying that there were critical articles in past years when this site operated as more of an attempt at humor than a serious news/gossip blog endeavor; but those were simply opinionated articles in an attempt to get a laugh, and hardly the malicious attacks that certain people make them out to be. Additionally, much of this happened before a majority of the current staff came aboard, and well before the change in direction for the site, so digging it up now is completely unrelated and irrelevant to most of us at allkpop. As far as critical opinions in general, yes, we will have them, and we will continue to have them. We reserve the right to have opinions of our own, just like Korean papers do, just like netizens do, and just like every other person, blog, paper, and publication in the world does. You don't always have to agree with our opinion, but to turn a simple critical opinion of a Korean artist or celebrity, and then make it sound like allkpop is an organization whose sole purpose is to misinform the unknowing masses is ridiculous and absurd. Again, it's a hypocritical attitude of the most gigantic proportions. Any negative opinion we have of a Korean celebrity is painted as anti-Korean or anti-Hallyu, but when Korean media or Korean netizens are critical of a Korean celebrity, they say it's just analysis or an opinion. Why the double standard? --- 4) Lastly, the author bemoans our usage of "SNSD"/"Girls' Generation"/"Shoujo Jidai" and goes to SM Entertainment with the false notion that we constantly use 'Shoujo Jidai' over 'SNSD' and 'Girls' Generation'. Basically, he's inferring that we refuse to call them by their Korean names and choose to propagate their Japanese image instead. SM Entertainment then stated that they will investigate why we do this. Of course, the problem is that we don't actually do what he accuses, and as such, we welcome with open arms any investigation from SM Entertainment about how we promote SNSD. In fact, we encourage it, because then they will see that this writer is simply making things up, and hopefully they will no longer take inquires from him again. On allkpop, the tag "Shoujo Jidai" has been used a grand total of six times, and every single time that tag has been used, it has been in reference to their ongoing Japanese promotions, hence the use of their Japanese name. Now if their accusation is correct, you would assume that the tag "Shoujo Jidai" would be used much more frequently than the "SNSD" tag, their Korean name, because they are saying we want to promote their Japanese name instead. The problem for the writer, of course, is that the "SNSD" tag (their Korean name) has been used on allkpop 1362 times, which is exactly 1356 more than the "Shoujo Jidai" tag, thus proving whatever point the author was trying to make about how we refer to SNSD as 'Shoujo Jidai" completely and utterly pointless. By the way, most international fans refer to them as SNSD or GG because typing out their full Korean name or their full English name is simply too much work.  There's no giant conspiracy behind it all, it  just has to do with making convenient acronyms. The other complaint is about how we allegedly use "Tohoshinki" to describe "DBSK"/"TVXQ"/"Tohoshinki" more than "DBSK" or "TVXQ". As you probably have already guessed, the problem is that we don't use "Tohoshinki" frequently at all. In fact, since the start of 2010, which was as far as I was willing to waste my time on this experiment, we have used "Tohoshinki" to describe the group exactly one time in our titles. That one time we did use their Japanese name was to express their succcess in Japan on the Oricon Charts, as seen here. A great majority of the time, TVXQ is the title used to describe the group, along with DBSK, probably because TVXQ is what international fans seem most familiar with. Type "DBSK" into Google and look at what it leads you to, a Wikipedia article calling the group "TVXQ". Case closed on that accusation as well.

To make matters worse, he takes his case to Shin Seung Il of the Hallyu Strategy Team, and provokes the following response from him: "The popularity of Hallyu will quickly die out if they continue to present distorted information and promote a negative image of Korea. It's important to create new things, but it's more important to properly inform what is already present." I agree, if distorted information is put out there, it could promote a negative image of Korea. I agree, it's important to properly inform one's audience with whatever content is present. Unfortunately for Jang Kwan Seok (and the many others who feel the same way he does), if they have a problem with what we put up on our site, then they have a problem with what the Korean media and Korean netizens are doing themselves, because what we do is translate news that Korean writers publish. Just looking at the title of the Dong-a Daily News article, "'allkpop.com' holds 1 million users, spreads plastic surgery, sexual favors suspicions without any filters", makes this more of a relevant issue to us because it's an attempted shot against allkpop (which ends ironically with him shooting himself in the foot instead). In the end, if there is a problem, as Jang Kwan Seok proclaims, then instead of blaming allkpop, he is far more likely to find the problem in the mirror than searching for problems overseas.  After all, if all of his articles are as poorly researched, written, and reasoned as this one was, then he's the embodiment of the problem he's trying to pin on us.

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