[OP-ED This post reflects the opinions of the author and not those of allkpop.]

Seungri, who is the maknae of none other than Big Bang, is currently being mistreated and disrespected while he is on his final solo tour before he enlists. In this article, I hope to bring up points as to what has happened to make me and other fans think so, why I think Seungri deserves better from YG.

Firstly, I think the point that really caught people’s attention would be the fact that Seungri admitted that Yang Hyun Suk didn’t give him any backup dancers and told him to perform alone for his current solo concert since he was ‘The Great Seungri’. It was also revealed shortly after that all of his stylists were sent to work with Black Pink instead, leaving him with no stylist, no band and only 2 backup dancers. At this, many people were already extremely upset and angry that Seungri, as a senior artist was being so disrespected and mistreated by his own entertainment label. To add on, Seungri mentioned how YG called him while he was on tour and mentioned how he didn’t even know Seungri was on tour. This again is atrocious as he didn’t even bother to care about the whereabouts of an idol who he is supposed to be managing. Seungri, who was one of the 5 members of Big Bang has been YG’s cash cow and part of one of the biggest K-pop boy groups of the past decade, and many fans find it ridiculous that YG could treat Seungri like this now that his other members are serving their military service. Big Bang was one of the groups that practically put YG on the map as one of the Big 3 Entertainment companies and yet Seungri is not being treated the way he should as a top tier idol in K-pop.

Next, after news that he was left with minimal backup dancers and stylists to perform on his own, many fans trended #Seungrideservesbetter worldwide and spammed Yang Hyun Suk’s Instagram with comments to tell him to respect Seungri. Because of this, Yang Hyun Suk reportedly made Seungri apologize in an Instagram post. Seungri, in the end, posted a message saying "I'll put an end to the controversy. I'm sorry for everything. I wanted to be funny, and I think I went a bit overboard." After this, Seungri also mentioned in another one of his shows about how he would have to wait for his turn to use the recording booth, and he acted out how he would have to wait for everyone in the company to be done before he had a chance. This referred to not only Black Pink, WINNER, and iKON which are junior groups that have already debuted but also trainee groups that have not even debuted. Once again, everyone was so angry at this revelation because Seungri was not given the basic respect that a senior artist should be getting.

The only thing worth giving credit to Yang Hyun Suk for would be the fact he spoke up about the Seungri ‘Burning Club’ scandal, helping to explain the situation when the controversy was being blown up. In his statement, he explained where Seungri was at the time of the incident, how Seungri was apologetic for the trouble but how he was asked not to say anything till the investigation was complete and how Seungri was tested for drugs but the results came back negative. The conclusion of the burning sun scandal was that Seungri is not actually involved in the situation but he is associated to the whole situation due to his name being tied to the club by association since he is an investor. (For people who are unsure of the full story)The full explanation of the burning sun scandal can be found here.

After all of this that happened to Seungri, with the scandal he is involved in putting an additional strain to his reputation, his ticket sales for his solo concert have been affected. Due to the 'Burning sun' scandal, fans have even gone as far as to sell away their tickets to boycott Seungri, even though it has been proven that he was not directly involved. This, plus the lack of promotions that Seungri has had for his shows, has to lead to lower ticket sales than expected. Fans were outraged at how little to no promotions were done to promote his tour to the other Southeast Asian countries. In Manila, VIPS had to come up with money from their own pockets to fund advertisements for Seungri on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Fans also were the ones who requested for local news sites to feature Seungri and his upcoming concert details on their websites since he was getting the bare minimal amount of promotions. Also, apparently the news of his concert was only released barely about a month from the date of his actual performance, resulting in many fans being outraged at how little time they had to get the word out. Seungri has been working extremely hard for his final few stages before he enlists for the next two years and yet his efforts are going to waste because there are no promotions for his concert and he is also given so little support for his concert, with little to no stylists and dancers.

In Singapore, Seungri’s concert will be happening on February 23 and he will be offering an individual photo session with 50 people who purchase his cat 1 tickets and a group photo session in groups of 10 with 50 people who purchase his cat 2 tickets. This is an amazing deal and when I heard of it I was honestly shocked to realize that the tickets for both categories were still not selling out. It is 10 days to the concert and yet the tickets for both categories are still not sold out. Seungri is performing in a 5,000 seat arena and yet all the categories are still available. Being a fan in Singapore, I really tried to figure out how this could be possible because Big Bang is so famous here and when G-Dragon came to Singapore in 2017, he sold out 2 nights at 7,500 seat arenas, it doesn’t make sense that Seungri’s tickets are selling so badly. But that is when I did some research and found out that there is a severe lack of promotions for him resulting in many people not even knowing he was coming. At this point, there is no coverage about him coming, much less the fan benefits he was offering for his concert.

What I am writing this article for is to call for attention to be placed on Seungri because he didn’t work so hard for his efforts to go to waste. Big Bang is an amazing band that succeeded because of every single one of their members, every one of them shines brightly in Big Bang. Just because 4 of the members have enlisted, please still remember to support Seungri and give him the love he deserves. Seungri still has the last few legs of his concert to go and there are still tickets available. Singapore concert tickets can be purchased here, Japan tickets can be bought here and here and pricing and information for his Jakarta tickets can be found here. I hope Seungri’s tour is a successful one before he enlists because that is only what he deserves!