With Eyes East

It’s time

Back by popular demand, “My Year in K-Pop: 2025” has actually been tricky to piece together. Damn that demand! Because I was anchored in this difficult year by Oh My Girl, I wanted to focus on their music in a special edition of the (theoretically) annual episode — a celebration, a thank-you. The plan was to count down their top five songs and, in between, introduce each member. The problem was twofold: one, a personal dissatisfaction with how I discuss idols, an issue I haven’t been able to resolve in six years in part because my enthusiasm had me barreling through any self-doubt. I may be reaching an age where other factors are competing with the enthusiasm, but whatever the case may be, I certainly can’t resolve this in the next few days, this episode being due before year’s end. Second, Oh My Girl is more complicated than I thought. I had two options: try to reconcile a celebratory episode with criticism, or do what I always do and ignore the problems.

First of all, there’s JinE, who left the group a little over a year after the 2015 debut. She had actually been hospitalized for extreme weight loss and diagnosed with anorexia. The segment I’d drafted was roughly what you’d expect, tut-tutting about our complicity as fans in pressuring idols to be thin. I guess it kind of rang hollow to me because I’d never really looked into JinE before. Either way, her dramatic exit from the industry was a reminder of how vulnerable these people are, and ultimately, how uninterested I am in ever criticizing them. And then there’s Mimi. In the end, for the still-upcoming podcast episode, I’d written about 2,000 words on the Oh My Girl members, and of that, I’ve adapted the Mimi segment into this post. I was perfectly willing to continue putting off this discussion, but then BD Wong said something at the start of the month and I’d just about had it. I also saw a video on Instagram where an East Asian woman described how deeply rooted K-pop is in hip-hop and Black culture, and I was like, “Oh, yeah.” The least we can do is not be racist.

I love Mimi. She’s a sunburst of energy, she’s a lot of fun, but I can’t deny: she makes me uncomfortable. I would charitably describe her whole vibe and aesthetic as appropriative. And cultural appropriation can be difficult to measure – South Korea has fairly unusual ideas about copyright, complicating matters – but as a starting point, I’d at least avoid taking from people who historically have had so much taken from them; Native Americans are a good example and, in this case, Black Americans, a sizable part of the hallyu audience. Only here have I seen accounts of burnout, of fans giving up their fandom, and I completely understand that. There’s only so much you’re gonna “put up with” in what’s supposed to be entertainment. By the way, these fans do this without first imposing what their vision of the thing should be, just as a side note. And the irony is, it should be different, it should be better. Sign some Change.org petitions just like the gamer bros and the Star Wars guys.

In April of this year, Tabby Kibugi wrote a piece in Teen Vogue covering the history of racist incidents – or at least, a dizzying many of them – and she puts it succinctly: “Loving K-pop has meant balancing joy and erosion — the thrill of the music against the heartbreak of watching the industry exploit Blackness while fans like me carry the weight.” And maybe you don’t always agree with each claim of appropriation or racism, or feel like “It’s not that bad,” or that it’s an attack, even, and sometimes I understand that, too. As alluded to above, idols are under attack all the time. I don’t want this to be guided by perfect victimhood; in other words, we don’t have to agree with every case. Instead, I want to focus on what’s at stake. We’re always trying to get white people to watch movies with subtitles, to try this spicy food, to sometimes frustrating results, but stuff like that has never been an issue for blerds. The acceptance we seek has always been there, so the least we can do is reciprocate.

We can trace this to the primordial example, of the RZA identifying with the struggle against the Manchu in Shaw Brothers movies, and that cultural connection, that identification of something universal, across the divisions of race and geography and history, it’s really beautiful. And so, there’s always been something beautiful about Black fandom. Turning people away from K-pop, from what they loved, is the direct inverse. It’s a profound failure. So, again, I love Mimi, but I wish she would read up on Awkwafina at least, and I wish we could communicate to her that she has a lovely singing voice and doesn’t always have to be the rapper. I didn’t even recognize her on “Who Comes Who Knows,” because she’s so often typecast. This is actually something that Jennie talked about in 2023. So, if you like Mimi, too, be sure to check out that song, because even if it doesn’t capture Mimi’s foremost talent, it’s a good showcase of what she can do.