Did Exo and Red Velvet’s K-pop bullying and cheating scandals cause SM Entertainment to rush new girl group Aespa’s debut?
The South Korean agency behind star K-pop groups Exo, NCT, Shinee, Super Junior and Girls’ Generation faces calls for a boycott from fans over its low pay to artists and links to China’s controversial iFlyTek tech company
After a glamorous debut, SM Entertainment’s newest girl group Aespa is getting a huge amount of attention and rapidly collecting followers – but as is too-often the case, this is balanced by a side order of controversy.
SM recently announced discussions were under way with China’s partly state-owned AI company iFlyTek, which has been sanctioned by the US for allegedly using its technology to aid in the mass oppression of Uygurs in Xinjiang. Many fans are criticising the agency behind hit groups like Exo, NCT and Red Velvet – and a call to boycott SM went viral on Twitter a week before Aespa’s debut.
SM Entertainment’s ethical track record
The hashtag #BoycottSM went viral on Twitter from November 10, the same day that SM Entertainment announced the possibility of a joint business venture with iFlyTek. The Chinese company supplies technology to the police in the Xinjiang region where at least one million people from the Muslim Uygur community are thought to be interred in mass re-education camps. Across the province, Uygurs are unable to practice their religion or travel freely, and its widely reported that children are often separated from their parents and placed in re-education schools, while women become the subject of forced sterilisation.
Many fans of SM Entertainment and Aespa don’t want to see their heroes in any way connected to this mass oppression. Fans have been posting on Twitter with the hashtag of #BoycottSM since the announcement, but there’s been no comment as of yet from the entertainment company.
SM has been called out before