It's OK To Be Late To The K-Pop News Train

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For good or for ill, there are several pillars to the K-Pop industry. Just as K-Pop artists have multiple areas of talent, from singing to dancing to visual presentation and more, the industry has a few reliable tenets that it can be counted on.

One of these is mass consumption. Whether it's for streaming tracks over and over again to top the K-Pop charts, purchases of albums (4.3 million pre-orders? No sweat, says boy group SEVENTEEN), and watching every piece of related media when it comes to favorites, fans in the K-Pop industry have always been about running the numbers up. And the K-Pop industry, with commonly-known practices of lottery-based fansigns based on album buys, randomly shuffled and assigned photocards, and chart-and-vote-driven music shows, is all too happy to encourage the behavior.

The corollary to the merchandise and media consumption in the industry is the consumption of news stories. I've been following K-pop for over a decade now, and if there's one thing I can count on, it's the fact that some K-pop fans are as quick to react to and consume news about the industry as they are to click the buy button on their favorite group's merchandise or albums. Social media has of course amplified this "Need for Speed" consumption by incentivizing the endorphin rush that comes from posting something A)fast, B)boosted, and many times C)controversial. Hot take that's also hot off the presses? Better post it quick so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of people jockeying for position to get their opinions into the K-pop ether.

The problem is that the pressure to get an opinion about K-pop news out quickly means that critical thought and verifying information before posting is often lost, resulting in some messy (and sometimes awkward) subsequent conversations. Take the recent BTS Suga DUI incident, in which police stopped him after operating an electric scooter down a street while intoxicated. Initial reaction, which included a news report and apparent CCTV video from South Korean news outlet JTBC, was pretty critical, seeing an apology about the circumstances to have been a dishonest lie. Yet when the footage acquired from JTBC was found to be inaccurate, and new CCTV footage validated the accounts submitted by both Suga and HYBE, the tide turned.

Granted, this was a slight outlier given the fact that well-known Korean news outlets were involved, but it also highlights the idea that even the news media isn't immune to the improper tendency to report and react to news fast rather than accurately. This is by far not the first time we're seeing this kind of ping-pong response to news in the industry - take the ongoing saga between K-Pop juggernaut HYBE, its subsidiary label ADOR (home to breakout girl group NewJeans) and their (now former) CEO Min Hee Jin, or last year's mess that took a massively viral hit such as FIFTY FIFTY's "Cupid" into a downward spiral that has the company and former members currently suing each other. Long sagas such as these are filled with a bevy of overspeculation couched as fact, misinformation, and signal-boosted wildness with very little researched or sourced proof to support opinions. In short, it's a mess - but it doesn't have to be that way.

Breaking: Taeil Leaves NCT Following Sexual Offense Allegations | Soompi

Taeil has been accused of a sexual offense and will be leaving NCT. On August 28, SM Entertainment issued the following statement: This is SM

SoompiMLim

Waiting to come to an opinion about something that is well-informed might seem to run counter to K-Pop fan culture, but I've always found it to be the superior course of action. You come armed not with speculation, not with opinion that might be poisoned by the well of potential social media hot takes, but with facts, figures, and verified knowledge. Doing your research and/or waiting and seeing has sometimes been seen as dithering or being non-commital, when really it's simply being careful with what you know and can see. There's a reason that in the old tale of the Tortoise and the Hare, the slow and steady Tortoise is ultimately the winner - being overconfidently fast is not superior to being steadily slow and ponderous, especially in today's online world.

That's why English language K-pop sites like Soompi, while slower to the draw than others within their sphere of competition, are sites I respect more because they take the time to source, validate, and be accurate with their news. The most recent revelation that NCT's Taeil has been accused in a criminal case regarding sexual offenses is as of this writing limited, on Soompi, to the official statement from SM Entertainment, and does not include the avalanche of unverified information that's currently running through some channels. And that's how it should be, especially with a potential victim or god forbid victims (the most important people here, honestly) to think about and legal actions to pursue.

Being fashionably late to the K-pop news party not only makes you look better in the long run, but avoids a ton of unnecessary arguments and awkward apologies later on, and I do hope that fans, despite what the industry tries to get them to do most of the time, try to take that to heart moving forward. Time will tell - but taking that time is what needs to happen.

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