Rosie Towler is a senior and the Unity Director for the Fishers Tiger Times. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper.
Ricky, a Chinese member of Zerobaseone, is being stood up for by fans on Twitter and other social media platforms due to a look inside the mistreatment of WakeOne, the company in charge of his group. While this certainly is not the first example of mistreatment we have seen in K-pop, it definitely will not be the last.
In K-pop, companies that are in charge of keeping a watchful eye on K-pop idols to keep their image have some pretty weird rules and somewhat borderline mistreatment or abuse. Ricky, for example, went live without telling a member of the company. This then prompted the staff member to tell Ricky to immediately turn off the live and go into a hallway, where he would be yelled at with phrases like “Do you understand me?” or “You did not tell us you started the live.” After Ricky’s live had been shut off, two other members of the group in the same room started a different live that captured Ricky getting scolded throughout the whole live.
This is not the first time K-pop fans have heard a manager of a K-pop group mistreat or yell at an idol. Around this time last year, SPIRE, a company that used to be in charge of taking care of the boy group Omegax, had gotten exposed for beating members and mistreating them. A video was shared from fans who were backstage hearing the whole thing happen. The video, though, allowed the members to bring up a lawsuit against the company, which all of OmegaX ended up winning and are now not part of the company.
While mistreatment towards idols by companies is not a new concept and has been going on for years in the K-pop industry, the internet has brought the true nature of this mistreatment to life. It is bad publicity for the companies repeatedly, and one would think that K-pop companies would get the hint and treat their idols nicely or at least not yell at them for, I do not know, going live without telling someone like they are a child?
