TWICE star snaps over fans' up-close photos
Chaeyoung passes through a crowd as some of them were trying to photograph her. / Courtesy of online community
By Ko Dong-hwan
Eager fans have irritated K-pop girl band TWICE member Chaeyoung because of their “uncomfortable” attention while trying to photograph her.
Chaeyoung, from Korea, looked distressed in online photos posted Wednesday as she passed through a crowd.
They show some men taking her picture from front and behind. One is so close that his right arm almost rests on the star’s shoulder while the long lens of his camera is only inches from her face.
Netizens said the fans went overboard. Their comments included: “If they were fans, they should not have embarrassed the star by photographing her in front of her nose without agreement” and “TWICE fans have gone out of control lately.”
Photography is a new trend among groupies. They buy expensive, high-functioning cameras to take pictures of their favorite stars and post them on blogs. Photos of stars at airports, concert rehearsals or on the streets in ultra-high resolution are rare elsewhere.
Some netizens, known as a “homepage master,” or “hom-ma” in Korean, use the photos to make calendars, photo albums, T-shirts, cheering props, character dolls and even underwear. They sell the goods on their homepage or SNS. But some hom-ma are targets of entertainment agencies that regard fan goods as a violation of the stars' copyright.