Nancy faked BBC invitation, Wonder Girl goes solo
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By Kim Tong-hyung
Here’s your midweek update on the stories in entertainment and media you might have missed while reading about Park Geun-hye bringing back the 70s, the millionth chapter to the A-Rod saga, or because your life is a lot more fulfilling than ours.
Why are we lionizing the wrong death?
Sung Jae-gi, who leaped to his death from a Han River bridge in one of the most depressing fund-raising attempts ever witnessed, has been influencing more people posthumously than he ever did running the anti-feminist group, ``Man of Korea.’’ We are all worse off because of it.
Since his funeral last week, the Internet has been overflowing with commentary attempting to elevate Sung to the status of martyrdom. He has been compared to Jeon Tae-il, the 22-year-old factory worker who died in 1970 after setting himself on fire to protest against the inhumane working conditions of those times.
Sung’s supporters are also twisting logic to blame his death on the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which was the windmill to Sung’s Don Quixote. Online message boards are bombarded with calls for the Park Geun-hye government to abolish the ministry, despite all indicators showing that this country has the harshest gender apartheid among rich nations.
No, this is not an attempt to argue that Sung’s death ― converted into a national spectacle by the 24/7 media and Twitter ― wasn’t tragic, because it was, but tragic in a drunk-driver-got-killed sort of way.
In a bizarre misjudgment, Sung thought he would survive the jump ― a stunt he arranged to attract 100 million won (about $90,000) in donations for his financially-crippled group ― and attend a barbeque party later. Can we not put him in the same sentence with Jeon, please?
While it seems to be a non-optional social convention to lionize a famous person in death, to say that Sung backed a noble cause when he lived runs against the limits of acceptability.
Man of Korea has consistently been a source of in-your-face misogyny, maintaining a clumsy argument that Korea men are suffering from "reverse discrimination’’ because of the efforts to reduce gender inequality and cultural disdain for women. Their brand of sexism has often been brutal and violent, such as the time they backed a rapist in a rape case at Korea University.
The group’s rants coupled with Sung’s self-inflicted death are depressing because it makes us wonder whether society has driven everyone slightly insane. It’s also sad and stupid that hate speech has enforced a real debate on the Gender Equality Ministry.
Nancy Lang fakes BBC invitation
Nancy Lang
Nancy Lang, the scantily-clad pop artist known more for her eccentricities than whatever she does with paper and paint, said in April that she had been invited by the BBC for an art event in May.
Byun Hee-jae, the bug-eyed conservative pundit who doubles as her Twitter nemesis, jumped on the announcement and said that the invitation seemed bogus.
Lang wasn’t in Britain the following month. She explained to the left-leaning Hankyoreh Newspaper that the BBC canceled her appearance because of anti-campaigning by the online supporters of Byun.
It somehow took until last week for the newspaper to admit it had erred in the fact-checking process: the BBC never invited Lang to the make-believe art event in the first place.
The regular readers of this column ― both of you ― will know we hadn’t been exactly kind to Byun, a man who was caught in a dual battle with imaginary communists and his own sanity, who makes it his job to troll famous people on Twitter. But on this particular occasion, Byun, sigh, was right. And Lang continues to be weird.
Former Wonder Girls member goes solo
Sunmi
In K-pop news, Sunmi, formerly a member of the girl band Wonder Girls, will make her solo debut later this month, according to her management company, JYP.
She could only wish her solo career will be half as successful as that of Lee Hyo-ri, the singer who has been the country’s leading sex symbol for the first part of the 21st century. Lee is now in a relationship with musician Lee Sang-soon and complained on Twitter on Monday that journalists are bothering his parents too often for interviews.
MBC television is considering sending the members of its popular show ``Real Men,’’ which puts a group of male entertainers through military boot camp and draws laughs from their adventures and misadventures, for filming in overseas warzones. That would be primetime television in a country that continues to have a disturbing habit of romanticizing military culture.