Government guidelines aimed at promoting more diversity in South Korea’s K-pop world have been withdrawn after critics said they amounted to state censorship of a booming industry.
“The problem of ... uniformity among singers is serious,” the guidelines issued last week said, adding that most idols are thin and wear identical makeup and skimpy outfits.
South Korea’s K-pop world is a multi-billion-dollar business, but so is the plastic surgery industry in the image-obsessed country, and tens of thousands of people go under the knife every year in pursuit of the perfect look.
The guidelines from the South Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family drew criticism online — and also from a lawmaker who said it was reminiscent of censorship during the nation’s authoritarian period, which ended in the 1980s.
Demanding the state apologizes, Legislator Ha Tae-keung said that the guidelines were a “totalitarian and unconstitutional idea.”
Until the late 1980s, censorship permeated every part of South Korean society and the state controlled everything from what could be screened on TV to the length of a man’s hair.
“It is truly surprising that South Korea is doing what communist dictatorships, like China and North Korea, would consider doing,” one online critic said.
The ministry on Tuesday said it would withdraw the recommendation after it had “caused unnecessary confusion.”
However, it added that it had neither the intention nor authority to control TV production and it had simply tried to “prevent media, which has big influence on people’s daily life, from undermining human rights or fostering discrimination unintentionally.”
Critics say the narrow concept of beauty promoted by South Korean celebrities pushes many to go under the knife. In 2017, all four members of K-pop band SixBomb went through extensive plastic surgery, from nose jobs to breast implants, before releasing a single.
A series of videos showed the four women visiting a clinic, strutting into an operating theater and lying on the operating table.
In a survey of teenagers last year, nearly 70 percent said that the idea of trying to become a celebrity in the entertainment industry had crossed their mind.
In the guidelines, the ministry alluded to the impact TV celebrities have on young people.
“Overt concerns for how one should look on TV has a negative impact not only on adults, but also on teenagers and children,” it said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion