LE SSERAFIM, as the first girl group at HYBE, naturally attracts much attention. Members include Miyazaki Misaki, Kim Cai-won, Heo Yoon-jin, Kazuba Nakamura, Garam, eunchae, and from the 4th of this month, individual and group preview photos will be released for seven consecutive days. However, during this period, many problems have been caused, members of the bullying, clothing exposure, objectification of women, trailer plagiarism, pirated props, group photos PS errors and omissions, quickly set off the discussion of netizens, can not believe that this is the level of South Korea's top entertainment companies.
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The controversy over photos and videos on the Korean website mainly focuses on the following two aspects:
# Sexual innuendo, including widespread exposure of the clothing of two underage members
In the trailer "CASTING CALL", the members first appeared in street sports costumes, but after entering the audition room, they all changed into sexy short skirts, and posed in various poses to show their bodies, and even appeared to show only the figure.
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The more serious problem is that there are two minors born in 2005 and 06 (Garam and Eunchae), and their dress is the same as the other members, with large areas of bare skin.
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Later on the 10th, someone on the Korean network reprinted the views of some HYBE employees on the preview of the new girl group. Some employees revealed that many employees of the same company think that the style of the trailer is outdated, and many people have a negative attitude towards both female employees and male employees. Even the business group (especially the female staff) collectively expressed concerns to the top management and tried to block the relevant projects, but in the end it failed.
South Korean netizens have expressed dissatisfaction with this kind of behavior of "making female love bean planning but not listening to the opinions of female employees", and it is not surprising that HYBE's works will be so "male gaze". According to data from June 2021, hybe's seven directors are all men; 59.3% of the company's 470 employees are women, but only 3 are female executives; and the average annual salary of female employees is only 49 million won, which is far lower than the average of male employees (78 million won).
# Poor production quality (post-production and prop problems)
There were several post-P-chart issues in the first edition of group photos uploaded by HYBE zero. Although the staff has urgently revised and re-uploaded, the shoddy and the group photos of the members without "group souls" have been criticized.
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In addition, some sharp-eyed netizens found that the Nintendo game console (NDS) of the trailer member Miyazaki Misana used a pirated game cartridge.
The outside of the genuine game card is smooth, while the outside of the pirated game card has a distinctly sunken card slot.
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Based on the above two reasons, coupled with the "school bullying" and "plagiarism" controversy of members in the past few days, LE SSERAFIM continues to be mired in negative public opinion. Will the company make adjustments based on public opinion? Will the continuous negative controversy affect the debut of the members? I believe this is the thing that the media and fans are most concerned about. The new girl group is expected to debut in May, and it seems that there is not much time left for HYBE to deal with.
Addition: "Plagiarism" controversy – The Jin Caiyuan trailer has several similarities with the Rolling Stones' "Ride 'em on down" MV, with gas station dancing, blue tongues and lollipops, background music, causing plagiarism doubts.