Wen Xu Tuzhi
South Korean actress Kim Mi-so died at the age of 29. Originally not famous, her obituary appeared in the headline on the right side of the home page of the US CNN website on January 7, 2022. She starred in the South Korean TV series "Snowdrop Flower", which is being broadcast to a global audience on the Disney network platform.
In the play, the supporting role of Kim Mi-so plays a 1987 Korean history college student, who is now the roommate of the heroine played by Ji-so, a member of the girl group Blackpink, who is now popular all over the world. She loves to read banned books disguised as comic book covers.
The 16-episode, 80-minute Episode-long Korean drama is being wildly criticized by South Korean netizens for "distorting history." This witch-hunting critique may be the murderer who pushed Kim Mi-so to death.
The death of an unknown South Korean actor shocked the nation
The news of Kim Mi-so's death was announced on January 5 by her entertainment company. The news of her death only said that she died at home in the early morning, and the family hoped that the media would not speculate about the cause of death, and the funeral would be held in private. She was filming another Disney-funded Korean drama before she died, and it is reasonable to say that she will not die of sudden accidents or illnesses at home, so it is only possible to commit suicide. This is probably the reason why the family is reluctant to disclose it.
Kim Mi-so, born in 1992, has graduated from university for nearly 9 years and is not outstanding in appearance. She has mainly starred in some stage plays before entering the film and television industry in recent years, mostly playing inconspicuous small roles that rank low in the credits. Although Kim Mi-so made her face in Netflix's original Korean dramas "Health Doctor Ahn Eun Young" and "Hell" in 2019 and 2020, not many viewers have an impression of her.
Kim Mi-so, who has few roles, is unlikely to commit suicide due to overwork like Lee Han-kwang, the deputy director of the 2016 Korean drama "Alone Drinking Men and Women". Although it is also a supporting role in "Snowdrop Flower", because she lives with the heroine, there are many opportunities to be exposed in the play. Compared with the other three roommates who are good at dressing up in appearance, her maverick personality, words and deeds, and even the image of a schoolboy wearing glasses are more attractive to the audience.
Undoubtedly, "Snowdrops" is a great opportunity for her to become famous. The other two roommates in the play are her classmates, and although they debuted later than her, they have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media Instagram. Unfortunately, this starry dream was destroyed with her death. After her death, netizens didn't even know if she had an Instagram account.
What puts great pressure on actor Kim Mi-so is the netizens' repeated accusations of "distorting history" in "Snowdrop Flower". In March 2021, the drama is being filmed, and some people only rely on a few plot summaries circulating on the Internet to insist that it distorts the history of Democratization in South Korea, beautifies the villain's security planning department, and hurts the feelings of victims of related historical events...
A total of 220,000 people signed a petition website at the Presidential Palace' Blue House, demanding that filming stop. JTBC TV, the producer of the TV series, twice issued a statement saying that netizens were worried. After the Blue House responded that it would not interfere with the freedom of TV drama creation, the storm gradually subsided.
Unexpectedly, on December 18, 2021, more than half a year later, when the drama that had been filmed was officially broadcast, the online petition to resist "distorting history" was staged again. Some netizens even said that the show was broadcast to the world through the Disney+ platform, which would make foreign audiences misunderstand Korean history. Someone also applied to the court to stop the show.
The TV station's response this time was much tougher, and it was scheduled to broadcast one more episode in the second week than before, that is, three consecutive episodes to let the audience fully understand the plot as soon as possible. The TV station also sent lawyers' letters to various online communities, saying that it would deal with relevant false statements through legal channels. The court also rejected the application for suspension.
Nearly half of the show aired, and while its influence and topicality occupied the top spot in the list of Korean TV dramas and comprehensive programs in the past two weeks, the ratings were wobbly. Is this a battle for South Koreans to defend their historical memory, or a farce of populist oppression of creative space?
What does history really mean for Koreans?
"Snowdrops" is not the first Korean drama to spark a controversy over "distorting history." On the same day as the first online petition against it, the korean costume Korean drama "North Korean Exorcist", which had just aired two episodes, announced that the whole drama would be cut off and would no longer be broadcast. The 36 billion-won TV series was produced in a shoot-and-broadcast mode and was originally planned to air 16 episodes.
It is based on the struggle of people and the "devil" during the Joseon Dynasty in the 15th century. Due to the scenes of the third generation of king Taejong Lee Fong-won ordering the massacre of the people and entertaining visiting Western missionaries with mooncakes, peeled eggs and other foods, netizens accused them of distorting the ancient history of Korea.
SBS TV responded: Mooncakes appeared in the then Uiju (now Sinuiju area of North Korea), which is close to the border between China and North Korea, and it is natural that there will be such Chinese food; as for historical figures, they will all be changed to fictional characters from the third episode onwards. Netizens did not buy it, and nearly 250,000 people ran to the Blue House website to petition, forcing advertisers to cancel sponsorships. The TV station had to shed tears.
The actors also suffered from innocence, and even supporting characters like QinCeloid not only had to delete all relevant stills on Instagram, but also had to issue a handwritten apology statement, saying that she would be more cautious in choosing the script in the future, so as not to repeat the mistake of "distorting history". Two months later, she played a female college student role similar to Kim Mi-so's role in "Snowdrop Flower" in the Korean drama "Youth in May". With her outstanding performance in this love drama set in the early 1980s, she won the 2021 KBS TV Korean Drama Best Supporting Actress Award at the end of the year, and "atonement for her sins" was forgiven by netizens.
It is likely that in order to "correct the history of audiovisuality", KBS began to broadcast the historical drama "Taizong Li Fangyuan" on December 11, 2021, and twice introduced it on the station's historical talk show "That Day in History". This is a "disinfection" of the "distorted history" caused by the Korean Exorcist.
Kim Mi-so's role in Snowdrop Flower.
What does history really mean for Koreans? Still take Korean dramas as an example, historical dramas are one of the three major genres with the largest number of Korean dramas, and the rest are love dramas and family dramas. From the perspective of pragmatism, Korean history is a compulsory subject in all kinds of korean civil service examinations.
Kim Mi-so's father was a Korean history teacher who worked at a number of cram schools that existed for civil servants. After his daughter's untimely death, his Instagram account was noticed by the media, and there were many posts cheering up the film and television dramas in which his daughter participated. The account has not been updated since June 2021. At that time, the first online petition to criticize "Snowdrop Flower" had just subsided. Works that bring a turning point to my daughter's career are put on the big hat of "distorting history", and I wonder how this father, who is a history teacher, will feel?
It is not history in the first place, so how can we distort history?
Did Snowdrops distort history? First of all, it is not a historical drama at all, but a romance drama based on a manned romance between a man and a woman under the conspiracy of the North and South Authorities on the eve of the South Korean presidential election in December 1987. That election was a major historical event, but the names of the people in the play were all fictional, and the partnership between the authorities of the North and the South was also a conspiracy theory written by the screenwriter. In 1987, although China had diplomatic relations with the DPRK, it had not yet established diplomatic relations with the ROK, so how to arrange the talks between the two sides?
People familiar with that history can see at a glance that the bald man "Code One" (the number one chief) with only side shots in the play alludes to the then president, Chun Doo-hwan. He and a group of military subordinates celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of the "One Heart Society" (alluding to the "One Heart Society"), which was like a triad organization meeting. When the show began, Chun Doo-hwan had passed away, but his family and many members of the YixinHui were still alive, and they did not accuse the show of defamation and ugliness, and it was a nosy matter for netizens to propose "distorting history".
Although the background of the story is 1987, it is the presidential election in the second half of the year, not the June protests in the first half of the year. Netizens criticize the events of the second half of the year by taking the events of the first half of the year, which is basically the donkey's lips are not right for the horse's mouth. They were probably influenced by the 2017 hit movie "1987" and only had memories of the first half of that year and no second half in their minds.
However, thanks to the constitutional system brought about by the direct presidential election in South Korea in 1987, successive South Korean governments since then have only designated June 10 of each year as the anniversary of the protests, and instead ignored the direct elections that brought about political changes. This is also one of the backgrounds of the times that caused the historical fault, and the netizens who accuse the script of distorting history are really distorting history.
Secondly, some people say that the male protagonist in the "SnowDrop Flower" drama is a spy sent to South Korea by North Korea, and cannot accept such a character setting. This accusation is also a glass heart. In the past three decades, there have been many Korean movies and TV series with the theme of North and South Korean espionage and love, such as "Hidden and Great", "JSA Common Security Area", and even the 2020 hit "The Forced Landing of Love". It glorified North Korean soldiers, was once accused of violating South Korea's National Security Law, and was later dismissed.
Others accuse the end of the first episode of "Snowdrop Flower" of the youth protest song of that year as the "background music" when the male protagonist evades the pursuit, suggesting that he is disguised as a Korean student engaged in protest. Although the song "Green Pine Ah Green Pine" has become a representative song of the Korean struggle since 1987, the use of the song in the play is obviously authorized by the copyright owner, popular singer and songwriter Ahn Ji-hwan.
Historical controversy turns into a traffic war, and actors bear the brunt of it
This pressure based on false accusations was quickly applied to the actors in Snowdrop Flower. When netizens first petitioned to boycott, the male protagonist who played the North Korean spy and the male number two of the South Korean agent were even described as "Islamic State" terrorists and Nazis by the English posters made by the boycotters. They are not afraid to post stills, and in addition to the large number of fans, there will be a lot of negative comments and private messages.
On the first day of the second petition boycott, Snowdrop Flower topped the Korean version of Twitter's hot search list with 67,700 tweets (posts), followed by a "democratization campaign" of 23,500. The former is basically the fan's solidarity with the actors, especially Zhixiu, who is making a movie for the first time, and the latter is the reason why the petitioners oppose the show. The latter is only one-third of the former, but it is fierce.
For the non-famous actor Kim Mi-so, she does not have the support of a large company backstage and tens of millions of fans, and only one father silently retweets her. After the drama began to cause controversy, the only public solidarity was gone. By playing a demonstrator student that misinterprets or deliberately misinterprets the theme of the show, she may feel guilty and lose confidence in her future, and finally choose to say goodbye to this disappointing world.
In these two traffic wars, the Korean media and self-media big V, who usually published a lot of star activity promotion advertorials, found that the number of petitions against "SnowDrops" at this time was twice at the top of the Blue House Network Petition List, and they began to reprint these specious accusations, rarely verifying whether the script was really "distorting history".
When the first boycott came, before the series could be finished, some advertisers withdrew their scheduled sponsorships and publicly apologized to netizens. After the filming was officially broadcast, the wave of resistance from netizens became more fierce, and there was a petition from JTBC TELEVISION, which demanded the closure of filming and broadcasting of the show. After JTBC issued an official document to accuse it of false online rumors, there were still petitions to counter-accuse it.
There were not many concurrers of these two petitions, but this extreme idea was only realized when Chun Doo-hwan engaged in "speech unification and abolition" to rectify the media. In that year, the predecessor of JTBC, TBC, was shut down by the government. Unexpectedly, more than 40 years later, similar stories reappeared in the name of public opinion. This has caused advertisers, shooting agencies and brands that originally appeared at the end of the film to fall like snowflakes from the second episode. The merchant who really can't erase the name has removed the conspicuous logo in order to minimize the impact.
The stock price of the parent company of "SnowDrop Flower" fell in response, and the market value at one point evaporated by 100 billion won (about 550 million yuan), accounting for 11% of its total market value.
The publishing house touched the porcelain TV station and took revenge for selling books for marketing
In the wave of petition boycott, unlike many anonymous netizens, a famous Korean publishing house went shirtless. Ostensibly to uphold historical justice, it is actually an opportunity to market one's own books.
"Snowdrop Flower" had only a few dozen words on the Internet at the time, which mentioned that the heroine's name was "Yingcao". Lee Yeon-sil, editor-in-charge of literary village publishing houses that published the book "Sister Yingcao", tweeted that JTBC TV's "Snowdrop Flower" is "consumption history".
She explained that the protagonist of the non-fiction work "Sister Yingcao" is called Qian Yingcao, and her husband Zheng Wenhe was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, and died of nutritional disorders after being severely tortured. So, this "spy black comedy" insulted martyrs like him.
Jung Boon-ho was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1974 for his involvement in the "NWCA incident" against Park Chung-hee's government, and was released with amnesty a year later, and died in 1998 at the age of 47, slightly exaggerated by "untimely death". The tweet, released on March 27, 2021, also carried the label of "boycotting the writers, directors, and actors of "Snowdrop Flower", and has been retweeted nearly 10,000 times so far. In an interview, Lee said she was considering trying to deal with JTBC's "copyright infringement," though she did not see below.
Just because the heroine of the TV series has the same name as the heroine of the self-published book, it is too arbitrary to conclude that the former "consumes" the latter. Moreover, when the book was published in 2017, in order to promote marketing, celebrity testimonials were specially printed on the waist cover and back cover, including JTBC news director and anchor Sun Shixi.
He was named South Korea's most credible media personality for years in a row, and his reputation peaked in late 2016 after leading reporters to expose Choi Soon's hard work that led to Park Geun-hye's ouster. Sun Shixi is more able to drive the sales of books than other recommended writers and directors, so the book was reprinted 10 times in half a year.
Prior to this, the name "Qianyingcao" occasionally appeared on the media page for nearly 40 years, and her small circle of environmental protection and political movements was not familiar to the public. Even after the book was published, it was not a historical celebrity, after all, in the Internet age, the influence of non-celebrity biographies was far less than that of TV dramas starring stars.
In addition, the Text of Sun Shixi printed on the back cover of the book is actually his comment on the news of the retrial of the "Minqing Students' Federation" incident on April 5, 2017, and there is no and no mention of the book and the name of the protagonist, which was published a month later. It was not a "recommendation", and he agreed to include it in the book as nothing more than a gift to the publisher.
After 4 years, Sun Seok-hee is no longer an anchor, promoted to president of JTBC and concurrently the president of JTBC Studio, the production company of "Snowdrop Flower". The Literary Village Publishing House now encounters the PORCELAIN TV series, which seems to stand on the moral high ground, but in fact it will take revenge. Unfortunately, although former Minister of Justice Cao Guo also joined in the recommendation of the book, there were very few buyers who placed orders.
On December 29, 2021, a bus stop in Seoul's Mapo district posted posters of the TV series "Snowdrops" that were caught up in the protests.
The publisher's allegations are unreasonable and heartless. But considering the threatening power of this wave of resistance, JTBC said that it noticed the feelings of "Qianyingcao" and changed its name in the play. In the version that is now broadcast, "Yingcao" is renamed "Yinglu" (transliteration).
It is also said that the male protagonist of "Snowdrop Flower", who plays the North Korean spy, is called Hayashi Shou, and his prototype character is President Moon Jae-in's first secretary, Ren Jong-jin, because the two not only have the same surname (the Korean characters for the surname "Lin" and "Ren" are the same word), but also have a relationship with North Korea.
In his youth, Ren Jong-hyun assisted South Korean female college student Lin Xiuqing in visiting North Korea without authorization. This must be approved by the South Korean government or it is illegal. Ren Jong-sung, who now serves as chairman of the North-South Korea Economic and Cultural Cooperation Foundation and special assistant officer for foreign affairs and security, has not seen him publicly express dissatisfaction with the "innuendo" of the TV series.
Ratings are wobbly, TV stations are broken?
Due to the huge controversy and the popularity of the starring star, "Snowdrop Flower" has become the most topical Korean drama in South Korea since the end of 2021. Although it ranks first in the ratings of Disney + film and television works in many overseas countries and regions, the TV ratings in South Korea are ups and downs and ups and downs. The lowest rating was only 1.7%, and the highest was only 3.9%, and the stock price of the production company was also in resonance.
Perhaps in order to get rid of this dilemma of good and bad, the TV station decided to fight a battle. On December 30, 2021, JTBC's legal department issued an official document to major online communities in South Korea, warning netizens not to spread rumors and excessively personally attack the producers and actors. The official document has a total of 9 points, in addition to specifically refuting the "distortion of history" argument, but also specifically clarifying the three major rumors of the play "related to China".
First of all, although JTBC accepted a 100 billion won investment from Tencent Group on December 29, 2020, "Snowdrop Flower" is not a TV series produced with this Chinese capital. It determined the role of the actor as early as June 2020, the crew began to read the script on October 5 of the same year, and filming began on November 2, nearly two months earlier than signing a contract with Tencent.
Secondly, there is an episode where high-ranking officials and wives play mahjong together, but this has nothing to do with Chinese capital, not implantable marketing Chinese elements. Mahjong was introduced to Korea from China through Japan as early as the Joseon Dynasty. In the 1980s, it was popular to play mahjong in South Korea's legal and political circles. This is all historical, JTBC not only set up a data collector for this show, but also hired a special historical consultant.
Finally, is "Snowdrop Flower" a "Chinese mark"? JTBC said the snowdrop flower is a daffodil family of plants, included in the Recommended Name of the National Standard Plant Catalog of the National Arboretum of South Korea.
After refuting it, JTBC took the initiative. On January 3, 2022, the first working day in South Korea, President Moon Jae-in delivered a New Year's speech to the people in the morning. Although the New Year's speeches have been similar throughout the year, this year is the last year of his term and the year of the general election, so the attention is higher than ever. As a result, eight of South Korea's nine national television stations broadcast Moon's speech live, with the exception of JTBC, which rebroadcast episodes 6 and 7 of the TV series Snowdrop Flower.
Originally, major television stations, such as KBS and MBC, would generally broadcast the head of state's important speeches live to fulfill their obligations as public radio and television institutions. But other private television stations, especially the four cable stations JTBC, TV North Korea, Channel A and MBN that were opened during the Lee Myung-bak administration, have always been conservative in their routes. Therefore, their speeches to progressive President Moon Jae-in are not recorded, and it is up to the editorial board to judge whether they broadcast them or not.
Since Sun Shixi joined the JTBC News Department, the station has begun to take the middle-of-the-road progressive route on the basis of news facts. After Moon Jae-in replaced the conservative regime in 2017, the station ushered in a double peak in audience ratings and program praise, which also coincided with the overall progressive trend of Korean society at that time. In the past five years, JTBC has had a good relationship with the Moon Jae-in government and successfully obtained a channel license to renew its contract.
On December 29, 2021, in Seoul's Mapo district, trucks pulled screens to participate in protests, demanding that the TV series "Snowdrops" be stopped.
Moon Jae-in's political achievements are not outstanding, and the conservative trend of thought has rebounded. JTBC is seen by some as the "spokesperson" for the regime, and the ace news program Newsroom has fallen from the top ten in ratings. Several Taiwanese dramas broadcast in 2021 for the tenth anniversary of the opening of Taiwan, although starring big-name stars such as Lee Young-ai and Chi Zhenxi, are neither applauded nor popular, and do not return to the glory of "City in the Sky" in previous years.
"Snowdrop Flower" is the last Taiwanese drama in 2021, the choreographer is also from "Castle in the Sky", the main actor is from the front line and younger, which would have had a greater chance of ratings. The script's strategy of "winning by surprise" is met with the headwind of "resisting the distortion of history", which can be described as bad luck.
The New Year's maverick replay of "Snowdrop Flower" without broadcasting the president's speech seems to represent JTBC's cut with Moon Jae-in. After all, the latter only has a few months in office, and current polls show that the public is more inclined to "change the dynasty" - to elect the Conservative regime.
"Snowdrops" was broadcast in early February, when there was only one month left before the general election, and the attention of the people would be diverted. At that time, the Blue House will respond to the petition of netizens to stop broadcasting it according to the usual practice, and it is estimated that it will be gently put down as it was last time, and the broadcast will be finished anyway.
However, it is unknown whether some kind of warning or punishment will be given to JTBC in response to netizens' complaints to the Radio, Television and Communications Commission. Even if the second half of "Snowdrop Flower" can turn over salted fish, the wealthy JTBC TV station, the superstar with more than 50 million fans and its agency company have paid a heavy price.
So, did the South Korean netizens who launched this petition sniper win? not necessarily. The comments under the same portal related news do not approve of this populist outrage, but they do not go to petition.
In any case, if you do not want to see the self-censorship and self-limitation of Various Film and Television Producers in South Korea in the future, this "historical defense war" in the name of justice is worthy of good reflection and reflection on netizens. An innocent and nameless actor like Kim Mi-so paid the price of his life for this, lonely and helpless before he died, and mourned after death, which is too hypocritical and ironic.