#it's that Bang Sihyuk has perfected his control over the largest kpop fandom

[beautifulpersonpeach]

BTW BPP, what did you think of those HYBE internal documents AKA the HYBE Burn Book? I get market research but some of what was in there seemed to go way beyond that. They talked about idols in such a dehumanizing way and some of the included info didn't even seem particularly relevant.

I could never figure out entirely what I thought of it because you had 95% of ARMYs wanting to brush it off as simple market research and then on the opposite end kpop stans who wanted to use it to paint HYBE as the worst, most evil, immoral company to ever exist that sabotaged every other artist, caused the downfall of xyz group and used fraud tactics for all of their own artists whose achievements were now invalid.

Allegedly it was the weverse magazine former editor-in-chief who was compiling and putting all of this together too? Which makes me think back on a lot of the criticism for that magazine that has already been discussed. I'm not exactly sure how involved that person was with some of those articles though.

On another note, I was pretty uncomfortable seeing them mention PJMs causing ARMYs to resent Jimin. It was something I watched happen in real time but it was something else to see the company directly take note of it. I'm curious how exactly they were planning on dealing with that too... The parts on Jungkook were also really weird, but I think they were parroting what antis said about him and disagreeing with it, but the whole thing got really tangled up with all the various interpretations and translations and I just gave up on following it.

I just hope the BTS members are watching all this dirt on HYBE being leaked and taking it into consideration when deciding on who they trust and how they want to operate going forward. But I’m sure they already know all that way better than I do. While I'm on that, I hope that at least Namjoon read that whole New Yorker article where BangPD called himself the king of kpop 🙄 it felt pretty disrespectful to BTS in parts ngl, but I know they know BangPD way better than I do so I'm not trying to jump too hard onto the solo/manti hate train for him even if I'm definitely not a fan of him or the people he keeps around at all (I'm still not a fan of MHJ either but I can really sympathize when I think about the kind of men who seem to run so much of HYBE and how they seem to really be holding that company back).

Anyways sorry about the rambling, I was just curious if you had any thoughts or random takeaways from those internal documents.

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(I ramble.)

Min Heejin had talked about those internal documents since her first whistleblower complaint against HYBE in March 2024. It was one of several issues she found problematic about HYBE's senior management that made her want even more independence from Bang Sihyuk's influence within the company, and like I've said before, I came to be sympathetic towards MHJ after reading her initial whistleblower report.

The existence of those documents have been public since April 2024 and known to anybody actually listening to Min Heejin and/or who understands Korean. The fact it was only after the National Assembly mentioned those reports and excerpts were released, that most other k-pop fandoms became aware of it, shows just how poorly international fans are following this dispute and also how tightly HYBE stans mostly control the narrative around NewJeans and MHJ in international fandom spaces.

You're right that the reactions to those reports both for and against HYBE were predictably extreme, but the fact is those documents are, plainly speaking, bad news. There's market research and then there's whatever the fuck those reports are - because while all k-pop agencies seem to monitor fan chatter around their groups, the HYBE reports show the extent to which HYBE in particular runs more like a well-capitalized psych-op machine, regularly making infinitesimal tweaks to reverse-engineer heightened emotional responses in the fandoms they have access to.

It was Kang Myeong-seok (Weverse's former EIC) who was the fall-guy after the backlash, but the reality is those documents reflect Bang Sihyuk's personal approach to fandom/group management more than anything else. This shouldn't be news because if you've been paying attention, you'd notice he's always put a priority on tapping fandom sentiment with impressive proficiency, since long before HYBE existed. For example, Bang Sihyuk has explicitly stated that since BTS was formed, BigHit will never debut a girl group because he wants to create a moat of perceived exclusivity (read 'assurance') for BTS's predominantly female fandom. If there's anything that tells you how cynically (or some would say pragmatically) he views the fandom, this is it.

That k-pop fans often see their idols as romantic placeholders is well known, but no other k-pop CEO has gone as far as Bang Sihyuk has in reinforcing that perception using the very structure of his company. He literally acquired another agency (Source Music) to develop his girl-groups rather than encroach on ARMY's personal fan space. I suspect the only reason BTS doesn't take their fan service further than they already do, is because of the limits the members personally set. Left to Bang Sihyuk, I highly doubt there is any limit too far, any detail too personal, to marshal towards creating ever more dedicated fandoms and ever more appealing products (aka idols). This is an opinion I've had about Bang Sihyuk for years.

This brings me to your point about the agency of BTS members in this mess. None of the guys are babies - I believe they are aware of those weekly internal reports and choose what to care about, and are also aware that HYBE's solvency, in very literal terms, depends on the members being content with the company. Despite the nonsense in those reports, BTS has a special status in the company, and I'd be disappointed if by now they didn't understand who Bang Sihyuk is, as well as their own positions in this power dynamic. Those reports are much more problematic for groups with smaller influence in the company, such as NewJeans.

At the end of the day, BTS are getting enough of what they want from HYBE and appear to maintain their trust in and allegiance to each other more than they do to anybody from HYBE, including Bang Sihyuk. And that's enough to tell me those reports have no real impact on the members.

For most of the fandom though, it's a different story.