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gaymer-hag-stan · 2 years ago

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Daily reminder that while Hwayoung is in no way innocent and was actively an asshole to Core Contents Media staff members and playing coy about whether she was actually bullied or not, she is absolutely not the sole reason for T-ara's downfall and should not be painted as such.

I want to clarify some misconceptions people seem to have about the situation. At points I will be using other groups as reference points (NOT to pit them against T-ara) and also using my own opinions and speculation at certain points, which I will make clear to point out from the actual facts of the story.

For all intents and purposes, yes, Hwayoung is a nepo baby. Her father is rich and he was also friends with Kim Kwang-soo, the CEO of Core Contents Media, T-ara's old company (now known as MBK)

Hwayoung wanted to be an actress but Kim Kwang-soo thought it would be better to be part of an idol group to gain popularity first and then launch her own acting career easier. It is not unusual to use idol groups as a launching point for later solo music projects or acting so all makes sense up to here.

It should also be noted that T-ara had already worked hard to make a name for themselves. They released Bo Peep Bo Peep and Crazy Because of You, two massive hits that both sold over 3M digital copies and were on the rise to become one of the most popular groups of their generation. They faced fierce competition, having debuted alongside the likes of 2NE1, f(x), 4Minute and After School (2009 was such a strong year) and initially faced severe backlash for their debut performance of Lie. They even had to literally perform in the streets outside of malls during Bo Peep Bo Peep promotions to get people to listen to their song. The internet wasn't what it is now back days so they also couldn't rely on their fans spamming everyone online to listen to their songs or artificially increase views by watching the MV again and again.

So the original six girls had built a strong bond by training together (Jiyeon, Hyomin and Eunjung at least, Qri, Soyeon and Boram were kind of last-minute additions after Jiwon and Jiae quit) debuting and promoting together for a year and facing backlash and severe working conditions together. I imagine Hwayoung being added after they worked to make themselves known might have been a "yeah ok I guess" moment for OG T-ara. K-pop fans seen to be easily annoyed by constant lineup changes too so adding or losing a member after the group has already become famous is never a good thing.

Like I said, Hwayoung wanted to be an actress, but for the most part she played along with the idol part. That being said, I fee like CCM never made an effort to present her as an actual member of T-ara in their songs, the title tracks at least. She always felt like a featured act to me or a backup vocalist, not an actual member. You could argue Qri and Boram also got very few lines, but it's not just that, Hwayoung was supposed to be the new rapper or whatever so that Hyomin and Eunjung could start getting more singing lines now that they had someone else to do the raps but... In the first two singles Hwayoung participated in, What's Wrong and yayaya, Hyomin and Eunjung are still mostly doing the raps and Hwayoung gets a few adlibs, basically... So what was the point of making her the "rapper" then 😬 And then after that Hyomin and Eunjung stopped doing the raps completely but Hwayoung was still only doing adlibs and 2sec raps in the bridge. In Roly-Poly all the girls have mostly equal parts. Even Qri, Boram and Hwayoung, who usually got very few lines have the same amount of lines. But while Qri's and Boram's parts are actually memorable (Qri has the intro and the start of the second verse and Boram sings in both verses) while Hwayoung, who actually sings in both verses and the bridge, is still only doing adlibs and 2sec raps. In contrast, let's take 2NE1's I Am the Best, that released around the same time. CL actually sings more than an entire minute of the song, but because the parts of the other three are still memorable, it doesn't feel like she's hogging the entire song. Each of them has their moments.

But like I said it's not just about the amount of time you sing, Bora was consistently the most popular member of SISTAR and she, basically, got the same type of lines as Hwayoung after 2011. Hwayoung's styling and stage presence also fell off. She's taller than the entire group (I don't remember if Eunjung is taller than her but I think she's not) and she wasn't a very skilled dancer so it showed on stage. On top of that, her outfits, hair and makeup always looked like shit to me. But then again, the stylists and staff members said she was a nightmare to them so maybe it was intentional after all lol. But my point is, if you have a member that's not good at singing, dancing, is the rapper but doesn't actually rap and is dressed and styled worse than the rest of the group, when in theory she's the daughter of your friend, you're essentially making her yourself to look like the outcast.

What's ironic is that by 2012 things seemed to have been slowly changing? Her styling looks considerably better, she actually got sizeable parts in Day by Day and she was even picked to be a part of the We Were in Love collab with Davichi, where she also got lines and it became a hit so maybe if she hadn't started slacking things would have improved for her?

Then again, as I said Hwayoung had zero interest in being an idol, she wanted to be an actress, an she was literally the only one that CCM never booked an acting gig for. All the others (sans Areum) were acting. Even predebut Dani, who was supposed to become T-ara's ninth member, got to act in Day by Day's MV, so I'm not sure how important to her the fact that she got decent raps that lasted for more than 2secs in two songs would be. Not to mention, that she actually got back to sharing the raps as, in the unreleased version of Sexy Love, she's only doing the rap in the bridge and has to share it with Areum. Maybe Shinsadebt Tiger just hated her 🤣 I'm betting that if she was still in the group by Number Nine she would only get the "I'm addict I'm addict parts" 🤣😭

Now, it's also worth mentioning that T-ara were BIG in 2012. It was the peak of their popularity. They were the third most popular girl group in Korea, behind only Girls' Generation and 2NE1, and the third most popular K-pop girl group in Japan, after Girls' Generation and KARA. Jiyeon was winning popularity polls against Yoona. Yoon. A. They were still going strong and might have even overtaken 2NE1 too, especially considering how YG stopped promoting them properly around that time and with CCM wanting to turn them into a nine-membered group they were, essentially, declaring open war against S.M.. They had five different singles sell over 3M digital copies (Bo Peep Bo Peep, Crazy Because of You, Roly-Poly, Cry Cry & Lovey-Dovey, I actually think maybe We Were In Love did too?) which, before 2012's SK Music market inflation prices, was considered an astonishing feat. For reference, the only other girl group to have ever had five singles sell over 3M digital copies is 2NE1.

Take all this into account along with the fact that they were constantly flying back and forth from Korea to Japan to keep up with their extremely demanding schedule and, honestly, I can't really blaming Hwayoung for finding an excuse to weasel out of a few performances, we all would, be honest.

The thing is, that the Budokan performance wasn't just any performance. It's a very prestigious Japanese venue and even it it wasn't it's still a concert that people paid money to see. Idols may occasionally half-ass or lipsync performances on music and other TV shows but concerts are where they give it their all (or at least second gen idols did 👀) and all the other girls actually wanted to be idols so, maybe it wasn't a big deal to Hwayoung, but the rest of the girls had every right to be pissed about it.

Shading her on Twitter, while hilarious, was probably not a smart idea, because it was essentially the beginning of the end. Before that no one was really paying attention to Hwayoung's relationship with the rest of the group, and if she was actually being such a menace to the stuff, sooner or later someone would speak, and even if there were doubts about whether OG T-ara and Hwa were friends or whatever, no one would really question a possible expulsion from the group and company if it was a known fact that she was being rude to the staff.

And that was actually the official line by CCM. Hwayoung has been fired because she can't work well with the staff. But because of the Twitter thing and Hyoyoung, Hwa's twin, also (kind of) directly antagonizing T-ara online and Hwayoung agreeing with her, people started speculating and finding previous "evidence" of bullying.

CCM's silent approach didn't work. I get that maybe KKS didn't want to publicly announce that his friend's daughter was as asshole and a liar and the rest of the group was kind of done with it but why on earth would you literally throw your main (and let's be honest here, only) moneymaker under the bus like that? Why shoot yourself in the foot? I don't get it.

To Hwayoung's defense, she literally said "they didn't bully me, stop harassing them" at first... Before settling for a conveniently vague "I was going through hard times" line every time she gave an interview afterwards, but the first time she actually outright said she wasn't a victim of bullying.

But people didn't really care about that. T-ara's fall from grace was never in defense of Hwayoung. Hwayoung was not a very popular member to begin with so it's not like her individual fans were actively campaigning against T-ara, this is in no way a Jessica's individual fans vs. OT8 SONEs type of situation. They definitely lost a lot of the more "casual fans" and lost a lost the general public, but Sexy Love and Number Nine still charted within the top 10, so their core audience was still there.

My personal opinion, which is half fact and half speculation that is still based on facts, is that while they probably did not create a rumour, companies like S.M. and YG whose profits were being reduced by competition from CCM could have easily influenced it's spread. We all know how S.M. treats their former artists and YG also tried to block coverage of 2NE1's Coachella performance to reduce its impact and didn't they literally force Naeun out of Apink? Is it a stretch to assume they might have been a little too eager to help remove competition? But maybe they didn't even have to involve themselves personally.

Misogyny in the K-pop community was at its PEAK in that era. SONEs and 2NE1's fanwars with constant slut and body-shaming of the rival group's members, S.M. associate producer, Teddy Riley, LITERALLY calling the Wonder Girls flops and saying SNSD are better, Krystal and Sulli's and Amber's individual fans CONSTANTLY at war with each other, HyunA and Suzy's fans trashing the rest of 4Minute and miss A.... Need I go on?

Like I said, T-ara were on the top with GG and 2NE1, and their respective fans did not miss the chance to throw them right off when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a fabricated rumour. What's worse is that this is not even the... Worse fabricated rumour. SONEs started a rumour that HyunA left the Wonder Girls because of a PREGNANCY... She was FIFTEEN... Luckily this did not affect her career in any way.

So, next time you want to talk about T-ara's "bullying scandal", do remember that it was a combined effort of misogyny in K-pop, enforced by entertainment companies and fans alike, Korea's obsession with idols having squeaky clean images and never doing wrong (the women at least, a boy group would have EASILY gotten away with all of that), gross mismanagement by Core Contents Media and Kim Kwang-soo, nepotism, Hwayoung taking advantage of a tricky situation, and Hyomin, Jiyeon, Eunjung, Soyeon and Boram (because remember, like Switzerland, Qri was neutral during the War) deciding it was a good idea to ratio Hwayoung on Twitter after not wanting to sing "I likey likey this, I likey likey that" for the nth time.

#T-ara #Jiyeon #Hyomin #Eunjung #Qri #Soyeon #Boram #Hwayoung #Areum #K-pop #Core Contents Media #Kim Kwang-soo #Girl Groups #South Korea #Korea

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