The frontwoman of top Korean pop act Aespa, Yu “Karina” Ji-min, apologized to fans on Wednesday after a Seoul-based entertainment news site last month broke that she was dating actor Lee Jae-wook, which is a big no-no for fans in Korea and Japan who demand that the extremely remote possibility they can eff their idols be left open, otherwise the is magic gone, Sky News reports.
Seriously. Aespa fans last week rented an electronic billboard and parked it outside of her record label SM Entertainment, with a message reading “Is the love to you by your fans not enough? Why did you choose to betray the fans? Please apologize directly. Otherwise, you will see a decrease in album sales and empty concert seats,” which led “Karina” to apologize on Instagram.
“I apologize for surprising you greatly. I know very well how disappointed [my fans] who have supported me are and how upset you’re thinking about the memories we shared together. I want to make up for my hurt fans from now on. I have always been sincere to you, and still each and every one of you are truly precious to me,” she hand-wrote in very bubbly Korean letters.
Obviously she didn’t say she was actually ending it with Jae-wook or otherwise commit to again becoming “available” to her fans so give her some points for that. Maybe it’s too much to expect a 23 year-old under no doubt a lot of control from her label’s executives to speak out against this mass delusion of incel-dom and tell people to fuck off, let her have her own life, but this is some weird shit and pretty embarrassing to witness even from a distance. Hopefully whatever Western fanbase she has could push the Koreans and Japanese to let go of their fantasy-based demands.