Recently, movie director Byun Young Joo appeared on a YouTube channel to discuss whether K-Culture was actually thriving.
| Director Byun Young Joo
The discussion highlighted the bleak outlook for the film and video industry, as well as the problems facing the K-Pop industry.
K-Pop, another key pillar of K-Culture, can be described just by the fact that we haven’t been able to see NewJeans for several years. We need to consider what kind of system allows this to happen so frequently.
— Byeon Young Joo
Professor Jeong Jun Hee, a media scholar, also added, “We need to examine why beloved artists like NewJeans are consumed solely as a question of ‘who’s right and who’s wrong’ in the conflict between HYBE and Min Hee Jin, leaving the artists in a situation where they can’t do anything.”
Jeong also felt that this stems from the very structure of the music industry.
Even great artists can’t achieve anything if the industry structure doesn’t support them. Ultimately, it’s become an environment where industry logic and legal rights dictate everything.
— Jeong Jun Hee
Meanwhile, Director Byun emphasized the unfortunate reason for their hiatus.
NewJeans can continue their activities, and companies and individuals can pursue legal action separately if they have any issues. In such a trend-sensitive industry, halting activities for more than a year is a huge blow and disrespectful to consumers. Artists have the right and obligation to continue creating, but the structure is unfair because they are always the ones who are held back.
— Byun Young Joo
However, netizens criticized the director for talking about a field he was not familiar with.
| theqoo | theqoo
- “Does he really not know why?”
- “It would be fine if they didn’t break the law and their contract. I don’t understand why he’s saying this when they are the ones that terminated their contract unilaterally.”
- “If they promote activities while the case is going on, who is going to financially pay for all their promotions? LOL.”
- “Does he not know what breach of contract is?”
- “What is wrong with this guy?”
- “Stop talking about things you don’t know anything about. Just stick to filming movies.”
- “What do you mean by why can’t we see NewJeans? Because they broke their contract?”