Being a celebrity, especially a K-pop idol, means you have to always be careful about what you say or do in public. In a time when cancel culture is pervasive, public figures have to tread carefully when it comes to very sensitive topics. Otherwise, you might end up being called out for being problematic.
However, one K-pop idol from a popular group recently got caught up in a controversy after an old video resurfaced on social media. It is a nightmare for idols when old skeletons from the closet come back to haunt them. Here’s what happened:
https://twitter.com/fyrewon/status/1643546463157334017?t=iz9_9za81krrId58yMLkjg&s=08
Twitter user @fyrewon posted a video of TREASURE member Haruto (하루토/ ハルト) yesterday (Wednesday, 5th April). The video showed what the singer had to say about romantic relationships between two men during an old live broadcast. According to the subtitles in the clip above, the Japanese-born artist said, “No, but a man and a man is weird.”
The other TREASURE members looked visibly uncomfortable with the statement and even tried to prevent him from going any further by making loud noises but the rapper can still be heard trying to get his point across. The resurfaced 9-second video blew up and has since reached over 12 million views, 1k retweets, 20.9k quotes, and 8.7k likes at the time of writing.
The viral video received a lot of negative attention from netizens with most of them accusing the 19-year-old of being homophobic. Some even suggested that the members knew what he was going to say, judging from their immediate reaction to stop him from talking. Of course, TREASURE fans came to Haruto’s defense by providing the context of the broadcast.
From the screenshots above, it is understood that the topic of conversation was BL (Boys Love) romantic comedy content. The idol was explaining that shipping two male characters or the actors is fine as long as it doesn’t cross the line. However, some argued that even with context, his choices of words were extremely poor.
At the time of writing, neither TREASURE nor YG Entertainment have responded to the homophobic accusations. What do you think? Watch the full clip below and judge for yourself:
https://twitter.com/peacemins1/status/1643728903318405120?s=20
Source: Twitter
