On Irene
I'm sure a lot of you have seen the news about Irene. If not, links are below
(Yes I use allkpop for my kpop news LOL)
The gist of it is that Irene treated one of the photoshoot editors she was working with on set really badly (randomly insulting her, throwing anger tantrums, etc.), and the article hints that this instance isn't the first time that this has happened. Supposedly, Irene has done these things (randomly get mad at staff, mistreat them, etc.) on multiple occasions, this photoshoot editor being the first. From what I've seen so far, as usual, South Korean netizens are taking this too far, but first let's get something straight.
I'm a Red Velvet fan, but there's no going around this. What Irene has done is terrible and not something that should be brushed aside as 'just being emotional'. A professional - heck, even a normal human being - should be able to contain one's emotions and not lash out onto others. One might argue that Irene has much more on her plate with all the hate she gets as a celebrity and all the stress that comes with her job, but you also have to remember that it's also part of her job to be polite or at the very least neutral to her coworkers as she is a public figure and essentially a role model (hence 'idol').
If you're an employee at, say, a fast food restaurant and you have been having a tough week (say you're going through financial troubles and your pet died recently or something, an accumulation of events in which it is perfectly reasonable to be stressed out/in a bad mental state/etc.), do you think your manager would just shrug it off if you started yelling at a customer or coworker? Similarly, as unfair as it is to idols, they can't just release their stress and negative emotions in this manner, of letting someone else be their punching bag.
Now, what I'm NOT saying is that someone like Irene should keep her negative emotions/feelings inside her forever; what she CAN do is find a more healthy way to vent her stress, i.e. working out or de-stressing with music or listening to a podcast or reading books, etc.
I've seen some people call what Irene has done a 'mistake'. I think this label is incredibly disingenuous: a 'mistake' is typically a one-time occurance, or something that doesn't happen often. From what I've seen (from those two articles above, not the following articles that might be clout chasers. I'll get into that later), it seems like Irene has done this many times to many people. I have no inside information and am purely speculating, so please don't take my word as the absolute truth (I'll get into this later too), but it seems to me like Irene has an unhealthy habit of lashing out and throwing temper tantrums when she's stressed out or the like. It seems to me like her celebrity status got a little to her head, or maybe she's trying to fit the role she's been given from her variety show appearances (what I've found similar to what Jessica Jung had the title of, 'Ice Princess'; basically, she's quiet and calm and deals with everything in a relatively straightforward/literal manner), but whatever it is, this is what I think might be another aspect of her actions.
Basically, what Irene has done isn't a 'mistake'. It's more than that, and labeling it as such downplays the magnitude of what she has done.
HOWEVER, I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be.
By this point, I think most of us are old enough to understand the difference between a celebrity's on-screen personality and his/her real personality. This exists for pretty much every public-facing figure, and I don't think Irene is an exception. She has some things that she would do off camera that she wouldn't do on camera and some things she would do for the camera but wouldn't do if she wasn't shooting. Now that Red Velvet has gotten this far into their career, I think we've been able to see a fair bit of what Irene's real personality is like, or at least what the 'good' side of her personality is like. I think just simply forgetting all of that, of all the times she bought food trucks other things for NCT or her members, of all the times she showed an almost motherly caring nature to her groupmates, of all the staff she's worked with that had positive things to say about their time working with her, of all the good she has done is just ignorant. I don't think, by any means, we should all grab our pitchforks because now, we know what Irene is 'really like', and that deep inside she's a monster that needs to be burned at the stake for repentance of her actions. I think the terrible things she has done is one facet of her personality (or hopefully, now that this has been pointed out to be an issue and hopefully starts working on herself, was a facet of her personality) and the good things she has done is another facet of her personality. Things in real life are never black and white, and to think this doesn't apply to idols is just ignorant.
Now let's talk about all the new accounts popping up of people who have been treated poorly by Irene. I don't want to take these people lightly, despite what I'm about to say: I'm sure it is very reasonable that a few, if not all, are victims of Irene's harassment and power abuse. However, let's not forget that Irene is, in fact, an idol, and selfish people in this world exist; I can all but guarantee you that some of these people are clout chasers, that they want to become famous by taking advantage of someone else. On top of this, all these netizens who are going back into past events (videos, clips, pictures, etc.) and pointing out things from the past that suggest Irene was always like this, that it was so obvious and 'how could we not have known??!?!?!?!?!?!??!' are just absolutely ridiculous and, in my book, as bad as Irene's actions.
A fan is simply an outside observer; maybe some fans have interacted with Irene, or maybe some have witnessed her off-camera, personal interactions with her staff members or whatnot, but most of us are simply people who consume content of celebrities. I emphasized that you shouldn't take my interpretation of Irene's situation/what her actions say about her personality as the absolute truth because I am one of those people. We are merely outside observers, we can't hope to know what the complete truth is just by piecing together bits and pieces of information from pictures and videos. The absolutely disgusting thing about what netizens are doing is that it happens so often and only when these pieces of information come up. If this was always so obvious, how come this hasn't been a big deal earlier? If Irene's frank response to the questionnaire she filled out on Weekly Idol (more info here) is such a problem, then why wasn't it a big issue when the information was first released? These netizens are just trying to make a mountain out of a molehill is the answer. They presume to know the secrets of the universe or are trying to be Sherlock Holmes (a famous fictitious detective for those who don't know) use these incoherently strung together pieces of information from 1247891243 years ago (exaggeration of course) to come to the conclusion that 'WOW LOOK AT THIS BAE JOOHYUN OF RED VELVET HAS ALWAYS BEEN A , WE SHOULD THROW HER IN JAIL FOR LIFE OR EXECUTE HER' (again, exaggeration. I hope.) For those that can't tell, this topic is sort of a sore one to me because I really can't stand es who pretend that they know everything when in reality, not even someone who knows Irene as closely as her manager can know everything about her. Hell, there are things about me, a perfectly ordinary person, that not everyone, even the ones closest to me (aka my mom and sister), knows.
So when you're reading these articles coming out about netizens trying to piece together a puzzle about how it's been obvious this entire time that Irene is a terrible person and that these clips from 5 months ago and this picture from 17 weeks ago and this clip from that show they did 2 years after they debuted prove it, take it with a grain of salt (or maybe more than a grain). Whoever pieced together that information don't know everything about Irene, the people Irene has abused/taken advantage of don't know everything about her (again, don't get me wrong; they are not in the wrong and in fact are in the RIGHT for exposing Irene's actions. However, they are NOT in the right for trying to make sweeping conclusions about her personality in its entirety based on a few interactions with her. I haven't seen this happen yet really, but if it does, then what I just said applies), heck even Irene's closest friends probably don't know everything about her.
So what's going to happen next?
I have hope that Irene will change in the future. I hope that she sees that these actions have been terrible and that she needs to change herself, be it something about her lifestyle or mentality, something. I think Irene should be punished for this; I'm not sure how, but definitely something more than a simple apology and a short break from activities. Maybe an in-person, personalized apology to everyone she's hurt? I don't know, there are problems with this method I think I made my point. I hope that this can be a learning opportunity for Irene, other idols who might also be abusing their power over staff members, and maybe even netizens in the future if Irene manages to turn things around.
I'm going to be honest; when I first heard this, I almost couldn't believe it. Heck, I even just finished writing a story with Irene as a character in which I characterized her as a deeply humble person; this may or may not be true, but my first reaction was to feel like an idiot for thinking that way. Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I've come to the realization that it's too soon to make hasty conclusions. We should all condemn what Irene has done, but in a way that's constructive and not unnecessarily negative/derogatory/harsh (because remember, it's a possibility that these harmful comments are part of the reason she acted in this way, and adding to that fire will not help at all), and just hope that Irene learns from this and that she changes this facet of her personality around. Honestly, she's already taken a huge first step as an idol and admitted her wrongdoing and apologized publicly, so she's on the right track already. All that's left for us is to hope that she changes for the better.
TL;DR: what Irene has done is terrible, but don't believe everything you read on the internet. No one can know the full context behind her actions, so it is disingenuous and outright dumb/ignorant to assume that this part of her personality can be traced from clips/pictures/videos from the past. All that we can do is hope that Irene will change for the better, her public statement and apology being a good first step. However, this TL;DR misses a lot of the important beats and explanation behind my statements, so if you have the time, I urge you to read the entire thing.
Let me know if you contest anything or have any questions, I'd love to discuss this topic (doesn't necessarily have to be about Irene) more if you have any questions/concerns/etc.
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