Recently, a new wave of controversy arose in the international Kpop fan community, when members of the girl group Blackpink were suddenly dragged into a controversy related to BTS's Suga.
The source of the incident started from the #SugaChallenge trend (roughly translated: "Suga Challenge"), which is said to justify Suga driving an electric scooter while drunk.
However, Army - the BTS fan community - has accused this trend of actually being created by Blackpink's (Blink) fandom to damage Army's reputation.
In response, some extreme members created similar trends called #RoséChallenge and #JennieChalleng (roughly translated: "Rosé Challenge" and "Jennie Challenge"), using edited images. to spread false information about Blackpink members.
These posts quickly attracted public attention, with many posts reaching 940,000 views on platform X.
This is not the first time there has been a conflict between international Kpop fandoms. In December 2021, when the BTS members first opened their personal Instagram accounts, V accidentally followed Jennie's account, leading to a wave of "reverse" criticism aimed at female singer Blackpink from enthusiastic fans. .
According to Kbizoom , popular culture critic Ha Jae Geun believes that this phenomenon comes from the cultural difference between domestic and international fandom. He explained: "In Korea, there is an unwritten rule not to mention other singers, even in the same fandom. However, this culture has not yet taken root abroad."
This expert also emphasized that criticizing other artists is not the way to protect your favorite artists. This behavior only hurts both parties. There needs to be self-regulation within the international fan community, similar to how domestic fans have done in the past.
