During a comprehensive audit conducted by the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee of the National Assembly of South Korea on October 24, a “Music Industry Report” written by HYBE Group employees containing disparaging and insulting comments about idols from other entertainment companies was revealed. This document shocked the public.
Kim Tae Ho - HYBE's COO and Belift Lab's CEO, who attended the audit on behalf of HYBE Chairman Bang Si Hyuk, stated that the contents of the document "are not HYBE's opinions" but are opinions collected from online posts.
This raises questions from the public, do all K-pop companies write such reports about the industry? If so, what information about rival companies is included in the reports sent to higher-ups? Do other companies collect disrespectful comments on social media as “data”?
JoyNews24 asked some people in the Korean entertainment industry with more than 15 years of experience to answer these questions.
An anonymous employee - A confirmed "never seen any monitoring documents like HYBE's".
“To monitor performance, you would typically analyze successful teams, reporting something like, ‘Here are the reasons why this team is doing well, so we need to improve in that area,’ or ‘Let’s look at how this team responded to the crisis and see what we should pay more attention to.’ That would be what you might call an industry trend report,” he explains.
A added that it was normal to spy on competing companies. However, A found it hard to believe that such an internal document was something that was sent to a senior executive.
Another employee - B, also asserted that compiling criticisms was an unprecedented activity.
“During my time working at many entertainment companies, I have never compiled data on criticizing artists from other companies. Although it is true that I have checked the posts and reactions of the community when our artists debuted, taking note of negative expressions or rates, I have never reported on the opinions of each of those netizens.
HYBE asserts that the document released to Congress is a collection of provocative comments stitched together. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the content was still included in the document.
In the K-pop industry, if there are explicit criticisms of other artists in the report, they will be deleted. Besides, I think the information collected from online communities is a very vague data set to be used,” B shared.
A third employee - C, told JoyNews24 that most entertainment businesses see each other as competitors, but also partners. HYBE creating such a document is "contemptuous and demeaning to other K-pop artists."
“There are cases where we share verbal reviews about artists and rival companies. But this is the first time I have encountered a case where negative reviews were turned into official reports. This is very dangerous,” C emphasized.
