TW: PTSD, sexual harassment, sexual assault, depression, suicide

(This is an excerpt from my BigBang review, hence why it is BigBang focused.)

BigBang is possibly one of the most famous (and most infamous) groups of kpop’s second generation. The famous part is easy: they were incredibly popular in their time, debuting in 2006 and each of the five members—Taeyang, G-Dragon, Daesung, T.O.P., and Seungri—had huge careers as solo artists too. But the infamous part is to do with Seungri alone. If you’d like to just skip to the music review, please click here.

If you’ve never heard of the Burning Sun scandal, I’m going to give a ludicrously brief summary. Please, please heed the content warnings at the top, because this is, quite frankly, horrible. Burning Sun was a nightclub owned by Seungri that, in 2019, was revealed to have been an epicenter of prostitution, spy cameras (also known as “molka”), sexual assault, and drugging women with GHB to commit said crimes. These crimes were often videoed and then this footage was spread in chat rooms.

And Seungri wasn’t the only idol involved, despite being the most well known; there was also Yong Jonhyung of B2ST (now Highlight), Lee Jonghyun of CNBlue, Choi Jonghoon of F.T. Island, and singer-songwriter Jung Joonyoung (JJY). Despite the mountains of evidence, none of them served long sentences. I’m really not doing this case justice, so if you’d like to learn more (which you really should), please read Vox’s article, look at Billboard’s timeline of events, or watch the excellent Burning Sun documentary that came out earlier this year.

So, after all of this, you may be wondering, why do this now? Why give Seungri more press, why thrust all this pain back into the spotlight? And the answer is because it hasn’t gone away. Seungri was released from jail almost two years ago at age 32, after serving less than a year and a half, a new sex scandal involving chat rooms and nude photo leaks has begun to break in South Korea, the late kpop idol Goo Hara has been revealed to have been a vital part of bringing the case to light, and most importantly, the survivors still have to get up every morning and go about their lives with the pain of what happened to them. It’s been five years since Burning Sun. And it is our duty to never let it be forgotten.

But where do I fit into this? I’m a music review blog, after all. True. But for a moment, I’d like to explain. I was once a witness to a sexual assault, when I was very, very young. I never reported it, because I was scared and I had no idea what was going on, and the victim lost her chance to get justice because of me. Since then, I’ve been committed to doing whatever I can to help survivors of sexual and/or domestic violence. It won’t make up for what I did, or, I suppose, what I failed to do, I do know that. But I do have a platform, small as it may be, and I’m going to use it as best I can.

In most of my reviews, I talk about what kinds of fun, lighthearted behind the scenes things I watched to get to know the members better, and I did watch some things, like parts of their Happy Together special, which was genuinely lovely. But then, Seungri is still there, acting normal.. I watched him cracking jokes with his group members and started laughing along, and then before I knew it, I was crying. Because he’s so funny. He’s funny and charming and I laughed. And then I thought of everyone he hurt, and I looked at the man onscreen, and suddenly he seemed even more terrifying than he’d been in the news reports.

I hope that mentioning my reasons for wanting to do this won’t come across as seeking sympathy or trying to make the suffering of others about me, because that isn’t what I’m after. Like I said, I know that no matter how much advocacy I do, I can’t erase my old decisions. I hope that I did Hara and all of the survivors of the Burning Sun justice. And most of all, I hope that those women get up every morning and stand tall in the knowledge that they are incredibly strong, that they should be proud for having made it through what they did.

If you are reading this, and you have suffered sexual harassment, assault, or any kind of related violence, I am so, so sorry. I wish there was more I could do, but I’m only a kpop reviewer, after all. But I am going to leave you with a number to call: The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network or RAINN, who has a 24/7 crisis line and can be reached at 800-656-4673, or at this website.

And this: it is never your fault. What you were wearing, what you were doing, what you were saying doesn’t matter. You were a victim. And I truly, truly hope that you can look in the mirror every morning with pride, knowing that you lived, that you went through hell and came out the other side. If no one else will say it, I will: I am very proud of you.

Thank you so much for reading. Next time, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. Tschüss, and please, please, I’m begging you, if you see something, say something.