intl V

I was cleaning out an old Hotmail email account I’d forgotten I had, when in the “sent” folder I come across a message from an AllKpop.com writer. She wrote me in response to one of my comments left on an article she wrote about popstar Uhm Jung Hwa.

Screenshot of the email: (click to enlarge)

And here is the text, in case you can’t see the image clearly:

Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:36:12 -0400
From: _________@gmail.com
To: _____@live.com
Subject: AllKPOP comment


[quote]I cannot believe you just said UJH “spreads her legs for every male in kpop”. Okay. Yeah… my feminine sensibilities have been offended for the last time here. I’m not a feminist, but there is a freaking line. It’s bad enough johnny can’t form a sentence without disrespecting a woman, now this guy has the nerve to deeply and horrifically insult a legendary woman. I bet if I went back through all the posts regarding women (even underaged ones like WG) there wouldn’t be a single one that didn’t degrade or sexually objectify her. I’m out. Looks like coolsmurf is the only stop on the internet for non-rude korean pop culture news. Oh well.[/quote]

Sorry about that. To be honest, I did not put in those remarks about her being a whore or whatever. In the pre-edited article I wrote, I only poked fun at her hair. And also I’m a girl, so I’d never insult UJH in that manner. :x

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My reply:

My apologies as well! I was just so taken aback by that; it was the straw that broke me :/ I was not aware that the ownership of AKP went around editing posts to make them more offensive. Shows what their goal is I guess. Either way, thanks for taking the time to write me!

Major, right? I did a quick search and found the article that offended me so greatly, in case one of you want to read it too. The comments have since been removed, but the rest is still painfully posted: Uhm Jung Hwa and G-Dragon Bring Disco Part 2 My favorite line from the article: “Speaking of whores, Uhm Jung Hwa spreads her legs for practically every male in the K-Pop industry, but even she won’t spread ‘em for Dae Sung and that other worthless dude, so worthless I don’t even remember his name.”

Does that sound like something a female writer would even think to say? Come on. It’s as if Johnny (or whomever ran things in 2008 on AKP) was intentionally trying to alienate as many people as possible. Normally, that would destroy any site, but for some unknown reason, this chauvinistic edge actually propelled AllKpop. Why would anyone support a site like that? And that’s not even scratching the surface of all the controversy AKP has had over the years. Allegations of false translations and biased articles run rampant.

I quit going to that site ages ago, and have never ventured back. Even though coolsmurf doesn’t blog anymore (that I know of), there are many more reputable, mature, and professional Kpop communities out there. I don’t know what the attitude is now at AllKpop, though I doubt it’s as bad as it was in 2008. Still, “6 theory” has a lot of explaining and apologizing to do before I consider revisiting their site. I’d rather give my online patronage to positive communities, like Koreaboo. And no, I don’t work for Koreaboo, I just happen to recognize professionalism and journalistic integrity when I see it.

I’m showing my age right now, but does anyone remember Popseoul? The owner of that site was filled with pure hate too. It was almost as if they started a kpop site just to poke fun at kpop. If you hate something so much, why dedicate so much time to it?? Let’s keep it positive, to support the industry and the fans. Is that so hard?