We need to talk about the mistakes and the injustices we often commit because we believe we know something in the media that the media and common sense themselves show us about it.

Do you know BTS? Yes, that K-POP group that suffers limitations like "it's just pretty faces singing in Korean and dancing well", to quote those who are respectful, because there is a lot of intolerance and disrespect with them, and with K-POP artists generally. Not to mention when ignorance transcends all the acceptable and becomes prejudice by their aesthetic choices. They are not often seen as human beings. This has roots even within fan bases, which also minimize them to the mere physical issue, when there is a complexity to be analyzed not only in what is produced by Korean pop culture, but also how this production hides an extremely competitive structure, difficult ascension and great producers who exploit these artists to exhaustion. But it's not the fault of this large number of fans, it's no one's fault. That's just it. We do not have easy access to this obscure side and even with the recent suicide of Jonghyun, member of SHInee, the mainstream media still managed to spread the news, but mask all the weaknesses of the industry that lead these artists to need to have a great burden emotional to deal with the constant requirement of appearance and perfection, which blind us to see them deeply and humanized.

Who sees them only in shows, clips and photos, don’t know that Jungkook, of BTS, was feeling bad and almost collapsing from exhaustion during a concert, but continued by demanding too much of himself. Don’t know that V and RM, also of BTS, almost fainted from fatigue in a presentation, after they recorded for 24 hours in a row. Don’t know that Jihyo, leader of TWICE, has already suffered body-shaming on the reality show "Sixteen", which would form Twice. Don’t know that Tzuyu was forced by his record company to portray diplomatically for the Chinese government, for appearing in "Sixteen" representing Taiwan. And she was only 16 years old.

The whole cultural industry leads us to think in a limited way, for many contexts we don’t even notice. I always thought that I was open-minded, but, in this case, I didn’t was. I thought that listening to a song, the most widespread, and watching a clip, I already knew K-POP enough to limit them. The boys of BTS were the ones that showed me a multiplicity that until then, I had never tried to know. BTS has become, for me, no longer a shallow one, but with a depth that, in part, justifies for me the fact that they are so popular.

Who only hears to speak of them, don’t know the visual works of art that are many of the clips. The technical production and the details are impressive. I Need U, for example, portrays several individual problems explicitly, but they become irrelevant to the union of a group, for then we know that we are not alone. Spring Day gently shows the memories that remain in times of transition and loss. Serendipity can be a reference to the Yellow September. Blood, Sweat & Tears illustrates dualities, contradictions, ignorance itself, but at the same time, chaos and art. And just like BTS in this clip, I paraphrase Nietzsche: " “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”. 

The star was fortunately reborn from the moment that I finally realized that I was blindfolded not to see the wealth that can be provided in knowing more deeply cultures that seem to be distant from us, but that, nevertheless, share the same sufferings and pains. Deluded by the apparent - always apparent - industries and groups, which, in reality, keep in the core the complexity of all the anxieties that involve the search for dreams of the youth and represent, in the contemporaneity, how the structure is cruel and demanding with these transitions.

May we learn to respect more.