Journal Entry #1
When most people think about South Korea or K-Pop, cringy pop music, overproduced music videos, synchronized choreography, boys wearing makeup, and plastic surgery come to mind. However, as an avid K-Pop fan for three years now, I've come to understand that what most people don't know about is the dark side of K-Pop. Many people don't realize that the South Korean music industry is notorious for its inhumane treatment of its celebrities, called "idols", and unfair slave contracts. For instance, many members of legendary girl group, Girl's Generation, who have trained with their agency since they were kids, are binded to 12-15 year contracts, all of which include working long hours with very little time to sleep, K-Pop's infamous "No Dating" rule, and constant promotion among many other things. Despite there being many agencies who have stopped these horrible practices, a majority of them still use these kinds of contracts. Although the government has made laws regarding the treatment of idols, especially young trainees, those efforts have proven to be uneffective. There are still various labels in South Korea who treat their artists horribly by either hiding their actions from the public or forcing people to keep quiet. Since an idol's agency legally owns their celebrities and has a lot of power over their careers, entertainment labels get away with what they're doing with little problems. Likewise, the more powerful the agency is in the music industry, the more they can hide anything they do wrong. There's absolutely no reason that these money-hungry agencies could give to justify the cruel way they treat their artists. Even though these labels provide a career for its artists, they have no right to treat them like tools used to make money. Just as much as the agency does for an artist, the artist does for its agency. While the label gives the artist fame, the artist, in turn, gets the label money and power.
Take for example one of the biggest, most successful labels in South Korea, SM Entertainment, home to legendary artists such as, Super Junior, TVXQ, Girl's Generation, SHINee, EXO, and BoA. Almost every K-Pop fan knows that SM Entertainment is, if not the worst, the face of unfair treatment and lengthy slave contracts. There seems to be no end to the amount of lawsuits filed against this agency by its own artists. There have been at least five seperate instances when an artist has filed a lawsuit against this label, gone through a lengthy legal battle that lasted for years, and started off their solo careers badly. One of the most controversial examples is what happened to ex-Super Junior member, Hangeng. During Hangeng’s time with Super Junior, he was forced to do things against his own will, fined when he disobeyed the company, was refused sick days off even when he developed gastritis and kidney problems. Also, the profits made from the group’s most successful albums and singles were not fairly distributed among the members. Although Hangeng was released from the legal battle two years later, we shouldn't ignore the difficulties he went through. Many labels, not just SM Entertainment, use their artists to make money, instead of seeing and appreciating them as artists. Although there have been new laws made about this issue, there isn't nearly enough enforcement to actually bring about change. There seems to be no solution to this problem, as it's hard to compete with the power labels have, but something has to be done.
A piece of advice that Zinsser suggests is that a writer should "prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw" with words such as, "a little", "a bit", and "sort of". In my original draft, there were at least two instances when I used "a little" in a sentence. Looking back at it, it didn't do anything for the sentence and actually made what I was saying seem less confident, which isn't what good writing is, according to Zinsser. Another thing that Zinsser suggests is that a writer should learn to always inform the reader when there is a difference in mood from the previous sentence. Throughout most of my writing, I think that I did a pretty good job of using mood changers such as, "although", "however", "even though", and "but". By using words like these in the beginning of your sentences, it makes it easier for the reader to process the sentence and announces a difference with what happened in the previous sentence. It helps with the flow of the writing and makes it less awkward. A last piece of advice that Zinsser suggests that you shouldn't "inflate an incident to make it seem more outlandish than it actually was". In my second paragraph, when I mentioned the story of Hangeng's legal battle with his agency, I believe that I told the story in a primarily objective way. I tried not to make the story seem so outrageous that no one would believe it.
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