2 false information about ‘Snowdrop’ spread by international fans of BLACKPINK that made Knets angry
Contrary to fans’ hopes, the wave of protests after ‘Snowdrop’ aired became even more intense in the Korean online community.
After a period of fierce controversy surrounding the plot content, JTBC‘s new drama “Snowdrop” has finally officially aired its first 2 episodes. Very quickly, during the past 2 days, a series of articles and topics related to “Snowdrop” were continuously posted throughout SNS in Korea. However, this is not at all a positive signal for “Snowdrop” when the most obvious reaction in Koreans right now is boycotting the film even more fiercely than before.
Right after the first episode ended, many Korean netizens filed a petition to the Blue House asking to cancel the broadcast of “Snowdrop“. In less than 1 day, this petition has received more than 250,000 signatures (eligible for the Blue House to respond) from the audience, enough to see that Koreans are currently very angry with “Snowdrop“. Although both the JTBC side and the director have firmly stated that the film didn’t have details that distort Korean history, right from episode 1, viewers quickly pointed out a lot of problems showing that “Snowdrop” has touched historical issues, from the context of the content to the character’s profession or even the background music.
When that much was enough to make “Snowdrop” the most fiercely boycotted series in Korea today, the reaction from BLACKPINK‘s international fans even added more fuel to the anger of Knetizens. Not only criticizing the Korean audience for “overdoing it” or resolutely supporting Jisoo’s new movie at all costs, many international BLINKs are also spreading false information that causes Korean netizens’ outrage.
First, many fans of Jisoo, after learning that Koreans filed a petition to stop broadcasting “Snowdrop” on the Blue House, used the excuse “The Blue House censored the content and let the series air” to condemn Korean netizens. However, this is a false information because in the announcement made in July this year, the Blue House re-introduced Article 4 of the Korean Broadcasting Act to assert that they have no right to interfere with censorship, editing or banning any series/movies when it has not officially aired. A Korean, after reading the comments of BLACKPINK fans saying that “the Blue House censored the content of ‘Snowdrop’”, said indignantly on Twitter:
“In the comment explaining the controversy surrounding ‘Snowdrop’, there were quite a few answers from international fans confirming that the script ‘Snowdrop’ had been censored and approved by the Blue House. In their mind, is Korea a country where the Blue House has the right to censor drama scripts??”.
Another thing that is also causing a lot of frustration is the rating of the drama. After the two first episodes, many BLACKPINK fans spread the news that “Snowdrop” had a peak rating at 7.55% – the highest among all programs that aired in the same time frame. For a drama broadcast on a cable station like JTBC, a rating of more than 7% is a very high number.
But in fact, this is another misunderstanding of BLACKPINK fans. A large number of Korean viewers have pointed out that the metric image they are spreading is just the rating on the Olleh TV app – meaning it only reflects the viewership rate on that app. In fact, the official Korean rating of “Snowdrop” just announced by Nielsen Korea this morning is 2.9% for episode 1 and 3.1% for episode 2.
Currently, the wave of protests and boycotts against “Snowdrop” is still very fierce and tense on Korean online forums and portals, from Naver, Nate, Daum to Pann, Theqoo, Twitter… Faced with the audience’s current reaction, JTBC has yet to give a response, although the station has taken steps to limit comments on the viewer’s message board.. Many brands have publicly announced that they will stop sponsoring the drama, firmly asking the production team to delete the scenes with their products’ appearance and apologize for not knowing the drama’s content well.
