Enhypen Jay’s careless remark about Korean history rose to real-time search in China, making this a global issue

Jay and member Sung Hoon of Enhypen hosted a Weverse Live broadcast on Jan 10th. While talking about studying Korean history, Jay said, “I like studying history, but there are not many events and things to learn about Korean history. If you study it or look through it, it might take only a few weeks and end quickly. It’s like a short story”. 

Sung Hoon tried to stop his member by saying, “There are many things to learn about Korean history”, but Jay continued to make mistakes. Jay added, “The histories of some other countries are really endless. I’ve read about the histories of many different countries and there seems to be no end. Korean history was all about just before Balhae until a little later after the Three Kingdoms period. I looked through it very quickly. While studying history, I kept wondering ‘That’s it?‘ Why did I finish this earlier than I thought?’”. As soon as the live broadcast ended, netizens poured out harsh criticism over Jay’s remark. 

Jay immediately apologized on Jan 11th, but the public’s outrage did not subside because of the part “For whatever reason” in his apology.

Pointing out the fact that Jay had completed all of his regular education in Korea despite having a South Korean-American nationality, netizens continued to criticize the male idol, saying “This is serious”, “You’re an idol and you don’t even think about the impact of your words?”, etc. Many people emphasized that Jay’s lack of qualifications and awareness about history might have a negative global influence.

What netizens were worried about eventually happened for real. On Jan 14th, an article was uploaded on an online community under the title, “Overseas real-time search: Korean idol member calls Korean history ‘a short story’”, and immediately attracted many views and comments. In the article, a screenshot of Jay’s remarks was included with the caption “Currently ranking No.4 on China’s real-time search”. In addition to this, many articles with pictures of Enhypen Jay are highlighted in media outlets in China.

As a result, netizens are not only blaming Jay for the incident but also criticizing Enhypen’s agency HYBE for not properly providing historical awareness and managing issues related to the member’s nationality despite having many sub-labels with global idol groups. Although Enhypen is not directly managed by HYBE, it is still under HYBE’s sub-label. 

In this regard, netizens reacted, “HYBE should give their idols history lessons”, “Korea is being affected because of him”, “If you had paid attention to history classes at school, you would never compare Korean history to a short story”, “Don’t do activities in Korea anymore”, etc.

Source: Naver