Besides many benefits that idol groups with large size can receive, there are also many disadvantages.
In recent years, K-pop has received many more idol groups with large lineups. This has brought a variety of musical colors, visuals as well as talents. However, there is also the flip side to populous groups which includes a lot of controversy, bad reputation and a waste of resources.
Many talents come with many controversies
The populous groups are the convergence of all kinds of K-pop talents, from singing, composing, dancing to acting, hosting, sports and painting. However, too many members also makes it difficult to manage them properly and entirely.
NCT is the most typical case. All 23 members of the group bring unique talents, however, some faces in the group have encountered a number of scandals. Recently, Taeil was caught acting badly. It is worth mentioning that the member Haechan also watched over the male idol to avoid the attention of the media and passersby.
This action of the two NCT members caused a fierce controversy soon after. Some fans defended that Taeil is already of an adult age, on the contrary, many netizens believe that this affects NCT‘s image and is not good for underage fans if they see it.
This is not the first time an NCT member has been spotted doing this. Previously, Jungwoo, WinWin and Lucas were also caught in troubles. Although all of them have passed the age of adulthood, their image has also been affected more or less in the eyes of the audience.
NCT’s Lucas was also entangled in a dating scandal that made him lose his image in the public eye. Specifically, in August 2021, 3 girls claimed to be the male idol’s ex-lovers and accused him of cheating. They also revealed that the male idol slandered NCT members, was arrogant and did not use safety measures in bed.
The 3 girls are Lucas‘ fans, he actively contacted and “promoted” to be his girlfriend to easily ask for expensive gifts. Furthermore, another man also claimed to be the male idol’s ex-boyfriend and said that the two stuck around for a long time even though he was an idol.
Another populous group that often gets into trouble is THE BOYZ. Recently, Younghoon was criticized for a bad joke. Specifically, the male idol gave fans a phone number that he made up himself. However, this is a number of a real user. This causes the owner of the number to be constantly disturbed. Although Younghoon apologized, he was still criticized for having a low EQ.
Younghoon‘s scandal just ended, and Q followed in the footsteps of his fellow member. The male idol was accused of being narcissistic when saying many bad words on the livestream with fans. Specifically, Q said, “If you see me on vacation, please don’t act like you know me. Just think of me as a normal person. Okay? Don’t recognize me or try to take pictures. I get upset when other people take pictures without asking first.”
This made the audience and fans of the group extremely surprised. Not to mention, before that, Q and Eric were also entangled in the controversy of going to dinner and drinking with MOMOLAND members during the complicated situation of the epidemic.
Not only male idols, many female idols are also “talented but troublesome”. Typically, Meiqi of WJSN. After many years of activities in Korea, she couldn’t find a place, so she returned to her homeland of China and achieved great success. However, Meiqi was entangled in the scandal of being a homewrecker and taking sensitive photos.
Too many fans only
The difficulty of managing members’ private lives is a major flaw that can destroy the entire careers of many populous groups. Besides, the controversy and fierce rivalry between the fan-only components (who only like one or a group of people) is another downside of the multi-idol lineup.
The most typical is the recent case of NCT. Specifically, after NCT 127 received Daesang at the controversial Seoul Music Awards, NCT Dream fans rented a truck to drive in front of the SM Entertainment building to confirm that their idol was not involved in the scandal of the “brother” unit. From this, it can be seen that NCT‘s individual fans are extremely large.
Large individual fan bases also lead to them buying idol albums just to accomplish achievements. During their comeback with Universe, NCT recorded million copies in sales. However, behind this is an image of hundreds of albums being thrown away, affecting the environment for the sole reason of not winning the photocard that they want.
Waste of talent, the audience has to remember all the names
Debuting a group with too many members also leads to wasted talent. Typically, when it comes to WJSN, the audience will immediately think of a talented Bona, SeolA with her amazing singing; when it comes to TREASURE they remember Haruto‘s cool rap, Yoshi‘s unpredictable transformation, multi-talented and funny Yedam; and another handsome Mingyu, badass Vernon when coming to SEVENTEEN.
It can be seen that the remaining members don’t have many chances to showcase their talents with fans. The audience can hardly even remember all the names.
We can’t deny all the benefits that a group with a large size can bring such as sales, image diversity and resources. However, this also has many downsides that we can clearly see above.
