Recently, IVE’s Rei had a livestream, where she showed off a brownish Hello Kitty plushie. During the livestream, Rei mentioned that she made the plushie wear certain clothes to create a “Hip Hop” vibe, then pretended the doll was rapping by using certain words and sounds associated with the genre.
This action of Rei has quickly raised eyebrows, as getting a “tan” plushie and immediately making it rap and wear “Hip Hop” clothes leans into racial stereotypes associated with dark-skinned people.
So one else finds it a bit weird that #REI from #IVE gets a tanning kitty and decides to give it camo boxers to look “hip hop” and then says “gang gang skrtt” or should we let this slight ignorance pass bc she said it in a cute way? #kpop pic.twitter.com/vz4MNSzULK
— nobodyyy (@ooooaaaaooaa1) July 29, 2024
As a result, the female idol quickly came under fire, with fans and various international netizens trying to educate Rei on stereotypes via SNS posts.
It seems that Rei has seen these comments, as the female idol sent an apology to fans regarding the matter.
God I’m so thankful for how sincere and seriously she took this. We love you rei 🫶🏼 https://t.co/dMeX1ak5Mv pic.twitter.com/zcKPnm5mnV
— Cassie 🌴CRUSH🌴 (@reikkomia) July 31, 2024
In particular, Rei published several messages on the fan communication platform Bubble, saying, “I realized while monitoring a recent live stream that while introducing a plushie that I wanted to show off to DIVEs (fans of IVE), I unintentionally made some inappropriate remarks. I take full responsibility for the fact that I said harmful things during the live and I would like to sincerely apologize to those who were hurt.”
“I will do my best to be more careful about what I say and how it influences DIVEs in the future and be more responsible so that I can only bring happiness to DIVEs. I apologize for writing this in Korean because my English isn’t very good”, the female idol added.
Source: X, Krb
