- The six-member girl group under Source Music was accused of ‘plagiarising’ dance moves from Twice’s I Can’t Stop Me in its debut music video for Fearless
- Fans were hoping Lesserafim would be more like Blackpink, and were disappointed with the short tennis skirts and heels, considering Eunchae is only 15 years old
The band recently made its debut with its first official music video Fearless (“I’m Fearless” is an anagram of the band’s name). Though it sparked rave reviews, the group has in fact been causing controversy since it first made headlines.
From gossip mongers trying to drag up a member’s bullying past, to the group’s choreography receiving tons of backlash from netizens, Lesserafim continues to be a hot topic on everyone’s lips. Here we take a look at five of the scandals surrounding the highly anticipated girl band.
1. Kim Garam’s bullying past
Soon after Source Music unveiled the group’s six members, one of them drew particularly negative attention online: Kim Garam was accused of being a bully at school. Not only that, but as quoted from Meaww, “a photo of Garam standing in front of a chalkboard with pornographic drawings was released”, which spread like wildfire on the internet.
However, Hybe and its subsidiary Source Music quickly squashed the overnight scandal by releasing an official statement.
“Since yesterday, there have been accusations made against her [Kim Garam] on various online communities, and we have conducted our own internal investigation on these claims. The result of our investigation is as follows. The accusations that maliciously slandered Kim Garam were maliciously edited to overemphasise the events that occurred during a time when she was making friends in her early middle school days.”
It continued, “Contrary to the claims, it was confirmed through a third-party statement that Kim Garam was actually a victim of school bullying such as cyberbullying and malicious rumours when she entered school.”
The official statement ended with, “We would like to reiterate that we will take legal action without any chance of settlement,” as the allegations contained attempted defamation.
2. “Inappropriate” choreography
Despite the girls’ debut single Fearless doing extraordinarily well with over 53 million views at the time of writing, the happy occasion also drew backlash from netizens – in particular concerning the choreography of the music video.
The music video showed off some cool dance moves and beats, but sparked criticism for some of the more provocative choreography.
According to KBI Zoom, some netizens thought the choreography was inappropriate because some of the girl group’s members are minors.
3. Plagiarised dance moves?
Concerned fans made public comments: “I thought Lesserafim was going in the same direction as Blackpink with their girl crush concept, but their choreography is like Twice’s,” per Korean media.
4. What about Gfriend?
Source Music formed Gfriend in 2015 and the girl group went on to attain success, winning several rookie awards, and achieving impressive commercial sales and great momentum. However, the girl group disbanded in May 2021 after all of the members left when their contracts finished.
Some fans have been furious and downright confused about why Source Music didn’t show the same protection of Gfriend that they gave to Lesserafim. One Korean report cited an excerpt from a frustrated fan: “The women who built you from the ground up did not get the bare minimum protection from you for six years btw.”
Another fan explained further, “Gfriend was used by both of them, and while Source [Music] was just overworking them [and] not spending their hard-earned money on them … [they] did not even gave one single apology for info leakage at least.”
Even worse, after the fandom blowout, South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) had Source Music pay a fine of US$2,300 (3 million won) for leaking customer’s private information, according to KBI Zoom. It refers to a case where Source Music used a Google questionnaire to refund fan club membership fees, but accidentally revealed the personal details of 22 fans in the process.
5. Controversial outfits
Another controversy that the group has faced is its choice of suggestive fashion ensembles – especially considering that member Eunchae is only 15 years old. Fans were baffled at the unlikely combination of wearing tennis outfits with high heels, saying, “no one can play tennis in high heels!”
Fans also commented that the nature of the revealing outfits didn’t emphasise sportiness and only made Hybe and Source Music’s dubious motivations more apparent: to supposedly objectify Lesserafim and to create unnecessary exposure for the newbies.
But as they say, any publicity is good publicity … right?
