Kpopalypse assesses more street harassment danger levels in k-pop music videos
Kpopalypse is back to assess street harassment danger levels in k-pop videos once again! Wait… what? Read on to find out more!
Seven years ago Kpopalypse dropped a post assessesing street harassment danger levels in k-pop music videos. In this post I examined several popular k-pop videos from the birth of the k-pops up until 2019 that romanticised creepy men chasing after women who didn’t really want the attention, and asked the question – what the actual fuck?
At the time of writing this post, seven years later, a lot has changed in the world of the kpoposphere. Men treat women much more respectfully, it’s always safe to wander out late at night alone, and nobody ever stalks anyone in music videos or real life…. oh just kidding, none of that is true, things are just as weird as ever, and the “street harassment” video format in k-pop is here to stay.
Kpopalypse will now look at some newer k-pop videos in this category and assess them on the following criteria:
Creepiness level: how annoying and entitled are the k-pop guys being? Are they like that idiot ex who tries to smash your door down after you lock him out of your room, or constantly tries to beat up your new man? Or are they more like the sneaky ex-partner who contacts you under false aliases and pretends to be someone new, just to keep tabs on you?
Threat level: it’s one thing to be a nuisance, but how much of a threat do these guys potentially pose to the women pictured? Are there obvious signs that the males could instigate events that could make the situation depicted turn violent or nastier than portrayed?
Defense potential: how good are the woman’s chances of repelling these pestering guys? What would be the best self-defence options for her? Could she easily handle the situation with a few basic street-smarts, or does she need to take a quick course of “The Weaker Sex (Sayest Thou!)”?
Of course all this learny stuff might be a bit offensive to some people who don’t think that they should have to worry about this sort of thing. I agree with them. Yes it would be nice if women didn’t have to worry about self-defence at all, but until the characters in my books become reality and start changing the world with their male-genitalia-mutilating ways, it probably pays to promote some street-smarts, because Seungri is out there somewhere right now in a club near you.
LNGSHOT – Facetime
Creepiness level: it’s definitely a special kind of creep who harasses you while you’re buying stuff inside a convenience store. These boys definitely have a “lng shot” of leaving a good impression by annoying this random blonde agency trainee lady in a public area. Yes she’s smiling and later dances with them, but only because her contract says she has to.
Threat level: while the visible ceiling cameras can sometimes be good for assisting with legal action after the event, these are less useful for protection while things are going down. YouTube is full of surveillance footage of people getting attacked in full view of cameras. Tight spaces also make this scenario tricky to navigate, even worse because there’s nowhere to escape from the awful music, perhaps the biggest safety threat in this scenario.
Defense potential: convenience store shelving can be a disadvantage for mobility but also an advantage for making a scene. Enough shopping alleyway destruction can make enough of a noise to attract bystanders and make would-be attackers scatter or at least think twice about attacking the insane person tipping over everything. You’d better hope the clerk isn’t in on it, as the one in this video certainly looks a bit shady like he might be a group member, but if he is and locks the doors on you at least you’ll know that he’s also suffering with you by having to hear his own shitty song.
BamBam – Wondering
Creepiness level: in this video BamBam pursues some girl walking along a beach, who seems fairly irritated until they both get wiped out by a big wave, after which she’s basically fine with it, I guess the water disoriented her enough to affect her situational awareness. Later they’re about to kiss underwater and suddenly he gets pulled down into the depths, I guess BamBam felt like a shark, or maybe a shark felt like BamBam chiki chika chu
Threat level: harassment by a body of water varies in danger levels depending on where you live. In some countries escape across the waves might potentially lead to safety, but where I live that would only lead to being horribly mutilated by various ocean-dwelling creatures. I don’t know where this was shot, but assuming it was Korea there’s a possibility she could sprint along the beach to the safety of some nearby tetrapods, which no idol wants to be seen anywhere near lest they become part of a “risky tetrapod activity” controversy.
Defense potential: throwing sand in the eyes of attackers actually works pretty well as long as they’re not wearing eye protection and you can make a quick getaway afterward, however in this case BamBam has his whole entourage on the beach with him engaging in very harassing symchronised dances to bad boy-pop music. Who knows what other atrocities they’re capable of. If the tetrapod gods are absent her best bet might be to beg for mercy before BamBam starts singing old Got7 songs.
The Wind – Hello, My First Love
Creepiness level: The Wind start stalking some girl who is just trying to pay attention in class. One of the boys eventually splits off from the group and follows her down the road into a wooded area, his groupmates chortling behind him. It all has extremely bad vibes, but soon enough she’s groping his seashells and drinking his flavoured milk, further reinforcing the creepy message that all these videos have which is “if she’s not that interested, it just means you’re not stalking her hard enough”.
Threat level: with lots of other students around, school should be theoretically safe, but then that never helped me all the times that I was bullied. It’s worth taking school stalking as a serious event that can lead to serious consequences, like being framed as the bully instead and messing up your k-pop debut. At least The Wind’s song is uncharacteristically good for one of these videos, so you can listen to a decent tune while you get endlessly propositioned.
Defense potential: the problem with school harassment is that you’re trapped in a room with your harassers sometimes out of academic obligation. Telling a teacher can work in some cases, but not all teachers give a shit, and if you’re not able to pay someone to take care of the problem or befriend a Kim Garam who can give the bullies some of their own medicine, the best option might actually be home-schooling. Don’t worry, the lazy teachers all use AI to mark your homework these days, you’re not missing anything you can’t just learn in your bedroom.
BOYNEXTDOOR – Serenade
Creepiness level: the boys from BoysNextDoor can’t seen to decide if they want to flirt with you the viewer, or flirt with the girl who just wants to walk down the street. If there’s one thing worse than a harasser who won’t leave you alone, it’s one who gets the shits when you start going out with someone new AND who wants to play the field themselves at the same time. Creepy to the max.
Threat level: probably not that extreme in this instance. Unless the k-pop boy group have their own van parked off-camera, she’s probably got a good chance of de-escalating until she meets the much busier road up ahead… or just teleporting somewhere else like she appears to do at 1:07.
Defense potential: at 0:53 the girl walks past something in the window that looks like some kind of new sentinel droid from Boston Dynamics. I think that if she smashes the window it will alert that thing’s sensors and the droid will activate its arm-mounted turrets, then we’ll have one less shit boy group in the world.
YOUNITE – Love It
Creepiness level: Younite chase some girl all around the school in this video. In one weird scene the boys somehow break into her locker to deposit love-heart plushies, which should be enough to get them hauled straight into the principal’s office for both harassment and vandalising school property. Someome expel these creepy delinquents.
Threat level: given that these boys seem to be able to teleport from one sportball field around the school to another at a whim, the danger level is obviously very high and there’s really no escape.
Defense potential: at one point the girl is wearing headphones, probably listening to some much better song, but not being able to hear the approaching k-pop losers could be dangerous. Her only real defence here is to be aware enough of her surroundings to alert the authorities, or perhaps activate area-of-effect boy-group noise-cancelling so at least she doesn’t have to hear this crappy song while she’s being attacked.
Mugi – Love Again
Creepiness level: inappropriateness isn’t just for your bias, nugu rock groups are doing the street harassment videos too! In this one, nobody’s even on this street which is particularly creepy as the guy is deliberately making his move when nobody is around.
Threat level: on a country road is definitely one of the worst places to meet a creeper, especially if it’s in a country like Korea that isn’t riddled with lethal wildlife like my own, otherwise you could probably just push the guy onto a random plant and there’s about a 60% chance it would eat him.
Defense potential: the girl plays along at first, appeasing her attacker, then tries the “look over there, a shiny object” trick at 0:51. She then starts running to get away from the guy, a chase that continues on and off for the rest of the video. Running is a good option only if there is a clear escape in sight, otherwise you’re just making yourself more tired and less able to defend yourself in other ways, like tying this shithead down and playing his own crappy Autotuned vocals at him until he shits his pants and promises to never do it again.
Corbyn Besson & Tzuyu – Blink
Creepiness level: it’s one thing to stalk a woman in your video, it’s quite another to have her singing in the video as well and have the entire song be about the stalking. I can’t decide whether Corbyn Besson is the nicest guy for his “awareness raising” capaign, or the biggest creep ever for this ridiculously pervy video. Maybe it’s both. Or maybe he’s a reader and is just trying to help me out with this list.
Threat level: Corbyn looks kind of weedy and I’m pretty sure Tzuyu with all that idol gym training could take him. Nothing to worry about.
Defense potential: Just keep walking. If the R&B gets too loud in your ear just do some crappy sing-rapping as the video demonstrates and then just quicken the pace a little. Corbyn looks like he has a weak constitution, he won’t keep up the chase for long.
IU – Square’s Dream
Creepiness level: the squares in this video seem to dream of IU a bit too much, and that’s understandable as we probably all do, but their relentless keeping pace with her and mimicking her actions in some kind of bizarre stalking mockery plus catcalling her while floating by in various bubbles and dirigibles is definitely crossing a line. It’s one thing to be a douchebag in a car, it’s worse when your car floats.
Threat level: while the squares do have a height deficit which is a disadvantage in melee combat, things get serious later on in the video when they start discharging some space-age style weapons. We see at 2:31 that the weapons seem to have the power to slow down both the song and IU herself, clearly an existential threat designed to overpower her plus make her recent music even worse.
Defense potential: IU’s strategy of ignoring the threat completely while strolling along the Minecraftian ramparts may be an attempt to prevent escalation but such strategies always need a backup plan. IU sings that the world is round, perhaps she should change her ideology to Flat Earth and build her castle right along the edge of the world so she’s got an existential void to push the squares into.
Taeyeon ft. Chanmina – #GirlsSpkOut
Creepiness level: Taeyeon is here to save us all from street harassment videos with her own anti-harassment video, an unsurprising theme from Taeyeon as she is someone with definite experience in this area.
Threat level: the threat level quickly dissipates after the first minute or so of this video once the guy gets brained with the big-ass sign, but before then, loser guys in cars are a definite menace. Any woman who lives in an environment where there are roads with cars that drive along them has experienced random guys saying shit from cars, or just using cars to be ultra-creepy.
Defense potential: Taeyeon has earned her stripes dealing with shitty men and knows better than to try any flashy moves. She’s A-list enough to have a random street sign on standby to fall on the attacker and crush them c-pop style, now that’s smart. However if Taeyeon is in an area where she might not have access to non-OH&S compliant signage when she needs it, I suggest that instead she quickly call her managers and make them sign the boy into a seven year slave contract with “optional” three year extension. There’s nothing more effective to make the streets safe for women than locking all the boys ino the k-pop trainee dungeon. For the rest of us poors we’ll have to make do with smashing windows.
That’s all for this post! Hopefully you’re now feeling safer and more confident, or atl least know which boy groups to avoid! Kpopalypse will return!
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