A new show is garnering a lot of negative press for how it treated female K-pop stars on the debut episode.
KBS's Lunar New Year TV special "Bon Bun Olympic" aired on Wednesday and swiftly came under attack for perceived mistreatment of female stars. The show, which assigns celebrities missions to fulfill, was criticized for putting several of the cast members in a variety of demeaning situations.
The most eyebrow raising moment of the show featured tricking the female entertainers into getting on a hidden scale that revealed their weights.
During the segment, the women were asked to dance on a rooftop despite the chilly weather. While dancing, they were weighed without their knowledge and the show's host later revealed how much the weigh, violating the women's trust, and then comparing it with how much the women previously publicly revealed.
Korean idols carefully manage their physical image, and the show is being criticized for taking advantage of the cast members in order to garner ratings.
"Bon Bun Olympics" also threw fake cockroaches at the women during another segment on the show, startling them.
Despite contracts and consent forms that the cast members signed prior to appearing on the special, the stars said they had no idea what they would be put through, according to the Korea Herald.
The show featured popular K-pop idols from groups like GFriend, EXID, After School, TWICE, and a former KARA member.
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Tamar Herman is a multi-media journalist and the co-founder of KultScene. She is a freelance writer and copy editor, and has written for MTV Iggy, Noisey and Paste Magazine.
