Scatter_88mil

Do please tell me exactly where in my post is not being realistic, then we can start talking whether here or on PM. Just because I'm not praising them all the time like some members here doesn't automatically mean I'm an unsupportive grumpy nutter of the sort. It's nothing new or even remotely surprising though, and I prefer to be honest about my opinions as well.

I could probably say the same for Korea lol. In any scenario the two Koreas reunite (which may likely happen in the distant future) or the current rate of politics going the same for 10-20 years, I'm willing to bet $100 that the government will very likely collapse and probably be overthrown by a military coup.

I'm curious as to which side of the political spectrum the group has actually voted for, or even lean on for that matter. Korea is my native motherland after all, and since politics is so closely tied with history, it gets my attention quite a bit From military dictatorships to a democracy, and with a ton of infighting here and there, it makes great entertainment to see the ruling and opposition parties slam it out one another lol.

1) Yes, they're the sixth municipal elections. Aside from governors, it's also elections of various other figures in metropolitan councils and the like. . 2) The guy who resigned, as CaptFantasy mentioned, was ROK Prime Minister Jung Hongwon. The position of PM is still left open, though a man named Ahn Daehee (former Supreme Court judge and lawyer) was nominated before he withdrew from it due to raised concerns of alleged corruption related to earned a bit too much during his tenure as a lawyer - at least that's what the opposition party has claimed. President Park is still in position, and won't be going until four years (unless she's somehow impeached or resigns, though this is very unlikely). EDIT: for more info regarding the 2014 June municipal elections, refer to these links; http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2014/06/03/south-koreas-local-election-a-test-for-president/ http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/640699.html http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/621088.html http://news.yahoo.com/ferry-tragedy-turns-local-korea-polls-referendum-040104551.html

Just to be helpful, if you have anything to ask about Korean politics, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about it (I follow K-politics closely here, probably more than anyone else in this entire site).

Man, it still kinda feels like yesterday when the three brothers were just little munchkins :/ Can't believe it's already been nearly 4 years then lol

@Uncle fan It is necessary to mention when discussion becomes of what is the main player of T-ara's image downfall. I don't disagree with you that the media has certain amount of influence, and there's plenty of examples of it playing a major role in breaking and making careers - I've mentioned myself that it is one of the two bigger players that effectively threw T-ara right at the trashcan for the sake of viewer ratings. At that time however, what the media did during that scandal was openly report what CCM had stated in its disastrous PR press conferences more than anything else, considering KKS himself basically had reporters from every newspaper imaginable right in front of his eyes. Had the latter avoided that (or at least had someone with more tact doing it), the media wouldn't have been extremely active at the time. It doesn't help that the company's conferences at the time, by feeding the media, pretty much engaged in an extremely dirty mud-slinging campaign against Hwayoung and using T-ara as a shield to avoid public scrutiny (or rather, dampen it) against the company itself. The media at the time was pretty much invited to play its part. Using Newsen as a 'pro-T-ara' propaganda outlet didn't help things one bit either, as it was used to bash other idol groups at the time of T-ara promoting SL. Later on in 2013, the CCM itself goes to restrict the press in what it's allowed to write in respect to T-ara, and winded up antagonizing one outlet up to the point it actually resorted to open threats. That being said, I rest my case on this.

@Uncle_fan - I strongly beg to differ there. It's called being realistic. Idol groups don't last forever, and this is an obvious fact that's been proven by history itself. There have been groups in the past in Korea whose fandoms were numerous times bigger and supportive than T-ara's and even SNSD's to a degree, but they disbanded and went their own ways. Some simply became a shadow of their former glory (i.e. Shinhwa, G.O.D and likely Buzz). 1) If CCM actually learnt how to do proper PR, then the media wouldn't have been going on a reporting spree and the catastrophe could actually have been better contained and had a smaller impact on T-ara's image. Blaming it all on the media is just plain ignorance and only breaking the tip of the iceberg. 2) Who's 'they'? You make it sound like the group endured it all out of their own sheer willpower without taking in the factor of management. In case you've forgotten or simply never knew, regardless if they wanted to give up or not, they were in absolutely no position to do anything out of their own choice. Kim Kwangsoo as early as 2011 had made it fairly clear that idols should never ever go up against their company regardless of reason, and is not afraid of making it extremely difficult for those who do so in a rather appalling manner - Nam Gyuri and Hwayoung are two major example. Bluntly put, CCM has a gun put up right behind their heads 24/7. Seriously, there are way too many fans who literally either deny, fail to acknowledge or remain ignorant of this, while putting all the blame on the media and Korea's online community. It's rather distasteful whitewashing, at best and at worst, makes them no better than the other side, if not even more so by making everything so black-and-white. T-ara doesn't have full power over what they want to decide in regards to their careers whether as a group or individual, as with many other idols. 3) Lee Hyori didn't grow bigger because she didn't 'give up'. She was already fairly well-known as early as her days in FinK.L. though today, is nowhere near as popular as she was back in her primal years. Just like many other older celebrities. 4) You're basically saying fans should be mindless drones that should accept and support everything the group does. If that's what you think fans should do, then it's no different to saying we should support CCM. 5) A fan is someone who stays with their celebrity because they simply like said celebrity in whatever way he/she interprets it to be. The definition of fan, is very debatable. As far as T-ara is concerned, there are fans who like them for their looks, fans who like them for their personalities, fans who like them for their music etc. It's all split, and the word 'fan' is what keeps them together in one spot as a community. Not a group that basically says 'T-ARA STRONG!!!!!!' all the time. 6) CCM obviously never really considered fans to be of much importance anyway. Back in 2012, there was quite a bit of worries/concerns that T-ara was being severely overworked, in poor health (in Boram's case, specifically) and the whole new member debate + KKS's public threats against the group. These concerns, were either flat-out ignored or met with a rather lackluster response, which pretty much says the company doesn't give a damn about our opinions so long as they can make a quick buck out of our wallets even if it means having to overwork the group to extremely unhealthy lengths (which they already have plenty of times). If their agency can't even respect fans even if its valid concerns, then that makes supporting the group a little bit difficult, at least for me anyway. 7) Whether you like it or not, the Hallyu Wave cannot sustain on being more reliant on K-pop. It doesn't help that the music industry in Korea is utterly corrupted to the core along with the filming industry, yet the K-government is trying to export it as some kind of brand of perfect lala-land lollipop. Secondly, contrary to what you claim, K-pop has been largely the same for the last several years. Ever since 2010 (if not 2009, arguably), the music industry's been badly over-saturated with cookie cutter idol groups that are basically knock-off versions of the more successful groups and has become extremely reliant on idol groups for revenue, and this shows absolutely no sign of slowing down anytime soon. If anything, at its current rate, K-pop has already shot itself in the foot in the long-term. There are no potential successors of the mega- groups like SNSD, 2NE1, Big Bang, DBSK etc. and the 'mid-tier' groups like After-School, SECRET, SISTAR etc. either don't have large enough fandoms, labels with abundant resources or staying power to replace them once they disband.

I advocate the fandoms should petition to the game developer and publisher companies in Korea to make specific T-ara skins in their RPG and FPS games, similar to Sudden Attack in 2012 :3 Just slap on some camo fatigues, combat boots, bulletproof vests, berets or field caps, sunglasses and utility belt or webbing, and it's all set >:-D

Either the author of the article is a huge, huge fan of the group, was paid a good sum of cash by CCM to write this up or it's a mix of both. It just reeks of it. As for people claiming T-ara won't be going away anytime soon - we'll see what happens after 3 years at the very least. Admittedly, I personally thought that the group wouldn't last beyond 2014/2015 but by the looks of it ,that does not appear to be the case (so long as they continue on as they are going now), but to think they'll be staying as a group in the long-term is extremely wishful thinking. From that logic, you could probably say the same for SNSD, but even they're not likely to stay as they are now in say, the next 6 years and plus. Even the 1st gen groups that had fandoms that outsized the ones of many popular groups today (like SISTAR) ultimately became history. If anyone's going to bring up Shinhwa, be noted that the group had times of extensive inactivity, especially when you count their conscription service. The whole 'going solo' trend has been going on for some time now, and T-ara's not an exception + it's more of an indicator that the members are exploring what career they want when they either decide to leave on their own accord (or against their will) or when T-ara disbands in its current lineup. They sure as hell won't be staying as the idols we've known since 2009. That's for sure,. Er, what? For some reason, a lot of people (and i-fans in general) seem to have this weird mythological belief that Korea's public and online community is to blame for the whole thing. Anyone with even a modicum of brains can easily tell that the Korean media and CCM are the ones that played the biggest role in T-ara's crash-and-burn incident, especially considering both used the group as a scapegoat (whether intentionally or unintentionally) to further their own agendas regarding that mess, despite the immense long-term consequences it would bring forth. The public and online community simply bought it, and are the product of as a result of piss-poor management within the press and the company that went on for the the rest of 2012 and 2013. They are a massively over-exaggerated mythical threat. While you can throw out the 'but other countries don't care!' card, but be reminded that still to this day and in the future, T-ara is in the end, a Korean group in a Korean company that is still more reliant on money from Korean fans than anywhere else, and their main source of popularity (or what's left of it) is in Korea, a tiny country with 50 million people that have extremely fast access to the internet anywhere they go. And no, T-ara won't be 'staying long' in the business. That's just wishful thinking. It's already dying, bro :3 IIRC, K-pop has been on a 'decline' in Japan since last year (even SM has admitted a decline in sales at the time), which isn't really good news since a massive portion of its overseas revenue happens to be from Japan, adding that it coincides with the fact that the number of visiting Japanese tourists has also declined significantly too, which is...not so great for the Hallyu Wave itself as well as the tourism industry . The K-govt and media aren't exactly the brightest crayons in the box, nor are really appearing to be particularly innovative in trying to solve the issue (the same could also be said of K-pop labels too). At best, it'll probably end up hitting niche audiences, similar to Japan's pop culture has though still heavily reliant on domestic sales. The only industry that's doing extremely well in the Hallyu Wave and faces zero danger of declining in the foreseeable future is the gaming industry (in spite of the ridiculous regulations slapped on it), backed up by that it makes way more revenue than music does by several times the amount, appealing to a much broader audience and a far bigger 'social equalizer'. IMO, the Hallyu Wave in the future will very likely become more and more focused on gaming and other forms of entertainment while music falls from the priority list (of course, this also means the govt will likely need new leaders to support this too, rather than the current lot that are incapable of looking at things in the long-term). Music and films were the biggest players of soft-power in the 20th century....gaming will likely completely overtake the soft-power expansion in this century.

^ 토토로 = Totoro Photo was taken at Chungnam (slang for South Chungchung Province), Buyeo County (fun fact - also the most richest province in all of Korea)