Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
The KMCA (Korea Music Content Association) has issued a statement opposing an amendment proposed last September that called for a reduction in the maximum working hours for teenage entertainers (idols, trainees, actors), for hours to be similarly limited as those in the Labors Standards Act, and that different limitations should be given to different age groups (a lot of it is in this post from a couple years ago).
Under current laws, teenage entertainers aged 15 and older are allowed to work up to 46 hours per week. However, the ‘Labor Standards Act’ limits the working hours of teenagers in the same age group to a maximum of 40 hours per week. The proposed amendment would then reduce the maximum working hours for teenage entertainers aged 15 and older from 46 hours to 40 hours per week.
The KMCA statement claims the amendment is being pushed “without sufficient discussion with the recording industry” and “portrays the entire music industry as unfair without a proper examination of the industry’s current environment.“
Basically, they claim it’ll cause difficulties for groups who have minors in them, say K-pop may be at disadvantages on a global stage because of it, and that the industry may end up lagging. KMCA specifically cite a fear that groups such as IVE and BABYMONSTER will no longer exist in the future. They then claim that the industry sufficiently self-regulates and already adheres to the Popular Culture Industry Act that limits the working hours of celebs under the age of 15, and claim that teaching kids singing and dance is a comparable curriculum to standard schooling. They also throw in the usual “plz think about our nation’s soft power” appeal.
Yeah.
I’ve said this before, but KMCA are effectively is saying that the industry cannot thrive without child labor that exceeds that of adults working a regular 9-5, and doing a manual labor workweek as well.
They also seem to just be arguing for the hell of it because the laws already in place are only a handful of hours more per week, and idols are still being exhausted regardless. That makes sense since it’s questionable how oversight of this would actually be done, and there seems to be a bunch of ways to get around the limits. Really then, what this appears to be about is KMCA just not wanting to head down a slippery slope where they can’t debut minors anymore, as previous regulations appear to be the reason there aren’t many idols younger than 15 anymore (and I don’t see anybody missing them).
——
Oh right, the KMCA.
At some point in recent years, I’ve noticed K-pop fans have started to see KMCA as some neutral actor in these discussions, presumably because they’re new to K-pop. Hopefully, this kind of stuff will disabuse those fans of that notion, as they’ve opposed basically every dispute brought by artists, including those that led to the reasons we don’t have slave contracts anymore. They effectively are a lobbying group formed by all the K-pop companies and distributors, so … caping for them is like one step above being a company stan, an extra level of pathetic. Maybe you liked what the KMCA said about a group you hate or something, so you began to inadvertently (?) bootlick, but if you like the entertainers instead of the corporations then you probably shouldn’t parrot their line of thinking.
If that’s not enough, then it seems like as good a time as any to remind people that the KMCA chairman is Kim Chang Hwan, an industry veteran with a storied career dating back to the 80s who was also convicted of aiding and abetting child abuse in The East Light case. This is also not a new thing, as Kim Gun Mo lightheartedly talked about being hit and abused by Kim Chang Hwan while under his guidance as his junior in the 90s, and Kim Gun Mo ended up suddenly leaving Kim Chang Hwan’s company back then despite his enormous success before eventually reuniting in recent years.
I’ll let you interpret the fact that all these companies don’t seem to have much problem with somebody who has been convicted in relation to child abuse as they advocate for how the K-pop industry is handling its treatment of kids just fine.
