Why K-pop stars keep relationships hidden
South Korea's £8bn music industry imposes strict rules on its biggest stars

A K-pop star has been accused of "betrayal" after fans discovered she had a boyfriend.
When followers of Karina found out she was dating Lee Jae-wook, an actor, they drove an electronic billboard mounted to a vehicle to her management agency in protest and asked the singer why "the love given to you by your fans" was not enough.
The 23-year-old member of the group Aespa was forced to issue a "grovelling apology", said The Telegraph, in which she said sorry to fans for "surprising you greatly" and promised to show a "more mature and hardworking side" in the future.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It was emblematic of a genre where fans can be "overwhelmingly hateful" and "downright abusive" to anyone they feel threatens their bond with the artist, said the Daily Mail. So if an idol is linked with a "vaguely romantic interest", they "may receive a barrage of hate mail, comments on their appearance and threats to their life".
'Bad for business'
Karina's is "not an isolated incident" because pop stars in South Korea and Japan work in "notoriously pressurising industries", where such personal revelations can be "tricky to navigate", said the BBC.
"Just a decade ago, it was common practice for K-pop agencies to ban new stars from dating or even having a personal mobile phone, and even now admissions of romantic relationships are often considered scandalous to fans."
The "intensely competitive" K-pop industry is worth an estimated £8 billion annually to the South Korean economy, said The Telegraph, and its stars have been "bound by contracts" that have “no dating” rules. They cannot get married without permission.
The driving factor behind these regulations is that industry managers want fans to believe they could have a relationship with the stars. When the Blackpink lead vocalist Jisoo's relationship with actor Ahn Bo-hyun was revealed, sociologist Patrick Williams of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore told the BBC that K-pop stars being in relationships may be "bad for business" because they "want to sell idols that appear to be, at least in an imaginary sense, romantically obtainable".
Although in "many places around the world", the announcement that a young pop star and an actor have become an item would be "little more than a quick celebrity headline", said CNN, in South Korea and Japan, it can "still be taboo" in a culture where record labels like to "promote the fantasy" of "unhitched" celebrities.
Signs of change
There have been "signs of change in recent years", said CNN, "with agencies shifting away from controversial contract terms". Fans have "begun urging each other to allow stars more privacy" and the "ability to live their lives", added the broadcaster, noting that under Karina's apology post, the comment section was "flooded with fans rallying in support".
And although the situation in the K-pop world is particularly extreme, fan discomfort over their pop heroes dating is not confined to the genre. Boy bands from the 1990s such as Take That and East 17 were discouraged from having relationships. Last year, Take That member Howard Donald told the Take That: This Life podcast that he had hid his girlfriend under a blanket during the band's heyday, said The Sun.
In 2015, One Direction fans told a woman linked to band member Niall Horan that they would "find her and kill her", said The Sydney Morning Herald. That came a few years after the late Caroline Flack said that she had received death threats after she was romantically linked with band member Harry Styles.
The intense bond between pop stars and their fans is universal. "When your crush is single, it's amazing because you feel like you still have a chance no matter how unlikely that is," wrote Jasmine Gomez for Seventeen. But "when they start dating someone new, a little something dies inside of you".
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
-
Today's political cartoons - March 15, 2025
Cartoons Saturday's cartoons - bogged down, incident report, and more
By The Week US Published
-
Norway's windfall: should it go to Ukraine?
Talking Point Oil-based wealth fund is intended 'for future generations of Norwegians', but Putin's war poses an existential threat
By The Week UK Published
-
5 government-backed cartoons about the White House Tesla sale
Cartoons Artists take on Cybertrump, Trumpmobile, and more
By The Week US Published
-
10 concert tours to see this spring
The Week Recommends As winter comes to an end, check out a variety of live performances
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
The Supreme Court revives a family's quest to recover looted Nazi art
Under the Radar The painting in question is currently in a Spanish museum
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Gene Hackman: the prolific actor who brought intensity to diverse roles
Feature Hackman was not an easily pigeonholed performer
By The Week US Published
-
Roberta Flack
Feature The piano prodigy who sang ‘Killing Me Softly’
By The Week US Published
-
Why Japanese residents can't watch their country's Oscar-nominated #MeToo documentary
THE EXPLAINER Shiori Ito became one of the faces of Japan's #MeToo movement
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
North Korea (sort of) welcomes tourists again
Under the Radar 'Hermit kingdom' allows foreign visitors for the first time since 2020 – but only in limited areas
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
The pressure of South Korea's celebrity culture
In The Spotlight South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron was laid to rest on Wednesday after an apparent suicide
By Abby Wilson Published
-
Dairy milk, once maligned, is making a comeback
Under the Radar Sales of dairy milk were up 2% in 2024
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published