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Baek Ji Young was hot, hot, hot. The Korean singer burst onto the scene last July with a racy salsa number, helping to kick off a Latin music boom in Seoul. With a successful debut album, her own radio show and an advertising contract with a Korean shoe company, Baek was on the fast track to stardom. But her personal star (lite) express may have been derailed after a raunchy videotape of Baek in a bedroom romp with her former manager turned up on an Internet pay-per-view porn site on Nov. 19. Radio stations scrambled to pull her songs off the air and television stations canceled appearances. The shoe company put its Baek ads on hold. If the singer follows Korea's unspoken rule for disgraced celebrities, especially women, she will quietly walk off stage with her head bowed.
But guess what: Baek isn't following the script. Instead of slinking away, she has hired a lawyer and defiantly vows to continue singing "if a single fan wants me to." At a press conference held Nov. 29, she cried uncontrollably and apologized for arousing public criticism. Then she got feisty, denouncing her former manager and denying she knew he had the camera rolling. Instead of playing the role of the fallen woman, the singer made it clear she sees herself as the victim in this drama. Said Baek: "I decided to come forward to tell the truth to prevent other women from becoming victims like me."
That spunky attitude has turned the young entertainer into an unlikely cause célèbre for South Korea's growing women's rights movement. Korea Women's Associations United calls the scandal a "clear case of invasion of privacy and a violation of human rights," including Baek's right to earn a living. The group has filed a lawsuit against a producer at SBS, the television station that helped publicize the existence of the video. Activists say the case highlights the double standard that still holds in Korea's conservative society, where unmarried women are expected to keep their sexuality under wraps—at least offstage—while men score points for promiscuity. Says Park Cha Oak Kyung, spokeswoman for the women's association: "Why is it that women actresses and singers are expected to be squeaky clean, while the same standards don't apply to their male counterparts?"
The male star in this saga certainly is not facing much heat so far. Baek's former manager, Kim Si Won, phoned a live entertainment program on SBS to say the video was genuine and that he was the guy in it (throughout the 25-minute clip, he repeatedly pulls down the sheets to make sure the camera gets a clear shot of Baek). Claiming he had planned to marry her, he said he shot the footage in his office in October 1998. He did not say why. He concedes Baek may not have known that he was filming their tryst. He told SBS viewers he had not put the graphic footage onto the Net. But he failed to explain who did, and prosecutors are still seeking the culprit.
Kim's appearance on the show turned Korea's Pamela-and-Tommy tape into a must-see item. A student at a high-technology institute soon hacked the security code at the pay-per-view site where the video first turned up. In a matter of days, the footage was posted on private home pages and shareware sites and Koreans were downloading hundreds of thousands of copies. By the time the Ministry of Information and Communication stepped in to stop distribution on Nov. 24, Baek had fled temporarily to Guam to escape a public lynching in the press and on the Internet. A typical Net posting reads: "Is Baek Ji Young a prostitute who gave up being a decent human being?"
While feminists have rallied behind Baek, other activists are joining the fray. Media watchdog groups have condemned the sensationalistic coverage and sounded somber warnings about a slide in journalist ethics. Web activists concerned about a rising flood of porn in Korean cyberspace have also weighed in, throwing up makeshift sites in support of the singer. In Korea's increasingly wired society, a growing number of actresses and even beauty pageant contestants have turned up on the Web nude or in "see-through" bikini shots supposedly taken with infrared cameras. Most of them are fakes with famous faces spliced onto nude photos, sometimes courtesy of Japanese porn actresses who happen to resemble famous Korean stars, according to local press reports.
Baek has certainly fared better than popular actress Oh Hyun Kyung. After a video of Oh having sex with her boyfriend started circulating in April 1999, the media denounced the starlet and women's groups left her twisting in the wind. At a press conference, she apologized for her "crime" and then fled to Los Angeles. Now there is a growing awareness among women's groups of what the real issues are. The test will be—can Baek make a comeback? She'll find out New Year's Eve, when she is due to bring back her Latin rhythms at a concert in Seoul.
Call him Korea's Edison Chen.
In 2000, former celebrity manager Kim Seok Jin shot to notoriety after a sex video of him and his charge - K-pop singer Baek Ji Young - started circulating on the Internet.
He then fled to the US but made headlines again last week, this time for statutory rape charges.
Kim, 45, was arrested by the police in the Koreatown area in Los Angeles on suspicion of having sex with a minor aged below 18, reported Yonhap News Agency.
He is also known by the name Kim Si Won in Korea, although his real name is said to be Kim Seok Wan. He had been on the US wanted list for two years.
A request for bail was put up but rejected by the US court last Tuesday, after US officials received an extradition request from the Korean government.
So far, Ji Young has yet to comment on the news.
Sources close to the singer told The Chosun Ilbo that she 'may not want her name mentioned in connection with Kim since the sex tape scandal nearly ruined her career'. Theirs was a scandal not unlike that which plagues Hong Kong actor Edison Chen and female stars like Gillian Chung and Cecilia Cheung.
Their sex photos appeared online in late January and have been the talk of the town since.
Over in Korea, Ji Young, 32, was last seen in public on 2 Feb, performing at a charity concert at Yonsei University in Seoul, reported My Daily.
Two days later, she reportedly underwent vocal cord surgery to remove a cyst that had caused her voice to break during performances.
She is now supposed to rest and not talk for three to four months, to allow her vocal cords to heal.
But Ji Young has been through worse trials and trauma.
Debuting in 1999 with a sexy image and a hit salsa single, she was soaring up the music charts when a sex video involving her and Kim was leaked on a pay-per-view pornographic website in November 2000.
Kim later admitted in a phone interview with a live entertainment programme on TV that he had filmed the video without Ji Young's knowledge in his office in 1998.
Public outcry ensued and TV stations, radio stations and advertisers alike were quick to boycott Ji Young.
But instead of making herself out to be a 'naive and silly' victim and making a fast exit, the plucky singer put up a fierce fight to stay in showbiz.
Times Asia said she 'defiantly vowed' to continue singing 'if a single fan wants me to', and her resilient attitude won the support of feminist groups and others.
But it was not so easy to sway public opinion.
Severing ties with Kim who had fled the country, Ji Young managed to release a new album in the aftermath of the saga but failed to convince Korea's three main free-to-air channels to lift their bans on her.
Sex tape
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Date: 2009-03-07 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-03-07 02:32 am (UTC)link (http://www.xiaoyenzi.com/2007/06/kawaii-onionhead-emoticon/)
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Date: 2009-03-07 12:59 am (UTC)Geez.
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Date: 2009-03-07 01:14 am (UTC)You just can't take any changes. If you really want to "watch yourself" to get off, buy a big ass mirror.
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Date: 2009-03-07 01:16 am (UTC)when i heard the word mirotic i thought of mirror/erotic and thought it was about sex.
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Date: 2009-03-07 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-07 01:05 am (UTC)...she has hired a lawyer and defiantly vows to continue singing
srsly, you go girl.
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Date: 2009-03-07 01:20 am (UTC)i love her, she's witty.
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