NCT members apologize for insensitive response to earthquake news

[em-cavey.livejournal.com]

Several NCT members have come under fire from netizens due to their inappropriate behavior upon receiving an earthquake alert during a live broadcast on December 14th. In response to the backlash, Doyoung, Mark, and Johnny apologized through social media.

At 5:19 PM on December 14th, a 4.9 magnitude earthquake occurred approximately 40 kilometers off the coast of Seogwipo city on the island of Jejudo. Almost immediately afterwards, a mass emergency alert was distributed to Korean citizens’ smartphones. NCT was conducting their NCT UNIVERSE Countdown Live when sounds of the notification came through from a staffer’s phone and the members joked around at first, thinking it was one of the routine Covid-19 update notifications (but unlike pandemic notifications, emergency alerts are delivered with a siren-like alarm).

However, they were quickly told that there had been an earthquake in Jejudo. Doyoung then mentioned ‘Earthquake,’ one of the B-side tracks off their album, and Mark started singing a few lines before being told to stop by the others. Johnny started dancing before being pulled back into his seat.

After the live broadcast, Korean fans and netizens criticized the members’ behavior as an inappropriate and insensitive response to what could have been a very serious situation. Doyoung, Mark and Johnny all apologized through their Instagram stories. However, some netizens further criticized their choice of medium, since stories are automatically erased after 24 hours.

Mark wrote, “I want to say that I am deeply sorry for the image that I showed of myself during today’s comeback live broadcast. I am really sorry for misjudging the situation and acting carelessly and rashly. I will reflect deeply on myself and work hard to never show behavior like this again.”

Doyoung wrote, “Hello, this is Doyoung. During today’s comeback live broadcast, I made a rash mistake without properly recognizing the situation. I want to apologize for those who were hurt and felt uncomfortable because of my frivolous actions and words. This was entirely my mistake, so I apologize again without excuses. I will work hard in order to not make a mistake like this again. Once again, I want to say sorry to those who were hurt by my actions and words.”

Johnny wrote, “I am very sorry for my rash actions during the comeback live broadcast. In future, I will be more careful about my thoughts and actions. I am really sorry. I want to apologize again to those who felt uncomfortable while watching my behavior.”


As of December 15th, no death or injuries and only mild property damage have been reported as a result of the earthquake. But Jeju citizens and authorities remain wary of continuing aftershocks.


Sources: 우와쟤봐, Yonhap, SBS New via Naver, translations from Soompi

They are very lucky there weren’t actually any casualties

Comments

[kyulkyung.livejournal.com]

idols are so stupid

[nudrive.livejournal.com]

lol I came here to comment this

[vanilla-09.livejournal.com]

truly like especially with this generation's idols they are already well-off, uneducated (both formally and just through life) and are really oblivious to the rest of the world it's actually really putting me off the whole scene. And this is not to say that it's not the case in other entertainment industries but that's how I feel about whatever market were talking about tbh.

[memei5.livejournal.com]

end post

[zui-circus.livejournal.com]

Man it is hard to stan this group, there is always something surrounding them, not in a good way.

[dantethetaco.livejournal.com]

Jisung and Shotaro were very quick to cut it out.

[lightframes.livejournal.com]

Imagine your younger members being more mature

[greasetastic-x.livejournal.com]

so so incredibly stupid.

I couldnt be an idol because i'd curse my groupmate out if they did stupid shit like this

[memei5.livejournal.com]

They are very lucky there weren’t actually any casualties

really, truly. i can imagine a block b incident if there had been any casualties

i'm sure it wasn't malicious but it's just...stupid and thoughtless. i also find it funny that it's 19 and 20 year old jisung and sungchan having to make 22, 25 and 26 year old members stop

op, doyoung initially says 'earthquake!', mark starts singing and johnny gets up dancing. jisung and another member start saying 'hey, hey, hey' and sungchan sort of pulls johnny back to his seat

[em-cavey.livejournal.com]

Yeah IA that it's not malicious or really ultimately that big of a deal but definitely dumb and thoughtless. It'll blow over but it would've been so much worse if people had actually been hurt, they really dodged a bullet

And thanks for the who's who! There's just so many....

[memei5.livejournal.com]

[i]There's just so many....[/i]

honestly, i'm concerned that i know about 85% of the members considering i don't even consider myself a fan and have watched a total of 7 NCT music videos in my life...Twitter truly is the transfer of unintentional knowledge

[ohmylol.livejournal.com]

This is me with them, I don't actually want to know about them but I know about the most popular members + Taeil and Johnny (lol) because Twitter

I've seen their last releases but it's more pure curiousity than anything else

[neoreulwonhae.livejournal.com]

OP, that was Johnny that got up and started dancing. Kind of embarrassed that he's my bias in the group... I think if they weren't literally promoting a song called Earthquake right at this moment then they wouldn't have joked about it; the English speaking members seemed to make the connection fastest but yeah that's not an excuse, they should have a filter between joking around/exploiting any reason to promote, and things that should not be joked about. (just to reiterate before anyone gets on my ass, I'm NOT saying it was okay that they joked about it)

Honestly I've been losing interest in NCT in general lately. I know it's their brand to put out "noise" but it's becoming pretty obnoxious. If they would stop shoving Mark and Taeyong down our throats 24/7 and give the other/newer members a chance maybe it would be less boring and breathe some new life into the group(s). Of their latest release (I haven't listened to the whole album or even Beautiful yet) I think Dream had the best song (Dreaming), which is also a surprise to me since I don't like the majority of their songs either and never cared for their concepts. I like Ten, and Xiaojun's voice especially is amazing, but as a whole I'm not that into WayV and if they bring Lucas back I'm out. Their rotating member concept would be more interesting if they actually rotated members more often than once a year (or 2 years). I also think it's pretty stupid that they went back on their Dream concept of graduating and let Mark come back - then what's the point of Dream?! Their concept was supposed to be youth and when they grow up they "graduate" to more mature concepts and subgroups... now they're just a copy of 127??

Anyway not to make this post about my personal NCT gripes but yeah...why do I stan a group that has so many issues...

[nefertitii.livejournal.com]

i agree with some of what you said. but i dont like the dream/graduation concept. they should stop expanding nct as it is. the biggest problem is that theyre bloated. on top of that, the dreamies had really bonded with each other considering they started training as children. i think they did the best thing to keep them all together and maintain their mental health (lots of crying and blubbering during what they thought would be their last stage together). plus they were the most popular subunit and the fans were super unhappy. in the end, money talks.


edit: i will say tho i still love nct's subunit music. nct as a whole should make a comeback every two years to give us and the idols a break.

[dlstmxkakwldrl.livejournal.com]

I agree with your thought on Dream! I think it was a really bad decision to backtrack the concept of it, because now you have two members who cannot commit full time to the Dream, and while they can release albums as 5, touring may not be an option until 127 is on hiatus. And it's just made fans angrier (idk what they expected in all their excitement about dream as 7 permanently). For a company that'll lock their artists in for 7 years, they're really not using enough of their brains to plan for the group for that amount of time, especially with how Lee Sooman was so involved in the process of this concept.

[mortkero.livejournal.com]

I just watched the clip and it is a very thoughtless few seconds.. but at least there were some members who immediately clocked on and shut it down.
Q
They deserve some criticism but in the overall scheme of things, just hope they learn from it.

I speak as someone who has no investment in NCT

[ohmylol.livejournal.com]

They are dumb and Johnny is 26 come on, acting like a child

[suggestivepeach.livejournal.com]

It felt like every time I heard about this group this year there has been a new scandal 😭

[memei5.livejournal.com]

honestly, i feel like we need a scandal roundup ontd original at this point for all of kpop this year alone

[cosmicdaze.livejournal.com]

this earthquake is how i learned that emergency alerts for natural disasters will bypass a silenced phone (unlike the covid alerts) because every phone at my job went off and i had to ask my students what the siren was for because i didn't have my phone on me

they were really so dumb for this, like even for the foreign members you'd think living in korea for as long as they have they'd know that a siren blaring from everyone's phones means something serious happened 🙄

[em-cavey.livejournal.com]

Yup it's very effectively alarming when every phone in your vicinity starts blaring at the time lol. I was on the bus and I nearly jumped out of my skin

[ultraflyy23.livejournal.com]

Yeah it was pretty stupid but that’s it. The whole “every time I hear about this group it’s due to a scandal” thing is kind of stupid because they literally have 20 something members in the group. In the grand scheme of things I don’t think they’re more or less problematic than your average group.

[lightframes.livejournal.com]

I was talking to my brother the other day about how so many people on Twitter think they're being funny when they're really being obnoxious, and if they would think for about three seconds before saying whatever they just said, they could avoid that

This is like that. If they had just thought for just a second it might have occurred to them, "not funny." But why think when you can make a joke!!!

Glad the earthquake wasn't serious.

[dlstmxkakwldrl.livejournal.com]

They were being stupid and should be criticised for it but this just seems overblown.