The creatives behind Prime Video’s Lee Soo Man: King of K-pop documentary have heard your outcry about the controversial trailer. The trailer features snippets of SHINee’s Jonghyun’s funeral as the discussion of “the Dark Side of K-pop” plays over it. The negative impact of K-pop culture has been discussed from the lens of the West, as if K-pop is the only problematic industry.
Director Ting Poo says that Jonghyun’s death is not something they take lightly in the documentary, but included it because it impacted their subject, Lee Soo Man, greatly as well as SM Entertainment and the whole community. She says it doesn’t sensationalize his death in any way.
“The film deals with it with the gravity and seriousness that it deserves,” says Poo. “As for the outcry over the use of the footage, we wanted to show in the trailer that we are not shying away from some of those more difficult things throughout the journey of this culture. There’s a misunderstanding that we’re saying it’s the ‘dark side of K-pop,’ we’re actually saying that is the narrative that the Western media has perpetuated.”
In the documentary, Dr. Stephanie Choi, a K-pop music expert, addresses these myths surrounding the suicides among K-pop artists, revealing it’s a societal problem rather than a “K-pop problem.”
Poo wants to make it clear that the film takes that stance. She states, “It is a much more serious issue. It’s a societal issue, and every one of these artists is a human being with individual struggles and problems.”
Many idols participated in the documentary, openly talking about their mental struggles. In a conservative country where mental health, especially in the K-pop industry, is broadly not discussed, Poo didn’t filter the answers or the content given to her. She reveals the artists were very receptive to telling their stories.
“A lot of the artists talked pretty candidly about their own struggles,” she says. “I was grateful that a lot of them opened up to me in the way that they did. Of course, the people around them want to protect them and all these things, but my stance when going into all of these interviews is that I’m not going to filter my questions. I will respect anyone’s choice whether or not they want to speak.”
The documentary, set to release on May 13 on Prime Video, tells the story of Lee Soo Man, the man widely known as the “King of K-pop,” having created one of the first K-pop empires — SM Entertainment — and the blueprint for what many know as K-pop “idols.” He is the man behind the popular first to current generation artists, such as H.O.T., BoA, TVXQ!, Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, EXO, NCT, and aespa. It centers on his rise, eventual downfall with the company, and his current ventures in the music scene.
Though a Western production is producing the documentary, Poo understands and accepts there is going to be mistrust from fans over the “Orientalist” perception of K-pop. She hopes the documentary will actually dispel a lot of those prejudices that Western media has about the genre.
“I believe that there is this kind of “Orientalizing” and pinning all these things on a genre when there are a lot of issues that extend beyond that,” Poo says. “There are [much] deeper issues or societal issues. There are personal issues like. These things are a lot more complex than that. I really wanted the film to say that, and I hope it did.”
