I'm just going to write a post here, somewhat a rant somewhat just a fact. It's linked to this situation but is mostly just a statement about celebrities as a whole. I'm only posting it here as it brings up many concerns people have for the NewJeans members.
Especially with the release of Jeanette McCurdy's book "I'm Glad My Mum Died" it's becoming increasingly clear children and minors should not be celebrities. Not in Korea. Not anywhere. I won't lie, I haven't read the book but TW (ed, abuse and potential grooming): Jeanette was forced to become a child actress by her mother, was forced to diet to the point she developed an eating discorder, and had an uncomfortable relationship with someone she named 'the creator'. And the sad fact is Jeanette is definitely not the only one. When you become a celebrity you get opened up to so many toxic situations. Firstly, you have to cast asside studies and work in order to persue the career. If the career fails you are screwed. Second, you have allowed infinite people to have access to everything about you. They can say anything they want to you. They can say whatever they want about you. Most adults can't even handle this, so how is a child suppose to? Three, and this happens everywhere to all child celebrities so I'm ngl it's very stupid for Kpop stans to act like this is only a Kpop issue (though that doesn't take away from the fact that this is happening in Kpop and shouldn't be), you get sexualised by both other teens who think it's okay because they're the same age, or by adults who, whether their intentions are malicious or not, are being creeps. While I think the minimum work age for celebrities should just be 18, I know that's unrealistic, so I think 16 at the MINIMUM should be the age of debut. And 13 at the minimum should be the age of training, though on the higher end would be better.
But another thing is, whether we want to accept it or not, when we choose to support celebrities, we are all running the risk of supporting not good people. Min Heejin is an example of someone who is surrounded by accusations and therefore we have the ability to decide whether to support her or not. I recently saw a video and for many reasons please do take this with a grain of salt because it's K-Tube Shorts and so could easily be false, but the video claimed an ex-worker from the idol industry said that a popular female idol who I won't name but who debuted as a minor and spent most of her career as a minor was constantly approached by adult male idols. These adult male idols might've been the same male idols people stan. But no one would ever think their idol is doing this. Because most celebrities have the smarts to not make it obvious they're bad people. We don't know celebrities. For all we know, we're all supporting a pedo, a homophobe, a racist, a misogynist, a bully etc. We can't know. What we see on the surface regardless of scandals and claims against these people still probably don't reflect the whole truth. I guess what I'm trying to say is, none of us are really at fault if we've supported someone or are supporting a bad person, because there's no real way of knowing what these people are like for sure. Everyone should be able to just make up their own decisions about what feels right for them.
Okay that's all I had to say, feel free to skip the post if you don't care but if you're curious as to what I have to say feel free to read and comment