Day: June 20, 2022

The surprise announcement by BTS last week that they were taking a break to focus on members’ solo projects stunned their global fanbase, shaking their label’s stock price and leaving many questions about the K-pop supergroup’s future.

HYBE, the company behind the band, denied the group was taking a hiatus — a word used in a translation of the group’s emotional dinnertime video announcement. In the days since, band members have remained active on social media, continuing the stream of posts, photos and assurances that the band wasn’t breaking up.

Despite the immediate impacts — HYBE’s stock initially dropped more than 25% and has yet to fully recover — several factors may still affect BTS’ future. One is looming military enlistment for older BTS members, as well as how engaged the group and their devoted fans, known as ARMY, will continue to be in social issues.

In 2020, at the height of BTS’ success, the South Korean government revised the country’s military law that requires able-bodied South Korean men to perform approximately two years of military service. The revised law allows top K-pop stars — including Jin, the oldest member of BTS — to defer their military service until they turn 30 if they’ve received government medals for heightening the country’s cultural reputation and apply for the postponement. All BTS members meet the criteria as recipients of government medals in 2018.

“Obviously, there’s a looming military enlistment so they might have thought it’d be good to do something individually before it’s too late and that’s why I think military enlistment was the biggest factor,” said Lee Dong Yeun, a professor at Korea National University of Arts.

There have been calls — including from South Korea’s former culture minister — for an exemption for BTS because of their contribution to heightening South Korea’s international reputation. But critics say that such an exemption would be bending the conscription rules to favor the privileged.

Jin, 29, is expected to enlist this year unless he receives an exemption.

Military enlistment of members has always been a headache for HYBE; BTS once accounted for 90% of the label’s profit. Currently, the group makes up 50%-60% of the label’s profit according to a report from eBest Investment & Securities.

The eBest report noted that the rapid stock plunge might have resulted from an “anticipation that the activities as the whole group might be uncertain after being discharged from the military.”

HYBE has been attempting to diversify its portfolio by debuting new K-pop bands, making online games, and rolling out Korean language tutorials.

As the most successful K-pop band to date with hits like “Dynamite” and “Butter,” BTS has for years commanded tremendous attention on social media and with each new music release. They recently performed several sold-out shows in the United States, became the first K-pop act to get a Grammy Award nomination, released an anthology album, “Proof,” and channeled their global influence with an address at the United Nations and a trip to the White House to campaign against hate crimes directed at Asians.

“Once you achieve success like BTS achieved success, then it means there’s a constant expectation to continue doing something that is connected to what you’ve already done, where you’ve already been. In the most recent releases that BTS has brought out, also we can see how they continually reflect back on where they have been,” said CedarBough Saeji, professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at Pusan National University.

She said Tuesday’s announcement signaled the band’s intention to figure out “where they are going for themselves without interference from other people” and “being able to choose their own path forward as artists.”

Last week’s announcement also leaves in doubt the group’s social justice efforts, which have included vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-violence campaigns. BTS’ legions of fans have embraced the causes, matching a $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter after George Floyd’s death.

But the group has faced mushrooming questions about why it isn’t as vocal about discrimination in their own country.

A leading South Korean newspaper recently published a column in which the author mused why South Korea, despite having BTS — “the ambassador of anti-discrimination and human rights” — has struggled to enact an anti-discrimination law for 15 years.

“It’s an irony,” the writer said. “South Korea needs their force for good.”

The country’s lack of an anti-discrimination law has led to unfair treatment against women and foreigners, among others.

Jumin Lee, the author of the book “Why Anti-Discrimination Law?” told the Associated Press that there’s a dire need for the anti-discrimination law in the country.

“South Korea is in essentially the same situation legally as America’s Jim Crow South. Equal protection exists as a constitutional concept, but there is no implementing legislation that allows the government to force private businesses to comply,” Lee said. “What that means in practice is that if I’m a business owner, I could post a sign on my door tomorrow that says, ‘no gays’ ‘no blacks’ or ‘no old people,’ and absent extraordinary intervention by the Constitutional Court, there’s very little the law can do to stop me.”

Lee recently expressed disappointment in the band for not speaking up about the important domestic issue.

“BTS and their business folks know that speaking up in the U.S. is profitable but doing the same back home would be more trouble than it’s worth. So, they don’t,” tweeted Lee after the band’s visit to Washington.

Despite that, Lee said the band’s silence is understandable, stating that BTS would be met with “indifference at best and hostility at worse” from politicians if they did speak up.

Some South Korean celebrities like singers Harisu and Ha:tfelt have been speaking out on touchy subjects such as the anti-discrimination law and feminism, despite backlashes.

After speaking out about the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which killed 304 people in one of the country’s worst disasters, Cannes-winning actor Song Kang-ho and director Park Chan-wook were blacklisted by the administration of the ousted President Park Geun-hye, noted Areum Jeong, a scholar of Korean pop culture.

“So, although many idols might be politically conscious, they might choose not to discuss social issues,” Jeong said.

Several BTS members said during last week’s announcement that they were struggling with the group’s successes and having trouble writing new songs.

“For me, it was like the group BTS was within my grasp until ‘On’ and ‘Dynamite,’ but after ‘Butter’ and ‘Permission to Dance,’ I didn’t know what kind of group we were anymore,” member RM said. “Whenever I write lyrics and songs, it’s really important what kind of story and message I want to give out but it was like that was gone now.”

While that clouds what BTS’ next steps might be, Saeji said their continued candor was necessary because of how much the group has impacted their fanbase.

“They’re meeting the fans with that same honesty and saying to them, ‘You had my help when I needed it. And now I need my help,’” she said. “‘I need to be on my own. To think for myself, to know what I want to write a lyric about, to understand my own mind, to become inspired on my own.’”

Source: Voice of America

Oscar-winning Canadian screenwriter and director Paul Haggis is under house arrest in southern Italy on charges of sexual assault and aggravated personal injury, accusations that Haggis denies, his lawyers said on Monday.

“Mr. Paul Haggis was detained on Sunday with an emergency measure issued by the Brindisi prosecutors and is now under house arrest in Ostuni. He will be questioned by Thursday by a judge who will have to decide whether or not to confirm the detention,” his Italian lawyer Michele Laforgia told Reuters.

Haggis was charged with forcing a young non-Italian woman to have sexual intercourse against her will the course of two days in Ostuni, Italy, public prosecutors in Brindisi said in a statement on Sunday.

“Under Italian Law, I cannot discuss the evidence. That said, I am confident that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr. Haggis,” Haggis’ personal attorney Priya Chaudhry said in a statement.

Both lawyers said Haggis was pleading innocent and would cooperate with authorities.

“A young foreign woman was forced to seek medical care” following the sexual relations, the prosecutors said in the statement.

They said that on Sunday after the non-consensual relations that man accompanied the woman to Brindisi airport, where she was left despite her “precarious physical and psychological conditions.”

An investigative source told Reuters the unidentified young woman will be questioned in the coming 10 days in what is known in Italy as an evidentiary incident, setting out evidence for a possible future trial.

Haggis, 69, wrote “Million Dollar Baby” and co-wrote and directed “Crash,” both of which he won an Oscar for.

In 2018 he denied accusations of sexual misconduct made by four women, including two who accused him of rape.

Haggis was in Ostuni to hold several masterclasses at the Allora Fest, a new film event being launched by Los Angeles-based Italian journalist Silvia Bizio and Spanish art critic Sol Costales Doulton that is set to run from June 21 to June 26.

The Allora Fest said they “learned with dismay and shock the news,” adding that the festival’s directors “immediately proceeded to remove any participation of the director from the event.”

Source: Voice of America

In Numbers

US$ 12 m six months (June-Nov 2022) net funding requirements, represent 71% of total requirements.

57,140 people targeted in May 2022

Operational Updates

Activity 1: Crisis response

• The activity is currently on hold following the end of the 2020/2021 lean season and is planned to resume in October at the start of the upcoming lean season. Preparations are ongoing for the response (October 2022 – March 2023) and, with available funding, the plan is to assist a total of 13,000 people which represents 8 percent of the total number of people planned to be reached under this activity. The targeted people will be assisted either through cash or commodity vouchers.

Activity 2: School Feeding

• WFP continues to provide meals to 50,000 learners (26,000 girls) in 2,000 Early Childhood Care Development Centres (ECCDs) across the country. To address high rates of micronutrient deficiencies in the country, specifically among school age children, WFP worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and the Ministry of Education and Training to advocate for the construction of vegetable gardens at the ECCDs to complement the food basket provided by WFP. A total of 73 ECCDs have been sensitized, and present during the sensitizations were the ECCD caregivers, parents, and community chiefs. Following these sensitizations, the ECCD centres will be constructing gardens for the production of vegetables.

• WFP continues to provide technical and financial support to the Ministry of Education and Training to implement a sustainable, nutrition-sensitive national home-grown school feeding programme. For the programme to be sustainable, it must be linked to the local agricultural production.

Activity 3: Strengthening technical capacity of the Government on early warning systems

• Urban preparedness project: Lesotho is selected as one of the four countries to pilot the Regional Urban Preparedness project funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO). WFP works with the Disaster Management Authority to pilot the project in five selected urban councils for which vulnerability profiles are to be developed. The project pursues five objectives to create a better understanding of the context of vulnerabilities of urban residents and create a set of tools that can provide a swift and effective response system. Currently, the coordination team continues to conduct discussions with district teams, community key informants and other community entities to identify drivers of vulnerability and establish a minimum expenditure basket.

Source: World Food Programme

Luanda – The team from the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) is due to arrive in the country Thursday, 23 April, as part of the mutual assessment that Angola has been undergoing since October 2021.

The group of experts, expected in the country’s capital, Luanda, is made up of 15 specialists from the USA, Portugal, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia and Ethiopia.

The delegation also includes experts from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya, according to the document made available to ANGOP.

The mutual assessment “in loco” of the Angolan financial system will take place from 27 June to 15 July, after the “draft” with 500 pages of responses about the country’s financial system was sent to ESSAMLG.

The assessment, for the next few days, will be based on meetings with representatives of the sectors and various institutions, including the financial system’s supervisory and regulatory bodies, as well as the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).

Source: Angola Press News Agency