Korean SEVENTEEN Fans Get Criticized For Throwing Out Albums In Bulk At Public Spaces

Trash accumulation and waste of resources are huge issues for K-Pop fans and companies. This became exacerbated by the rise in video calls and offline fan signs, which often run on a raffle basis. As record-breaking also becomes a measure of the popularity of a group, fans are pushing themselves more than ever to purchase albums in bulk.

While inserts such as postcards and photo cards are still considered valuable, the album shell and photo book often become obsolete. With fans unwilling to let the albums take up room in their house or lug them home from the store, discarded albums are often seen on the streets near record shops. In one case, K-Pop fans faced major backlash when they donated opened albums with inserts taken out.

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With SEVENTEEN‘s recent album release for FML, they broke records by hitting over 3 million copies in sales during pre-orders. They became the highest-selling K-Pop artists quickly.

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Despite the fantastic news, fans have been receiving criticism for leaving opened albums in public spaces or on the streets. At first, Carats tried to persuade their fellow fans to take responsibility for their purchases.

#rt #please RT. Please don’t throw your opened albums at the trash disposal in front of Soundwave after taking out all the photo cards, bookmarks, and inserts only to leave the photo books. If you do this, Carats won’t look good to others. And don’t throw the opened albums in the trash bags on the streets as well.

— Carat

You may wonder why this is an issue if the albums were dumped at a trash disposal. Firstly, Korea is super strict about recycling and trash disposal. Most of the time, each building and street has its own disposal areas, and it is frowned upon for one to throw their trash in areas not allocated to them. Public trash cans are a different story, though! This is also because trash needs to be bagged and bound before being left at the disposal area. Leaving whole boxes of albums on the street is highly frowned upon.

Some fans also untied existing trash bags to include their albums or left them next to the bags.

The fan who uploaded the original post was later criticized for “airing dirty laundry” and giving haters a reason to tear down the group. Despite their good intentions, they have since deleted the post and uploaded an apology.

Another fan discovered opened albums being left at a cafe within a record shop. Although they had left a note to say “anyone can take the albums if they wanted,” they were criticized for leaving the albums at a cafe unrelated to fans or any SEVENTEEN event.

RT) To the person who took out all the photo cards and simply left 31 albums at Holly’s Cafe, please take them away. It’s not like you rented out Holly’s or something — what crime did Holly’s commit? You can just give them out in front of M2U or something instead. Please recognize what you did was wrong and take them back.

— Oopal0128

Not only did fans leave albums in a cafe, but they also left bags of albums by a public sidewalk in front of a record store.

Someone just left 20 albums in front of M2U — is there someone who claims it as the owner? I took them with me because it’s raining first, but if you just threw them away like that, it’s really rude of you. If not, contact me please and I will send them to you.

— @oopal0128

After the matter blew up, netizens were highly critical of the irresponsible fans.

Donation? What donation? Don’t even donate them. I’m someone that works at a center for the less fortunate, and it’s hard for us to handle these too.
This happens to my idol too. I wish [the company] would just sell the photo cards, please.
I wonder why people do this when it’s so obvious whose fan threw them away… If you buy them, then you should handle things properly. If idols saw their albums being thrown away just anywhere, they wouldn’t be happy too.
I hope they make a law where only photo cards are sold. The trash is so serious.
Makes me wonder if the first week sales are that important when this is happening.
I think if this is the extent of things, album sales distributors should start dealing with the trash too.
Although I don’t stan idols anymore, I don’t know why people do this now and back then.
What kind of behavior is this?

That being said, the behavior of a group of fans does not represent the entire fandom.

Source: theqoo