Radical Koreans Once Attempted To Get JaeJae Banned From Television… And Miserably Failed
MC JaeJae, known for her hit interview talk show, MMTG, fell into controversy in the past. During the Baeksang Arts Awards festival, JaeJae was seen making a hand gesture while eating a piece of chocolate. Various male community sites had taken offense with this gesture as it is reportedly a gesture of male hate, signifying that they have small reproductive organs.
As many would know, some males in the South Korean online community are highly sensitive to feminism as it often is misunderstood by them as male hate. Previously, celebrities such as Red Velvet‘s Irene received criticism for reading a reportedly feminist book. Similarly, former Apink member Son Naeun was criticized for her phone case which supported feminism.
Regarding the controversial gesture, the producers of MMTG released an official statement. They claim that the team was discussing various outfits and ideas for the red carpet. Amongst the ideas, a clear snack baggie type of pouch was suggested in place of a clutch or a bag. As a comedic MC, JaeJae would then take out a snack from the bag and eat it on the red carpet, as sort of a joke performance.
The process of this decision would be shown through a behind-the-scenes clip released on MMTG‘s channel. They claim that the action of taking out a snack ended up looking similar to the controversial gesture, resulting in controversy.
Despite this statement, a petition was submitted to the Blue House to take JaeJae off public broadcasts. This would affect her greatly as at the time, JaeJae hosted through SBS, which is a public broadcasting channel. JaeJae has since turned to freelancing and is now also hosting a radio show on MBC.
The petition claims that the gesture she made is a logo of an anti-male site and they claim that JaeJae has been regularly showing support for female rights and creates content that demonstrates so, hence there would be no chance that she was not aware of this.
As seen in the picture, the petition received over 90,000 signatures, but did not reach the required 200,000 for the Blue House to make a statement. Ultimately, nothing came out of the situation and JaeJae continues to promote as normal.
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