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After aespa, minor girls IVE victim of misogynist joke at uni festival, fans say 'ban grown men'

Fans disgusted after the two MCs joke about selling IVE's used water bottles

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: It is university festival season in South Korea and we have been getting some iconic performances by the likes of PSY, Winner, (G)I-DLE and more K-pop acts. Many were impressed with the general public's love for new girl groups as evident with the huge crowd that IVE, Le Sserafim, aespa and NewJeans attracted. But the debate of whether K-pop should allow minor girls to debut has again popped up after students and hosts misbehaved. 

We first had male students groping aespa and making misogynist remarks at a university festival that had fans angry. And now, a few months later, we have a similar situation as the hosts of a recent university festival joked that they would be selling the water bottles that IVE had used. With half of the IVE members being under 18, fans found the joke disgusting. On top of it, many think it wasn't a joke as a fan who was present, claimed that she heard someone say that they could sell a water bottle used by Wonyoung for 50k won ($35).

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University festival MCs make inappropriate joke about IVE

On September 29, IVE attended the Chungbuk University Festival which was hosted by outsiders Bang Ju-ho and Im Sung-wook who are comedians. OP (original poster) who overheard the comment about Wonyoung said, "We're not living in the 90s anymore and this is 2022. You can't just say stuff like that trivially no?" Fans looked up the hosts and found their YouTube videos where they constantly use misogynist jokes in their sets. And with several of the members being minors, fans are requesting IVE's label Starship to protect their artists from such incidents.

'Kind of gross'

One Knetz commented, "Crazy... Wonyoung is still a minor... This is disgusting." Another said, "Seriously why is the bar so low? They'll just piss off people like that.." With many users pointing out that the joke could just mean that IVE is popular enough to sell out used water bottles, one fan explained, "Ive 3 members are minor in korea. Its a sexist term used to put down women in korea . Go to those mc youtube they are misogynistic man who make joke about women body harassing them in youtube."

Another fan added, "Making these types of "jokes" about women is gross, the ive girls are minors too which makes it 10x worse. we need to ban grown men from even interacting with underage female idols tbh." An alumnus commented, "As a graduate, I am really ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ that the name of the school goes up and down in this way." One fan said, "It’s kinda of gross for grown men to be joking that they will sell used water bottles of 20-15 year old girls…. It’s sexual harassment why would they sell it just for one reason. Imagine if someone some man said that to you???"

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