There were 3 specific things that we abided by at that time [during our trainee days].
Firstly, to greet well (to whoever, sincerely).
Secondly, to be punctual.
Thirdly, to tell no lies.
No matter what happens, these are the 3 things that the members and company abide to, and it is also the promise between us members. It’s been a year and a half since debut and this promise still holds true. I believe that it would be the same in the future… The company once told us, “The road that you all have chosen… You will live by communicating with the public, receiving their love while meeting their expectations. If you cannot even keep a small promise to yourselves, how are you going to keep the many promises you make to the public?”
-B1A4′s Baro, Star Column interview, 2012
One of the perils of being a K-pop fan is the possibility of betrayal by people we trust. We come to know idols, and sometimes the staff behind them, through performances, interviews, and variety shows; the more time we spend with information about them, the more we believe we understand about their selves and their lived realities. Yet even as we cheer for our favorites, watching them soar to new heights of popularity and performance ability, we are aware of and occasionally confront the fact that the industry exists for one reason, and that reason is not the growth and wellbeing of the young people who are its face. The K-pop industry is fundamentally a capitalist enterprise, and it exists to generate profit. Our glimpses “behind the curtain” are often jarring, revealing an industry that does not love its idols the way we do, and that loves us only insofar as we buy the products (from their own albums to makeup, snapbacks, chicken, and more) that our faves advertise. We quickly learn that people in the industry will do whatever it takes to keep their idols relevant and moving products off the shelves.
It’s unusual, then, that in the context of an industry that values profit over people, WM Entertainment holds its idols – a 5-member boy group called B1A4 – to the expectations Baro outlines above, expectations that put humanity and trust at the center of every interaction. And it’s ironic, and perhaps a little sad, that the same company is now under fire, facing allegations of dishonest business practices while promoting the group’s second full album. Specifically, WM has been accused of sajaegi, that is, illegally buying back B1A4’s physical albums in order to increase the sales numbers that factor into music shows, where idol groups have the opportunity to win awards based on several criteria.
B1A4 after winning MBC Music’s Show Champion
In this piece, we explore how fan discourse about the controversy reveals participants’ standards for evidence. Our aim is not to convict or exonerate WM, but rather to trace the unfolding of the controversy and to suggest that what we as fans believe is limited by the kind of evidence we are able to obtain and our understanding of the system from which that evidence is derived. First, we’ll probe the data available to us and suggest what it means. Second, we’ll trace the claims and counterclaims about the scandal, and we’ll suggest reasons why this controversy may not be able to be resolved to fans’ satisfaction. Finally, we’ll look at the implications of this scandal for us as fans of K-pop and as thinkers and participants in society.
The scandal begins and ends with the charts: Hanteo and Gaon provide performance metrics for both physical and digital sales of Korean artists (K-pop and beyond). It’s important to understand the difference between what the two charts measure in physical sales: Hanteo shows the number of albums sold to consumers (either by wholesalers or by retailers), while Gaon shows the number of albums sold to distributors. By Gaon’s count, albums that are sitting on store shelves are counted as sold because the distributor has received and paid for the albums. Therefore, Gaon’s numbers are almost always higher than Hanteo’s – the number of albums sold to consumers should be less than the number of albums available to consumers for purchase. Gaon’s reporting for the week ends on Saturday, while Hanteo’s ends at the end of the day on Sunday. In both cases, the numbers provided are aggregates of reporting done by outlets registered with the charts, including chain stores such as Hottracks, Synnara, and M2U, as well as wholesalers. The numbers do not show any breakdown of who bought how many albums; they reflect the sum of reported sales only.
B1A4 released their album on January 13 and saw moderately good physical sales during the first part of the week. However, a sudden ballooning in sales toward the end of the week raised suspicions. Depending on the account consulted, there was a jump of 8,000 sales in two hours (Netizenbuzz), or 14,000 in 3.5 hours (translation of No Cut News article), reported to Hanteo on Sunday late in the evening, after normal business hours. In the album’s second week, a total of 40,000 sales were reported to Hanteo, bringing the total albums sold to 67,000. Fans provided receipts for 8,000 of the albums, according to Netizenbuzz, leaving 32,000 albums in the second week “unaccounted for” – and, by implication, bought back by the company.
In the scramble that followed, participants in the discourse presented a number of reasons why B1A4’s physical sales could be attributed to sajaegi. However, other participants offered rebuttals that exposed the assumptions behind the accusations. To explore these claims and counterclaims, we begin with a diagram that shows the path physical albums must take to get from producer to consumer.
The first article on the controversy that was translated by Netizenbuzz alleged that the mechanism for sajaegi is to scan an album’s barcode sticker, record it as sold, take it off, replace it with another barcode sticker, scan it, record it as sold, and replace it with another. The agency (WM) would then report that number of albums to Hanteo as sold. However, as OneHallyu chart tracker dragonfly0915 explains, Hanteo only accepts aggregate numbers of sales from its registered retailers, not the agency. Furthermore, the barcodes on all albums are the same, so there would be no point in replacing and scanning the barcodes. Thus, the initial proposed method of sajaegi does not work given the constraints of the system.
There are two possible opportunities for WM to buy back its own albums and have those reported as legitimate sales to Hanteo. In the first instance, a representative of WM could conduct a bulk-buy from a wholesaler, purchasing thousands of albums at a time. This would go unnoticed because it’s a common practice for legitimate fansites to conduct similar bulk-buys from wholesalers. Such a method would, however, be capital-intensive: as Dispatch reports, buying back even 20,000 of the 32,000 “unaccounted-for” albums would cost 1.8 billion won (US$1,668,600). In theory, the company could later sell these albums directly to fans as a condition of attending fan meetings or other events, and thereby recoup the money lost. If WM did conduct sajaegi in this method, then we can expect to see those “extra” albums showing up, either in storage somewhere, or in B1A4’s events.
In the second instance, Hanteo charts could reflect bought-back albums if WM purchased those albums at the retail level, since the individual merchants report aggregated sales to Hanteo. Consider, the effort it would take to do this: given that most individual outlets probably carry no more than a few thousand albums at any given time, representatives of WM would need to physically go to various locations and purchase albums. Alternatively, WM could ask the retailers to report sales that did not actually happen – but they would be gambling on the retailers’ loyalty, and it would likely cost them a significant amount of money (in the form of bribes). In both cases, evidence of the bulk-buy would emerge in the company’s tax invoices (and, Dispatch suggests, in the retailers’ invoices, if sajaegi happened at that level rather than at the wholesale level).
Given that it would be possible, though difficult, for WM to conduct sajaegi, what other evidence remains to suggest that sajaegi did in fact happen? Let’s turn now to the claims and counterclaims made by participants in the discourse.
Claim 1: B1A4 sold 67,000 albums in week 1, yet they had only 1,000 fans attend their fansign event.
Counterclaim: With six different album covers and a rumor that each album cover – a 144-page glossy magazine – had different contents, it is plausible and widely reported that fans bought more than one album (see, for example, Dispatch’s investigation). In addition, the fansign was lotteried, meaning that only 1,000 fans could attend, but many more may have bought multiple albums to increase their chances of being allowed in. B1A4 held three fansigns over the week of January 20th, with applications opening at the end of the previous week.
Claim 2: The random spike in sales (8,000 or 14,000) reported after business hours on Sunday, January 19th, is highly suspicious.
Counterclaims:
a. Hanteo updates itself every half-hour, but this does not reflect when sales are actually made. It is possible that retail staff waited until the end of the day to convey their data to Hanteo. Hanteo and WM stated that much of these sales are accounted for by overseas fans’ purchases at an offline store (something like the bulk-buy planned by these Japanese fans; a wholesaler bulk-buying from a Hanteo retailer, or late-in-the-day aggregate reporting). According to Hanteo’s representative, speaking to OSEN News (clarification on translation by dragonfly0915), online sales of this nature would be suspicious, but offline sales are not.
b. TVXQ, whose album was released the week prior to B1A4’s, saw similar spikes during their first week. The sales pattern – a bulge at the end of the day Sunday as well as other days – is the same as B1A4’s, suggesting that retailer reporting is similar across the board and reflects increased purchases due to fansigns.
Dispatch’s investigation proves that B1A4′s sales patterns are similar to other boy groups (Source)
Claim 3: B1A4 sold 67,000 albums in week 1, putting them on par with the top sellers in K-pop such as Super Junior, Girls’ Generation, and Big Bang. It’s a huge jump compared to their previous release, a mini album that sold only 22,000 copies in its first week. This is unrealistic for a group that is relatively unknown.
Counterclaims:
a. In fact, B1A4’s sales put them in the top-middle of the pack of first-week sellers (14th place), on par with Infinite, who are their seniors by one year. Between their 164,000+ registered fancafe users, 500,000+ followers per member on Twitter, and 364,000+ followers on Google +, it seems reasonable to expect that after an eight-month absence, B1A4 would be able to sell at least 67,000 of their full albums. (That’s just 13% of their Twitter followership.) Moreover, B1A4 is enjoying increased visibility with the general public thanks to Baro’s role in the hit drama Reply 1994 (which achieved ratings up to 11.5%), and Sandeul’s stint as a soloist on Immortal Song 2; the fancafe grew by over 2,000 members in the month of January. Some netizens commented that B1A4 could barely sell 5,000 seats at a concert, but both of their solo concerts have sold out – a total of 10,000 seats each in under five minutes. It would only take those dedicated fans buying approximately one of each album cover to account for the first week’s sales.
‘Who Am I’ comes in 6 different 144 page magazine-style editions making them very collectable (Source)
b. In addition, the unique packaging provided an incentive to purchase more than one album at a time. This could be a significant reason why album sales tripled. Participants point out that Super Junior has also released multiple covers, with no impact to sales; however, the groups’ contexts and fandoms are completely different, and there were likely no rumors at the time of SuJu’s album release that there would be different contents within each album cover.
c. Some SM fandoms work together to space out album sales over the course of the promotional period, thus increasing their faves’ chances at winning multiple times, but also artificially lowering their own sales numbers (again, here). Thus, B1A4 is not really selling at their level.
d. B1A4 is not the only group to make a huge gain in album sales recently; EXO, VIXX, and Infinite have seen similar jumps in the last year. In all cases, the fandoms are growing in numbers, which could account for the ballooning sales.
Claim 4: A suspicious 3,600 albums were sold in Daegu in week 1.
Counterclaim: Maybe B1A4 has a lot of fans in Daegu. Maybe “3,600” reflects international fans’ purchases through kpoptown, which is located in Daegu. We don’t know, and we can’t know because of the aggregated reporting, but there are possibilities other than sajaegi.
Claim 5: Hanteo said there’s nothing suspicious about B1A4’s sales pattern – but it’s in their interest to lie to protect their own credibility, and no one believes them anyway because they only know the aggregated sales numbers, not what goes on before the numbers are reported to them.
Counterclaims:
a. It’s in Hanteo’s interest to tell the story that aligns with the money. If there were anything suspicious, Hanteo would do better to call for an independent investigation and put blame on WM, a small company in comparison to most of the agencies whose artists’ albums are reported by Hanteo. If Hanteo felt that standing with WM would threaten their credibility with larger companies, they would likely not do so.
b. If Hanteo is not to be trusted, then its reporting of sales, including the suspicious spikes, is also not to be trusted, and its charts cannot be the basis for the controversy at hand.
c. Hanteo and Gaon reiterated their position that there were no irregularities in B1A4’s sales, and Gaon’s monthly chart numbers indicated that the number of albums distributed was greater than the number of albums sold, as would be expected. Sales continue to hold steady, both digitally and physically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), along with Youtube views and Twitter mentions, leading the group to a total of eight music show wins.
Claim 6: WM is a sketchy company – they manipulated Youtube views on B1A4’s debut music video, then took it down before there was much of an outcry.
B1A4′s Baro as ‘Binggeure’, a popular character in tvN’s hit drama ‘Reply 1994′
Counterclaim: Manipulating Youtube views is far easier, less expensive, and less risky than sajaegi would be. This is the only example provided of WM’s “sketchiness,” and past guilt has no causal relation to the present.
In the midst of the discourse, one element has been notably absent: motive. For WM to conduct a risky and illegal business move, they would need a strong incentive to do so. Dispatch suggests that the motivation is publicity – higher album sales attract more sponsors. Yet, as mentioned, B1A4 has reached new heights of popularity thanks to Baro’s drama and Sandeul’s solo work (along with an attention-grabbing performance at the Gayo Daejejun); we would go as far as to argue that most of the promotional work for Who Am I was completed before 2014 even began.
If WM were to conduct sajaegi, it would be redundant – and with more eyes on them, the company faces more scrutiny and has more to lose than ever before. In addition, sajaegi sends a strong negative message – “we don’t actually believe your work can sell this album” – to WM’s partners who contributed to the album, including their producers, graphic designers, featured artists (such as Harim, Park Shinwon), and the B1A4 members who contributed their creative abilities to eight of the twelve songs on the album.
Next, sajaegi does not accomplish the goals that the participants in the discourse claim it does: physical album sales count for very few points in three of the four music shows where B1A4 has won first place (calculations here show that even without physical sales, B1A4 would have won regardless of physical sales, given strong digital sales and broadcast points). At Show Champion, where weekly physical sales account for 20% of points, the group has received three first-place wins, including two wins in the weeks after the alleged sajaegi occurred. Thus, physical sajaegi would not help them increase their attractiveness to potential advertisers. The prevailing discourse has not considered what WM’s motive might actually be and what the incentives or disincentives might be for taking such a measure, yet, as we can see, that factor is important in our evaluation of whether sajaegi is likely to have occurred.
In the many forums where the controversy has been discussed, participants talk through the above claims and counterclaims in varying combinations, but participants who believe there has been sajaegi conclude the same way each time: “If there has been no sajaegi, let WM/fans bring forward the receipts of legitimate sales.” For these participants, the absence of collated receipts “accounting for” each of the 67,000 albums sold indicates that WM did indeed conduct sajaegi. Some participants further point out that other groups are able to produce their receipts and account for their sales – although we are unaware of any “accounting for” of all albums sold over a given period in any fandom (including linked photo evidence). What participants may not realize is that there is no way for WM to “produce the receipts” if they did not conduct sajaegi, because the receipts are located with wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. The only receipts WM has – and the only receipts they should have – are those for the transaction selling the albums to the distributors.
As proof of their young fanbase, B1A4 are ambassadors for Girl Scouts Korea
Participants say it then falls on fans to gather the retail and wholesale receipts, and their inability to do so is “as close as you’ll come to proof” that sajaegi happened.However, these participants fail to acknowledge the reality of B1A4’s fandom, which is relatively new and is largely populated by younger fans who a) are likely not organized the way experienced fandoms are; b) may not even know what sajaegi is, much less why their group is accused of it or how they should respond; c) likely have knowledge differentials as well as geographic dispersion that prevents them from organizing effectively in this case (though some attempts have been made). If WM and B1A4’s fans collaborate to gather the receipts from fans and retailers, they may be able to account for most of the albums sold – but it will be both painstaking and time-consuming to do so. And receipts provided by the accused themselves may not be satisfactory to some accusers, who may entertain the possibility of forgery or additional foul play. In any case, a quick, easy resolution to the issue is not likely.
Among those participants who said they believed this was a case of sajaegi, some clear themes emerged. Those who believed that WM did conduct sajaegi were ready to condemn the company while accepting the claims outlined above at face value. (In fact, it was days before anyone realized that the barcodes on albums were all the same, and thus the identified method of sajaegi was actually not possible.) Others held to the assumption that B1A4’s fans would not buy the physical albums in the quantities reported, believing the fandom to be too small in relation to other groups, without data to support the legitimacy of the comparison. Still others claimed that “solid proof” had been collected or that “the evidence is strong” against WM, but they did not point to what that evidence was or what made it strong. One commenter said that the fact that netizens had set new records for commenting on B1A4-sajaegi articles was an indication that something fishy was going on. Several participants stated that WM’s inability to produce receipts was a sure sign of guilt. These participants based their conclusions on generalisations and assumptions about B1A4, the fans, and the charts. They further locate the burden of proof with the accused party, rather than showing evidence beyond the claims above that would implicate the company.
As noted by dragonfly0915, truly incontrovertible evidence would be a “smoking gun,” such as a stash of bought-back albums, or incriminating emails sent between company staff. No such evidence is available at this point (to our knowledge). Still, participants on all sides make the call about the company’s guilt based on the information they have. Some explain their sureness of WM’s culpability by saying it is an issue of fairness – dishonesty in the industry must be called out. (If that is indeed the case, we must wonder where these arbiters of justice were during other groups’ sales spikes.) For these participants, WM is not to be trusted – instead, assumptions drive the theorising about what may have actually occurred.
Ultimately, fans are not the judge and jury – nor can we be. The evidence we have is necessarily incomplete because, whether veteran fans or new to K-pop, we are not industry experts, and many of us do not have the Korean language proficiency to fully comprehend the way the charts work, what news publications are reporting, or what netizens are saying. The best we can do is learn from the situation as we know it (keeping in mind that it may not be the full picture) and set the highest standards for our own thinking and behavior. We can choose who and what to trust, and we must do so with a critical eye on the interests and power of those involved. In this kind of evaluation, the claims made by the accusers are subject to the same scrutiny as the accused. Finally, without actual evidence, we need to be aware of the consequences our words and actions have for real people whose guilt we are not sure of. While many participants said they had nothing against the members of B1A4, and they were simply upset with the company for engaging in illegal business practices, they seem to have ignored the connection between B1A4 and WM – if a scandal like this were to sink WM, the members of B1A4 would cease to be their employees.
Our actions do have consequences, and whether we choose to trust WM (as Hanteo and Gaon have done, and as partners like Running Man and Hats On continue to do) or not, we must always be aware of how our thinking impacts others. Though we’re fans first and foremost to enjoy the music and the people who make it, B1A4’s sajaegi scandal reminds us that fandom, like real life, has its dark side – and it seldom presents us with clearcut answers. Being a fan means critically evaluating all the information we have, questioning assumptions, placing our trust with care, and using our positions to encourage thoughtful and positive outcomes for our fan communities.
Co-written with MJ
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