Oh My Girl may have dominated the brand reputation rankings for Kpop girl groups but they are recently under fire for their insensitive comments during their guest stint for Super Junior Shindong's YouTube show.
According to a report by Kpopstarz, fans criticized members for their racist comments and for blatantly disrespecting Shindong.
Fans were offended after seeing the video on SBS' popular YouTube show Shindong Gayo which featured Oh My Girl as the guests for the episode. After their interview with Super Junior's Shindong about their comeback, the girls reportedly participated in some fun games.
The guessing game required Seunghee to imitate a CF. However, fans found an issue with the way she used a derogatory slang to describe Mexicans.
Mexican viewers immediately took to social media to complain about Oh My Girl's racist and stereotypical depiction of Mexicans. The idol group's Mexican supporters also expressed disappointment over the members' dismissive behavior.
SBS, after hearing about the complaints, assured in their statement that they will be cutting the CF part from the video uploaded to their channel.
However, racism was not the only issue that fans raised during the episode. It seemed that ELFs, Super Junior's fandom were also complaining against Oh My Girl's Hyojung's actions during a game of charades.
The staff decided to make the questions easy for the guests and included Shindong in the charade questions. Hyojung first imitated Super Junior's famous dance Sorry Sorry which the girls immediately got. When it came time to guess the member, fans were shocked that instead of simply pointing to Shindong, the Oh My Girl member made a wide gesture, to indicate a fat person.
ELFs were offended for Shindong, who struggled with his weight for a long time before deciding to shed off the pounds. They said that throughout his career, Shindong was fat-shamed relentlessly so fellow idols like Oh My Girl should have been more sensitive to his weight issues.
In related news, Oh My Girl recently topped the May brand reputation rankings for girl groups. Based on the monthly data analysis conducted by the Korean Business Research Institute, the girl group topped for keywords including Nonstop, YouTube, and comeback. They also ranked high for related terms like cool, do well and shine. On the positivity and negativity index, Oh My Girl drew 85.59 percent positive reactions, Soompi reported.
For the individual brand reputation rankings for girl group members in May, five members of Oh My Girl made it to the Top 10. Arin ranked first on the list along with Hyojung (#4), Yoo Ah (#5), Jiho (#6), and Seunghee (#9).
