BigHit Music is now in hot water after restricting the taking of BTS photos ahead of the last two "Permission to Dance on Stage" concerts in Los Angeles. This announcement coincides with the Homa-ma or the Homepage masters who complain of harassment and bullying at the recent international show of the K-pop group.
Home-ma, which is also called fansite masters, runs sites or social media pages, where they upload photos of the fan-favorite idols. These people are already part of the Korean K-Pop culture for playing a major role in the organic marketing of the idol groups-in this case of BTS.
They will usually share high-quality photos and videos of the hitmakers that help them increase their fame, AllKpop noted. In the same way, they are gaining attention, too, with their work.
However, there are recent complaints from some Korean BTS Home-mas after their bad experience at the first two-day "Permission to Dance on Stage" concerts in Los Angeles. One Home-ma revealed that he experienced "reckless physical assault" at the event.
She said some local fans would whisper if someone who looked Korean, Chinese or Japanese would walk in front of them. From here, the harassment began.
These locals would be filming who they assumed were Koreans with their cellphones and threatened to upload them on social media. They would also slur slanders at anyone who looked like a Korean Home-ma because of the negative things they had read about them online.
She, then, defended herself and said if they only wanted to earn from this BTS event, they would never spend a lot of money to buy pricey concert tickets worth more than 500,000 KRW. They would have just taken photos of other famous people, turned them into merchandise and sold it.
She continued that they dared to go to Los Angeles and risked their lives to see BTS live once again after a long time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With that said, she asked if there was anything wrong with it that they had to be beaten up.
This event seemed to coincide with BigHit's announcement about BTS's "portraiture rights and copyrights" on WeVerse, per Koreaboo. The company said it was prohibited to take photos, videos, voice recordings and live stream the event, among others.
It also banned bringing filming or recording devices inside the event's premises but not handphones. Howver, filming on phones was still not allowed.
If anyone violated these rules, they had to delete the clips and be forced to leave. Sure, fans praised BigHit for its action, but many were concerned and frustrated. Some even said that the company was being too harsh on them after spending thousands of dollars to support BTS.
