BTS have asked fans to lay off the stalker-like behaviour

Having one of the world’s strongest fandoms certainly isn’t easy. K-pop stars (or idols) have had a real time of it this year, weathering major industry changes, as well as having to deal with unprecedented amounts of harassment and cyberbullying. With the added pressure of “sasaeng” fans (translated as “private life” fans), sometimes it can all be a bit too much.

One definition of sasaengs comes from a 2015 journal article on “Singapore Youths, Authentic Identities, and Asian Media Fandom”: they are a “stigmatized fan identity that refers to individuals who are unhealthily interested in the personal lives of K-pop idols”. Sasaengs are often young female fans, aged around 17 to 22, and can be driven to perform borderline criminal acts because of their obsession.

Kim Taehyung (a.k.a. V) of BTS spoke out against this behaviour in a recent live broadcast on the South Korean app VLIVE, revealing some of the group’s more negative experiences with sasaeng fans. In particular, he cited sasaengs as the reason the group has stopped travelling by charter flight: “We actually want to fly on a regular flight,” he said, according to the official translation provided by the VLIVE app. “But when we travel long distance or short distance, fans may know beforehand that we will be boarding and sit next to us, or in front of us.”

Continuing, he said: “In those private spaces, we don’t get to relax as much as we want to. So we were a bit uncomfortable. [And] to be frank with you, we don’t want you to do that. […] It's really scary." Seriously, when you’re hurtling through the sky in a metal container, clutching a travel-sized bottle of gin for comfort, the last thing you want is to be harangued for your autograph.

Sasaeng behaviour is, unfortunately, scarily common in K-pop. In some cases, idols have put their stalkers on blast, posting public documents with the names of “blacklisted” fans together with their etiquette violations, and cancelling their fan club memberships.

Some sasaengs have escalated their efforts to a dangerous extent. In the group’s early years, EXO narrowly escaped an attempted kidnapping after their manager realised that fans had rented a van identical to their own and had waited for the band to get inside. Kim Heechul of Super Junior even had a brush with death after his own sasaeng encounter, getting into a car accident while trying to escape fans who were tailing him.

No one should be subject to this kind of behaviour, and clearly there are stan attitudes that sorely need to change (must get rid of toxic in the community, truly). A plea to the sasaengs: if you won’t stop buying plane tickets for the sake of the artists’ privacy, at least think of the environment!