There have been A BUNCH of serious issues recently surrounding the Kpop industry that seem to be calling the industry itself and the way they do business into question. There have been more controversies in the second half of 2014 than ever.. though that may be an exaggeration.

So much has happened in just the last several weeks that we felt like, as people living in Korea and making Youtube videos regularly, we had to address it. The question we answered came in two days ago, so we were essentially this was very timely.

I think it’s actually funny to me because Richard commented in a video just the other day about Jessica leaving SNSD. And now the Kpop world and my Twitter feed are overflowing once again with Luhan leaving and suing EXO to break his contract. For those of you who aren’t aware, most Kpop singers sign 10-15 year contracts which are fairly difficult to get out of.

Do either of us know all the details about what’s going on? No. Do we think that SM is pretty controlling and probably makes some bad management decisions at times? Yes.

Regardless, I know that I wouldn’t want to be a Kpop star. Having someone micromanage my life, my appearance and everything to that extreme is just not something that I could do. And while being a Kpop star probably looks glamorous initially, I’m sure that being a member of one of the biggest groups out there is more than a little bit overwhelming.

None of us really knows if we’re not actually experiencing it for ourselves firsthand. Of course, I doubt this is going to be the end of EXO by any means. There are enough good looking guys out there, they will find somebody to replace him.

I’m going to leave it here for now. We said a lot in the video and we barely scratched the surface. There’s a lot behind the scenes in the Kpop industry that we just don’t know about still, so it’s quite difficult to draw accurate conclusions.

As for the future of Kpop, that’s up in the air. We would have liked to have covered it more in the video, but we wanted to keep it under 10 minutes just so we don’t make out videos too long and boring. Kpop has been around for quite awhile now. Maybe Richard’s right, and Psy was the height of international Kpop fame. Or, maybe Kpop is still just getting started. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully it’s popular for years to come.

Last week’s video