Crayon Pop accused of far-right connections

It has not taken long for Crayon Pop to go from being one of the hottest new K-pop groups to one of the most controversial.

One of Korea’s largest online shopping malls, Auction, said Tuesday it would stop broadcasting its new TV commercial that showcases Crayon Pop following widespread customer complaints that the group has connections to a far-right Web site.

The Web site in question is the controversial Ilgan Best Garage, widely known as Ilbe. But the group’s connections to it may seem a bit underwhelming.

Exhibit A: singer Heo Min-seon, better known by her stage name Way, who in June was caught misspelling the Korean word for “very” on her Twitter account. Instead of neomu, she wrote nomu - which is also a disrespectful way Ilbe members often refer to the late President Roh Moo-hyun.

Further evidence of an Ilbe connection was a comment made by Crayon Pop’s management, Chrome Entertainment, thanking people for promoting the group on Ilbe.

“We had no reason intentionally to make such a controversy and hurt the group’s image,” said Chrome yesterday.

“However, if the public dislikes the word, we will agree that it is inappropriate, and we will try our best to be more humble and recognize celebrities depend on the attention and love of the public.”

The Chrome spokesman also said that the member of the agency who commented about the Ilbe promotions was only trying to be thankful for the additional exposure and did not realize the Web site’s political reputation.

BY LEE SUN-MIN [summerlee@joongang.co.kr]