The production team in March implored the public to not presumptuously react to 1980’s university setting romance K-drama Snowdrop before it aired and accused it of distorting history and romanticizing the then military government crackdown on student activists. Back then there was a Blue House petition to cancel the drama but it was resolved by the production vowing that the drama story was not problematic and to please wait and watch before making any assertions. This weekend the first episode aired on Saturday and within 24 hours there was a new Blue House petition to cancel the drama which has 200,000 signors already, viewer feedback that the drama was indeed going to soft pedal that era and had the central problematic elements, and now three CF brand sponsors have pulled out of the drama. jTBC tried to lessen the viewer feedback by closing chat boards and not providing streaming clips but it’s not enough to stem the current controversy. I don’t think jTBC can just ignore this mushrooming controversy this time and remembering how bad it got that Joseon Exorcist was cancelled after just 2 episodes airing I think there is a real likelihood it could happen with Snowdrop. It just depends on how vocal the public gets and whether the plot set up is truly that upsetting to viewers with how it deals with the government crackdown on student democracy activists at that time.
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Pingback: Blue House Petition to Cancel jTBC Drama Snowdrop Gets 200K Signatures in 24 Hours After First Episode Airs, Drama Loses Three CF Sponsors as Well - Kpopnchill - All About K-pop News
im liking it so far but they should of just made it a romance set in that time ( lord knows ive been waiting for one) didn’t need to be all political, xD he could of just been a cop or a college student ,what were the wrtiers thinking
As someone that have zero interest on the drama (don’t know any of the cast and don’t like the genre) and have zero knowledge of Korean history….I could just sit and read the comments from two sides..
Altough most of the comments I read on popular drama IG account in my country, 90% said just stay out of it because we don’t know their history, and 10% defend Ji Soo. But since it’s drama based, I don’t know how comments from kpop based or BP based accounts.
Jtbc and the production team completely ignored what the public was angry about months ago. They didn’t have to make the ML a North Korean spy. He could have just been a regular college student accused of being one.
Completely in agreement with you. After what happened to JE JTBC should have asked the production to change the male lead character’s identity.
Youth of May was broadcast without any hitch because of this.
I do not understand why the production team insisted and not modify?
If this gets canceled after two episodes then it’s the production team cast and crew who would lose.
They could just set the story on that chaotic era without the spy angle since the people who went through those trying times and lost loved ones are now getting emotionally upset and are now dead set in putting an end to Snowdrop.
I had thought that after so many months, they had time to change and edit what is needed to not anger the viewing public again.
Jtbc is a right wing channel if anything it most likely supported the NSA and the military dictatorship. They would support the Snowdrop narrative in every form.
well this the writers’ and production team’s fault for being stupid enough not to change the “forbidden romance with an NK spy” angle as well romanticizing the NSA. they ignored being called out earlier this year knowing they could rely on Jisoo’s international fandom regardless of domestic outcry. anyways, history ad politics aside, the first 2 episodes were just average at best despite all of the mediaplay and hype, so if this ends up getting cancelled, it’s not a huge loss in terms of quality programming rofl.
Wow, you’d think the production would have changed things up after the outcry back in March. Like they must have known the drama would be put to super intense scrutiny. But it seems like they didn’t change much except a slight edit to the female lead’s name (from Young-cho to Young-ro…wow barely any effort there). They way the drama was promoted and the inappropriate use of a protest song and that lackluster Jung Hae In interview comment…seems like some higher-ups are intending for the drama to fail. Is this some sort of weird money laundering thing?
If there will be some twist that will make things better, they should just release all the spoilers and scripts now and try to change viewers’ minds.
The drama will never fail and even the endorsers backing out have already paid the full fees and not once have they asked for compensation unlike the case with JE where the production had to pay for damages. Disney+ already paid a huge amount for the airing rights of the drama so JTBC has nothing to worry about in terms of losses since they already made back all the money and then some. Even the Blue House won’t dare to interfere with the drama.
the blue house dont care because the villains back then were the government… if anything snowdrop will be whitewashing the government organisations… so why would the blue house has a problem with that?
Wow, nothing changed from the leaked script that got so much controversy initially. I have no clue what the scriptwriter was thinking. She might as well write a pro-Japanese script while at it. Jung Haein gave the most boneheaded response to this and he’s going to lose whatever goodwill he got from DP. I am just ??? at everyone involved in this.
JBTC might not cancel this, but I don’t know how this will continue airing with the outcry. This is gearing up to be the most controversial kdrama ever, unless there’s some twist we don’t know of. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start staging live protests in front of the JBTC offices.
I wonder if the backlash will affect future JBTC and Disney+ kdramas.
Yeah and it’s not like they didn’t have warning and this took them by surprise….Korean netizen brought up these issues months ago but I guess JTBC thought foreign viewers+Disney+ would make the controversy at home irrelevant.
Jung Hae In is a good actor but legit seems to have no sense of how to read a room, it’s not like he didn’t know this was controversial but then he wenr right ahead and said he didn’t do research.
“Alternative history” is fine when it’s things like fantasy sageuk but this is really not it.
@Royal We – Jung Haein’s response makes zero sense. He said he was born 2 years after the events in the drama so he’s unaware of them and just followed the script. I’m facepalming at every part of that response.
Disney+’s attempt to enter the kdrama market is not off too a good start.
Jung Haein is just a fame hungry airhead starting with his center controversy and now his dumb Snowdrop interview. He totally just wanted to ride off the fame of the production team and FL by signing on without knowing the history backdrop of the script.
The production company have already sold it to Disney. If the right sold was exclusive then must be at a price more than the production costs so probably the production company couldn’t been bothered to address the previous backlash.
JTBC is at the losing end. Losing 3 advertisers is serious. What’s making it worst the production company was accused of rigging the ratings. That’s probably their solution to address the negative impact of the backlash. Still JTBC lost advertisers. What a mess!
Why Jung Hae-in is involved in controversy quite often. Anyway, One Spring Night is always one of my all-time fave k-dramas.
That scene with JHI character in NK uniform caught me off guard and thought yeah they are done for lol crazy, what a shitshow JTBC is in right now
It was either they could have set the story in another timeline where she falls in love with a nk spy operating in sk(something like CLOY but in reverse).
This nk spy trope has been used plenty of times and no one batted an eye. But here they related it with the 87 movement which sounds like a propaganda. Smh.
Another option , they simply could have done away with him being an actual spy. Like an op above said, just portray him as someone who was falsely accused cause that’s what happened in real history.
Anyways jtbc made a report back in March titled ” the dangers of history distortion as seen from sbs’ joseon exorcist” .lol the irony . Seems like they themselves forgot to read their report.
Also, i still think joseon exorcist should have been allowed to air after doing some changes. But here snowdrop is just unsalvageable
With all these publicity, the drama is hella boring.
Anyway it’s on Disney+. International audiences don’t care. So even if got stopped on JBTC… Disney+ will probably continue streaming it!
Where is the history distortion tho?
https://twitter.com/brokelife_/status/1472656746338725888?t=tIgAUUAl0EJ8JIgKPseTFw&s=19
People made a petition before airing, it was pretty sure they will make one now…
Honestly, people have the right to be angry but cancelling? I think it’s too much. If they don’t want to watch, they don’t. It’s not like they sold the drama as a historic drama.
I mean there are so many movies/tv shows whose set up in a certain period but are wrong historically. They chose a black actress to tell the life of England Queen… The public can choose and it shouldn’t be the gouvernement (really not).
This is so easy for u as a non Korean to say stuffs like “if you don’t like it then don’t watch”. Do you know family members of Park-jeong cheol, who died after extreme torture at the hands of NSA and whose death basically kickstarted the june democratic movement also spoke up related to the drama controversy? They said there are still families living who were accused of being nk spies and this drama creates such narrative that was used against the victims. And the right wingers now using this drama for their own gain
@Sayaris – The Korean public has chosen to request this drama be taken off-air, and petitioning their government is one avenue of doing it. The government is not deciding by itself to end this drama.
Your comparison of Snowdrop to the new Anne Boleyn movie starring Jodie Turner-Smith is one of false equivalence. The former distorts important historical events, while the latter does not. I’m not sure if you’re unable to see this logically fallacy or are being willfully ignorant.
A more apt comparison for Snowdrop would be with the American series Confederate, which also reimagined history and received significant backlash, leading it to be shelved before broadcast.
Yeah, a black being a queen is a distortion but you can choose if it’s important or not. It wasn’t successful because people chose but at least, the production could make it and air it, they were free to use their freedom of expression.
The Korean public? 240’000 people is not the Korean public, it’s just a part who can choose or not to watch it on a private channel. SBS is a public channel and get money by the governement not JTBC.
240 K is also can be the main watchers/audience of the 2% rating drama. If your main audience hate it, then who left to like it anymore, sigh
Just accept that your fave just pretend to like history but never into one, like how they don’t even good at acting and singing
Umm> You don’t understand. I don’t care about the actors in this case! I care about the freedom that is very important in democracy. Freedom of expression is on the decline in our many democratic countries, journalists are suffering, etc. Let people chose what they want to watch. If the ratings are low, it’s ok and the production will understand what they did wrong. But don’t force the governement to take a decision, they shouldn’t take in the first place.
Go read about the Gwangjo Movement, you self-entitled lady from the west. It isnt just about the black queen.
I saw K-netz also urging SBS to retaliate to that report made by jtbc against Joseon Exorcist. Lol.
I heard one of the companies said their name was falsely included in the list of advertisers by jtbc. Damn. What the hell is wrong with that network? Plus, a reader above said they were accused of rigging the ratings??? No idea how accurate this is but Wikipedia currently has the ratings of first two episodes as 2.985% and 3.898%. If these figures are indeed accurate, some K-viewers might be watching to see how worse it gets. From what I’m reading from Koreans online, they say EP2 was much worse. Let’s see how this all plays out.
Strongly doubt the ratings went up because people want to see how much worse it got. There are over 50 million people living in South Korea and many of them never took part nor supported the pro democracy movement. It is possible those people just don’t care about the truth of the historical movement and then there are many families whose lives were unaffected by it. You’re also forgetting many powerful people never supported to the movement and only shifted allegiances when they saw the power was crumbling not because they supported the movement. Even if 50% of the population chooses not watch the drama the remaining 50% can easily contribute to the ratings. And the thing about ratings is it is the percentage of people watching a particular drama at that particular time. So if only 1 million households are watching dramas at that particular time only 3% of that 1 million needs to be watching Snowdrop for the ratings to manifest these ratings which is a small number in terms of whole numbers but in ratings it is much bigger. So even if 500,000 people sign the petition there are still over 24 million who don’t.
Hey, can you read? I didn’t say the ratings increase was because all K-viewers are watching to see how worse it gets. I said SOME, given the criticisms I’ve read from some K-viewers online about EP2 being worse. I didn’t classify all K-viewers because I understand that there could be other K-viewers who are genuinely interested in the drama. As for the rest of your blah blah blah, you can cram it back down your keyboard. Or your throat. Up to you.
JTBC brought this unnecessary mess themselves, it’s genuinely mind boggling how badly this was handled. Some people are probably getting fired for Christmas and behind the scenes at JTBC, the scapegoats are being rounded up. Such a mess.
JTBC is a far right wing channel who are strongly anti the democratic movement protests. Nobody is getting fired because this has always been their agenda and the President supports it because he wants to see North and South reunited asap since it was one of his election promises. JTBC controls the political circle of South Korea and is hand in hand with all the big chaebol businesses. Don’t assume the channel has no clue what its doing. JTBC news is the most trusted news channel in the country they know exactly what they’re doing.
So JBTC = Fox News?
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. If it’s true, it could lead to deeper backlash beyond just this drama for JTBC.
It makes more sense then, like I said as a drama network, it’s mind boggling to me that they would go ahead with this but I’m more familiar with JTBC’s dramas and not their news division or their general political stances and connections since I do not fully understand Korean. I’m interested in learning more about this from more sources but probably impossible to find in english. Don’t know if you know of any or have support for what you have stated. Again, thanks for sharing!
Female lead name nearly same to women who was torutured , left disabled. 1000s of students got tortured. Its like japan and British who glorify their past,, when they killed millions and stole trillions. Nationalist will never tolerate this. Kpop fans bashing koreans is beyond pathetic
Imagine losing your child , sibling in protest against dictatorship and when you see the glorficatiom of such acts. Will u like this? My grandfather lost his parents during partition of 1947 , when some pakis burnt them alive. And it triggers feelings of indians even today, bcoz wounds will never heal. The nerve of ifians and kpop fans to mock koreans and their feelings.
I read up more to understand the issues, from what i understand from Koreaboo, the people at that time was falsely accused as north korea spy and killed. Relatives of those killed are still alive, writer has no thought for their feeling? This drama make a slight change of name for female lead n ml is a real north korea spy. Knetz also questions on writer other characters in drama n background of writer. Writer is really brazen. I support knetz petition for this case.
They deserve all the criticism imo. these issues were raised months ago when the whole country drag joseon exorcist to the ground. I thought they amend the script but the only thing they did was to change to FL’s name. How are they gonna save themselves when the character description clearly said that JHI is NK spy posing as a college activist? and using that pine song? it is so easy to write a romcom without those details. how can this from the same writer that wrote bridal mask/gaksital? I just dont understand.
JHI should be glad that he still has DP S2 to wash this off ngl.