Super Junior Fans Protest Against Addition of New Member25/10/2007
After Super Junior’s agent company SM Entertainment announced a plan for adding a new member (Henry) to Super Junior, fans immediately objected and formed a silent protest. At 4:00 PM on Wednesday afternoon (October 24th), over 270 high school and college students swarmed towards SM Entertainment’s building and formed a “Against Adding a New Member to Super Junior Joint Committee.”
Wearing surgical masks, holding signs that plastered “13″ all over the board, sitting in straight lines, they silently protested against the action. Some raised signs and said, “SJ ONLY 13″ and “SM what do you want?” and other similar words.
Nearby there was a huge sign hanging from a tree, with the words, “We are not naive children causing trouble. We are guarding the treasured courage. My name is FAN.” It took well over $1000 won to create the sign.
When SM created Super Junior, they publicized the group with the tagline, “The gate towards stardom in Asia” and stated that this group is a project group with an uncertain amount of members. Currently Super Junior has 13 members, but this was not what the fans want.
According to one of the protesters, although Super Junior was originally a project group, after the release of single “U” last year in June, SM announced through the media that Super Junior will stay as a permanent group. Therefore having plans to add the Chinese Henry and debuting Super Junior-China is lying to the fans.
Another student said, “We do not want Henry or anyone else to be added in Super Junior. We want Super Junior to be a safe 13-membered group. We support Super Junior to target overseas markets, but not with Henry. Henry was not originally a Super Junior member. We will protect Super Junior’s name.” She also added, “We’ve started the protest on the 21st and at that time we had over 400 people. We’ve also sent many messages to SM about the situation, but they did not reply. We will continue to protest until SM gives us an official answer.”
For this, SM said, “We never stated that Super Junior was a permanent group. The fans had it misunderstood. Super Junior was formed as a gate to stardom in Asia, therefore our Chinese trainees like Han Kyung were added.”
They also added, “With the formation of Super Junior-China and doing activities overseas, more people will recognize Super Junior and it will help the group create a greater popularity. We hope fans will continue to support Super Junior.”
On another side, some 50 people supported Super Junior to have an extra member, and held signs with words, “We support Henry’s addition,” to create more controversy.
Future activities of Super Junior and fans’ interaction will be closely followed by the media.
source: shenyuepop
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