Active on SNS ‘Warehouse’
Photo card, autograph entry ticket, etc.
After sending it to fans living overseas
CDs are ‘processed’ with a fee.
Fans criticize ‘distorted industry’
It has been discovered that a market has emerged for ‘disposal middlemen’ who only send necessary probability items such as photo cards and fan signing event tickets to overseas K-pop fans, and then dispose of physical CDs for a fee. Suppliers overproduce waste even though they know it will be discarded, and consumers are forced to purchase waste, leading to the emergence of companies specializing in waste disposal. There is criticism that the current K-pop industry is not sustainable.
As a result of coverage on the 28th, overseas K-pop fans were using intermediaries called ‘warehouses’. After searching for and contacting warehouse companies spread online, you receive addresses from personal messengers such as Line, WhatsApp, and Telegram, and proceed with the purchase.
On the 21st, we contacted a warehouse through Indonesian K-pop fan A, and found that they were charging a separate disposal fee. When Mr. A said, “I only need a photo card, not an album,” the seller responded, “An ‘unboxing fee’ of 1,000 won will be charged per album.” He then said, “Please pay the unboxing fee in advance and pay the photo card purchase fee in post.”
The album from which the photo card was removed was discarded. Mr. A asked, “Where is the album going?” When asked, “Can you donate it?” the business owner replied, “I will throw it away.” Some vendors announced that they would donate albums, but it is presumed that most of them will be discarded because there is no place to donate them. Because transactions are conducted secretly, fraud is frequent. Mr. B, another K-pop fan from Indonesia, said in a written interview, “In 2020, several fans formed a group and purchased albums (in large quantities) from Warehouse,” adding, “It was $4 to $5 each, but the albums arrived even after waiting for six months.” “I didn’t do it,” he said. There are a total of 111 albums that Mr. B’s group did not receive, worth 6.7 million won.
Warehouses are generally presumed to be managed temporarily by international students staying in Korea or operated by Korean companies whose true nature is unclear. When I checked the three warehouse addresses searched on the Internet, I found that two were shared offices that specialized in address registration. The other location also had a factory-type office as its address, but had no employees and did not answer phone calls.
Fans criticized the K-pop industry for being distorted. Rosa de Jong, a K-Pop for Planet activist who participated in the forum ‘Exploring climate response measures through creating a sustainable K-pop consumption culture’ held at the National Assembly on the 20th, said, “By creating a probability system, mass purchases are forced and the guilt is passed on to fans. “The industry must change,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Environment, the amount of plastic used by domestic entertainment companies to produce albums increased every year from 55.8 tons in 2017 to 801.5 tons in 2022. The album sales volume registered on Circle Chart in 2022 is 74,195,554 copies. Since one CD weighs 18.8g, the plastic used in the CD alone amounts to 1394.9 tons.
