 October 14, 2019, at approximately 3.21 p.m. after being unable to reach her the whole night before, the manager entered her room and sung them South Korea. As they entered the second floor, there they found her body. It was a death that shook an industry, a death that rocked an entire nation. Choi Jun-ri, better known as Sully, lead rapper and visual of the K-pop group FX. She was known as the star with the million-dollar smile. Sully was just a young girl, a fourth grader in elementary school when she was officially cast as a trainee for SM Entertainment, one of the four biggest entertainment agencies in Korea. At the age of 11, she was cast in her first drama. In September 5, 2009, at the young age of 15, she debuted with the group FX and on August 2015, after a successful six years, Sully had left the group. SM stated Sully was suffering physically and mentally from malicious and untrue rumors spreading about her. Ever since early in her career, she had been the target of criticism and bullying from Korean netizens, also known as K-Nets. Sully had always been open about topics of sexuality, feminism and mental illness. She was an individual who went against the norm. She didn't play by the established rules of society, and she refused to be placed in society's cookie-cutter image of a K-pop idol. And for that, she was crucified by both the media and the internet. She received hate for the most absurd things like going out in public without a bra, starring in a movie with a nude scene, speaking openly about women's rights, and even acting simply posting a selfie of her and her boyfriend was met with controversy and criticism. On an episode of Night of Hate Comments, Sully responded to the ridiculous hate comments that she received from K-Nets. Because of this, she was constantly bullied online, from being slut-shamed to K-Nets telling her to kill herself. And on October 14, 2019, she did just that. Sully had taken her life. In 2017, 15-year-old Kyla of the group Pristin became the target of online criticism. Many K-Nets insulted Kyla's weight and image and felt like Kyla did not fit the image of a typical K-pop idol, which was completely untrue. In October of 2017, Kyla had to take a hiatus. She stopped all group activities and remained inactive until their disbandment in 2019. The online media website AsianJunkie commented, it certainly seems like a 15-year-old girl got bullied out of her dream. In 2018, Jennie became the center stage for cyberbullying K-Nets, multiple videos of Jennie's surface online of her as K-Nets perceived being lazy and not giving any effort, which furthermore built upon a lot of critics' views of her being spoiled, ungrateful, and prideful. Additionally, any dating rumor of Jennie was taken as truth and was then humiliated simply for the fact that she went on a date. In 2005, K-pop idol Heiyun, otherwise known as Yuni, had undergone several different procedures for plastic surgery, including her jaw, nose, and breast enlargement. Immediately afterwards, she was met with criticism, people calling her fake, plastic, and oddly enough for being too sexy. In January 21st of 2007, she committed suicide. She left a note saying, I feel everything is empty. I am again walking down a path to reach a destination that I don't know. Now, this isn't something that's only unique to idols, these are just the examples that we hear about. It's an epidemic that's facing teens all over the country. On November 18th, 2011, a Korean girl committed suicide due to intense bullying that she received at school. In her suicide note, she listed the names of all her tormentors, along with the names or the words, if I die, it will be the end for all of you. And these complicated problems would come to an end too. The girl was 14 years old. In Korea, about one-third, 32% of all teenagers who use the internet say they have been the targets of cyberbullying. This is a problem facing one in three teens. Being bullied at such a young age won't any age really, but especially at a young age can be horrible for teens. It affects a teen's mental development, makes a person feel alone, worthless, sad, and afraid. Time Magazine reported, statistics show that suicide is the leading cause of death among 10-19 year olds in South Korea, where young students often face intense pressure to conform and excel in hyper-competitive academic environments. Most young South Koreans who commit suicide are believed to do so because of bullying and family problems. Among East Asian countries, Korea ranks first, with the highest suicide rate, with 20.2 suicides per 100,000 people. This isn't a coincidence. Since the emergence of social media came the ability to communicate with friends, relatives, and acquaintances, it became easier to organize things, keeping contact with friends across the world, and remember people's birthdays. But it also gave birth to a new vile form of bullying. Because of the anonymity, people can say and act as they please without fear of immediate consequences. Within seconds, you could ruin another person's life and reputation, all with the click of a button. Didn't matter if it was true or not, people like to believe the juiciest story. So where does this big bullying problem stand from? To fix any problem, not only do you have to recognize that it is a problem, but you also need to know where it comes from. In a 2017 Korean study, it stated that school violence and cyberbullying occurred due to intermotive such as ostentation of power, desire to govern or subdue others, revenge, boredom, jealousy, and transition of emotions. As stated earlier, young teens face a lot of social pressure, especially in academic settings. In order to deal with this pressure and other negative emotions, students will turn to physical bullying and cyberbullying to cope. The study continues by saying victims of school violence tend to have cyberbullying inflicting behaviors to reduce their tension for school violence. So it seems that victims of school violence will also in turn inflict violence and bullying to others. It starts to create a vicious cycle of never ending bullying. At school, students don't see their peers as friends, but as competition and believe that they need to beat them to get ahead. Students who are good in their studies can immerse themselves in that. Those who are not might try to bully or control someone else. Some other contributing factors to bullying were jealousy and as the study called it, ostentation of power or in layman's terms, the need to show off, the desire to be better than others. We live in a day and age dominated by social media. We are constantly exposed to people who are more beautiful, who have more money, nicer cars, and have seemingly perfect lives. People think that this will impress others and will earn the love and praise of others. When bombarded with everything that we see on the internet and social media, this desire to be better than others naturally turns into jealousy and idols whose lives are constantly under a magnifying glass become the easy target for people's hate as an output for their jealousy and the pressures from academic life. I was able to speak with crazy grace who spoke about her own struggles with bullying as an idol. I would have so much like negative comments and it was hard to not look at them but it just makes you want to look at it because they're talking about you and sometimes negativity feeds off of negativity. It does get very depressing and you just feel like all your hard work wasn't even paid off just by people judging you on what they see on TV and they don't really know you in real life and you can't even explain all of that to everyone. So that's the most uncomfortable thing you have to deal with and I think that happens because of internet because internet is so easy to be anonymous and just like comment really fast. You're basically commenting without really thinking and I don't think they would really do that if they were you know in front of the celebrity face to face internet just makes it easy to be negative. Obviously bullying is a huge problem, a problem that desperately needs to be solved. No more people need to needlessly die. So what can we do? The easy cop out answer is just to say oh be nice and kind to everyone I don't think that's enough. If we truly want to see change and root out this epidemic then we must take action and we must be proactive about it. The tone at the top needs to change from the people in power to the kids at school there needs to be a change in culture and I don't mean culture as in the language arts and history I mean the habitual collective behavior of a group of people. Change in the belief that it's okay to torment people because we are angry or jealous or the idea that it's okay to take out your academic stress on people that are weak and powerless parents teachers and other students must take a zero tolerance policy to bullying. On October 15th a bill referred to as the Solia was proposed to counter malicious comments. A bill supported by about a hundred different organizations and more than 200 celebrities and K-pop idols who reportedly had experienced malicious comments themselves. The Korea Entertainment Management Association declared we will no longer stand idly by and we will do our best to eradicate cyber violence and malicious commenters nothing will be forgiven and strong action will be taken. Once again we will be taking strong legal action on all fronts against malicious comments directed at pop culture business professionals and artists. The bill is expected to be brought to the National Assembly's Memorial Hall in early December. Ask ourselves this do we hold grudges do we gossip do we make an effort to make people feel welcome or do we purposely exclude other people instead of being happy for others and their achievements do we instead become envious and hateful so we can ask for all the changes in legislature changes in society changes in other people but at the end of the day there's only one person that we have full control over my plea to you is be the change that you want hey guys that's it for my video special thanks to crazy grace for helping out with this and remember to check out her channel here below and also special thanks to ember in itaewon for the venue and lastly won from across the square if this video was helpful remember to hit subscribe and as always love yourself and speak yourself