ATINY Are Outraged Over An Insulting And Mistranslated Comment Being Read To ATEEZ’s Mingi

Sometimes jokes can go too far.

ATEEZ recently had a comeback with their new album, The World EP.1: Movement, and its title track, “Guerrilla.” As part of their promotions, the group made an appearance on Weekly Idol with hosts Kwanghee and Super Junior‘s Eunhyuk.

ATEEZ on Weekly Idol. | @mbcplusm/Twitter
| @mbcplusm/Twitter

The group was able to perform and show off the dance to their new song and attempt to win the “Random Play Dance” portion of the show, as well as play a few other games with the hosts.

In a segment of the show where fans sent in reasoning for why they would not want to go on vacation with a specific member, a viewer sent in a comment saying that they would not want Mingi because his English is “the worst.” The comment got a strong response from the hosts and ATEEZ, who began defending Mingi.

Fans immediately took to Mingi’s defense online, bringing up that Mingi previously clarified that the original instance where he made a joke about speaking English was just said to make the program funnier and that his English is actually not bad. The message read on Weekly Idol used the word 최악 (choi-ak) which is a harsh way of saying the worst, and many fans say this was not appropriate for the context of the conversation.

Many fans also believe that comments about K-Pop idols’ English should not be made at all. For many idols, including Mingi, English is a second or third language. They work hard to be multilingual in order to communicate with fans around the world. In addition to that, Mingi tries especially hard to communicate with international fans during video call events and remove the language barrier for non-Korean speakers.

As stated by host Kwanghee, the comment appears to have been from an international fan that used a translation app online. These apps are often incorrect and do not take context into account with translation. Fans fluent in Korean even began offering their assistance with translating comments for other ATINY in order to avoid another situation like this occurring.

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