the bad faith discourse around yoongi’s DUI incident has been actively pissing me off for days. bad faith discourse, in general, irritates the hell out of me, and i’ve been mulling over this for a few weeks because of two books that have come up in discussions, the first (euny hong’s THE BIRTH OF KOREAN COOL, 2014) because it was the july book for my korean history book clubs and the second (elise hu’s FLAWLESS, 2023) because it reminded me of the first.
the idea of bad faith and good faith is something i first came across in law school, and it’s one of the few things that stuck with me from 1L. faith, in this context, is intent — it is the underlying attitude, essentially, from which you approach a situation and form your argument. when it comes to writing, i think of faith as various things, but, in the case of these books, i’d describe them as the [seeming] impetus behind an author wanting to take on a topic and situate themself as some form of authority. it doesn’t have anything to do directly with the quality of the research or the writing, though i do think that it absolutely colors the end result that is the book — it’s difficult, in my opinion, to write a book in bad faith and end up with a book that merits discourse.
it is fair to say that both hong and hu did their due diligence for their books and there is informative value to them (speaking more for KOREAN COOL than FLAWLESS, though, as i couldn’t get past fifty pages of the latter). hong looks into korean culture at-large, presenting a history of korea’s investment in soft culture, from pop to dramas to video games, and providing a good explanation of han in my opinion, and hu tries to talk about korean beauty standards and the k-beauty industry and its effects on society (i think from my skimming of the book). both conduct interviews and do research. there is a fair amount of information in both books, but the thing is that they only dive so far and provide insight because this, i think, is where bad faith really rears its head — hong seems to come from a place of contempt for korean culture, and hu starts from a place of Othering spectacle. neither shows much respect for their topics, and what results are books that feel opportunistic, an attempt to jump on a moment in the zeitgeist and profit off them, whether financially or status-wise as journalistic authorities.
seizing a moment isn’t inherently good or bad. it isn’t a bad thing to be tuned into culture and hop on trend quickly; i often wish i was a faster thinker and writer so i could be more timely with my writing; but, when it’s done in bad faith, it means that the topic (and the culture) at hand doesn’t get the proper treatment it deserves. when you start from a place of wanting to capitalize on something, you can honestly go so far, and, ultimately, you do a massive disservice to the topic at hand — and the people and culture connected to it.
and, so, suga — there’s been a lot of bad faith discourse whizzing around the internet, from the sides of the fandom, anti-fandom, supposed regular people who aren’t bangtan fans or anti-fans and allegedly have no skin in the game. (and the media — good lord, there is so much bad faith journalism in both korea and the west right now.) there’s a lot of hypotheticals about how someone could have gotten hurt, a lot of accusations of bighit and yoongi lying, a lot of histrionic calls for yoongi to leave bangtan and so many bad faith comparisons being made to other celebrities who have had DUIs, never mind the fact that there are many differences between, say, kim saeron or shin hyesung’s cases and yoongi’s. there’s a general unwillingness to think critically and inability to hold multiple things to be true and a general lack of grace, spurred entirely by the fact that yoongi is part of bangtan and therefore should be made an example of (never mind that all of bangtan is in gundae because the korean government likely wanted to set a precedent with them). there is a lot of bad faith discourse exploiting the fact that, yes, DUIs are serious offenses and should be taken seriously to take advantage of a rare bangtan scandal and make a sensation of something that is being sorted out by the police.
(this doesn’t even touch on all the irresponsible media reporting that has led to a lot of confusion because of so many corrections that are being issued as apparently no one can wait to write about this until after everything has been confirmed. this is the most egregious act of bad faith.)
multiple things can be true at the same time. yoongi made a mistake in getting on an electric scooter after drinking. he reasonably could have thought that an electric scooter didn’t fall under the same laws as a car. he got lucky that he didn’t get into an accident and that no one got hurt. he is facing the consequences; his license has been suspended, he will likely have to pay a fine, and his reputation is in the gutter. both he and bighit were too hasty with their statements in their apparent eagerness to get ahead of the media (and they should either get a better legal team or listen to their legal team), and he could have tried to underplay how much alcohol he had consumed, which is not great behavior (if true) but is also human. korean drinking culture is toxic; this isn’t some kind of surprise. this is his first offense.
i believe that there is a particular arrogance to korean celebrities who commit three specific acts: (1) drinking and driving, (2) doing drugs, and (3) evading military service — and, to tack on an unofficial fourth, on a slightly minor level, gambling. these are acts koreans know will be most likely to end their careers (there are many examples in the industry of this being the case), so there’s a specific hubris behind this behavior. it’s also incredibly selfish to drive under the influence because it’s not only your life you’re playing with but the lives of strangers, and i’ve seen firsthand what driving under the influence can do — one of my parents’ church friends has a niece who did the stupid thing of driving home after drinking in koreatown and rear-ending a SUV so badly that two teenagers were killed. i do not take driving under the influence lightly.
my thing with yoongi’s situation, though, is that (1) he wasn’t driving a car, (2) no one got hurt, and (3) this is his first offense. i know that he still could have potentially hurt someone with a scooter, but a scooter still is not the same as a car and has a much lower possibility of meting out comparable damage. i would also argue that it isn’t necessarily common sense to assume that DUI laws apply to an electric scooter; i certainly learned through this incident that that is indeed the case in korea; so there is room for reasonable human error here. to add to that, he didn’t hurt someone, so i don’t see the point in shouting about what could have happened, especially when a hypothetical situation shouldn’t (and legally likely does not) factor into whatever punishment he receives.
i also don’t agree with people’s reactions over his alleged BAC level of 0.227 and using that to determine that yoongi is a raging alcoholic who got blackout drunk. yes, if true, it is high. no, i don’t think it’s great, and, regardless of what his BAC level actually was, i am still generally concerned about korean drinking culture and people who drink regularly/heavily. (i do drink but rarely, and i have never been entertained by stories that begin with “omg i was sooooo drunk” but rather find them kind of pitiful.) i also have the common sense to recognize that alcohol hits everyone differently, that everyone reacts to alcohol differently, that one reported [alleged] BAC level isn’t sufficient to diagnose someone as an alcoholic or assume that he was blackout drunk. there are so many bad faith accusations and assumptions being thrown about, and i wish everyone would watch the try guys video where they all drink the same amounts and take field sobriety tests. eugene at the end of the night is nowhere like zach halfway through, and, to be very explicitly clear, i don’t think anyone should drive after drinking — the point i want to make is that you cannot judge one person’s capacity for alcohol as the same as another’s because there are so many factors that go into how your body metabolizes alcohol.
also, showing grace to someone isn’t the same as wanting them to get off without consequences. given that he broke the law, yoongi should have his license suspended, and he should be fined. none of this is for the public to decide, though — bighit at least was clear in their initial statement that his license had already been suspended, so it’s not like either the company or yoongi is trying to slither out or consequences. the law will deal with that.
grace, though, is not destroying him personally and professionally over a first offense where no one got hurt and letting him have the room to be human and learn from this and not make the same mistake twice — because people can learn and change. case in point: ever since harris announced tim walz as her VP pick, people on the opposing side have been actively trying to tear walz down. one of the things that has surfaced again is walz’s arrest in 1995 for reckless driving, when he was pulled over for speeding then put through a field sobriety test, which he failed. republicans have been trying to use this as some kind of indictment of his character, except the thing is that, yes, walz did drive under the influence, he did go to jail, and he learned from the experience and has chosen not to drink since.
instead of demonizing yoongi for what could have happened, maybe the grace is to acknowledge that, yes, he got lucky, and he will pay whatever consequences korean law determines, and hopefully he will not do this again — and that is all the public needs to express. if he does this again, if he were to drink and get behind the wheel of a car, that would be a very different conversation, but, right now, that’s a hypothetical conversation. it is not relevant to now for the simple fact that it hasn’t happened. in general, i find the discourse around this situation to be in bad faith, fairly disingenuous with a lot of eagerness, whether intentional or subconscious, to dump on a public figure, and this netizen impulse to destroy people so recklessly and thoughtlessly behind the safety of our phone and computer screens doesn’t really reflect well on where we are as a society.
the thing i dislike about bad faith discourse (and bad faith writing) is that it ultimately plays to the lesser parts of humanness. bad faith wants to elicit a particular response, one that’s grounded in spectating and disregards more critical thinking and a more expansive perspective.
when you start from a point of dislike and contempt, you can’t have respect for your subject and, therefore, give it more than a superficial glance. when you start from a point of spectacle, you can only regard your subject as the Other, as something to be exoticized and ogled, set apart and made freakish. when you start from a point of self-righteousness, you dehumanize your subject and forget that there is a real person on the other side. bad faith invites us to look down on and condescend to, playing on our worse instincts, instead of inviting us to be more open-minded, to see other people and other cultures as layered, complex entities with humanity that is equal to ours.
bad faith discourages us from being better people.
we live in incredibly dark, shitty times, and i find myself with less and less patience for bad faith discourse. we already see it so much in our papers of record, in their incredibly disingenuous, harmful reporting on the ongoing genocide of palestinians, the 2024 U.S. election, trans rights to name a few examples, and it’s so disheartening to see how it’s become so normalized, how people simply consume what they are given and accept it without thinking critically about the propaganda being stuffed down our throats. we don’t need more bad faith shit; we need more grace.
i’m sure yoongi’s situation will be resolved even as media reports regarding it are still changing and netizens are still being netizens. i know he doesn’t need me to worry about him — he’s got the wealth and fame to insulate him — and it isn’t even that i’m necessarily worried (i don’t know him; who am i to worry about him?), but more that, like i said, i’m annoyed. bad faith discourse sets my teeth on edge.
editing to add: i personally didn’t have an issue with the memes from fans because (1) he wasn’t driving a car and (2) he hadn’t gotten into an accident and no injuries had been reported. those facts have yet to be contested, and there is something darkly comical over the situation — he was riding an electric scooter. and he fell over. like, of all the scandals to get into, this is kind of on the ridiculous end of things, made humorous because of the two pre-existing facts.
had yoongi been behind the wheel of the car or had he injured someone while on the scooter (or, also, had this not been his first offense), the humor would be incredibly tone deaf and out of place, and it would be fair for netizens to be calling out fans for their cat memes and jokes. that’s another hypothetical situation, though, and i think it’s in bad faith to pile on fans for not taking things seriously when the situation is what it is and yoongi is facing the consequences — and, as far as i know, no one’s calling for him to be let off easy.