KMCA opposes amendment to protect minors in entertainment, which is a good time to talk about the KMCA

The KMCA has issued a statement opposing an amendment proposed last September that called for a reduction in the maximum working hours for teenage entertainers (idols, trainees, actors), for them to be similarly limited as those in the Labors Standards Act, and that different limitations should be given to different age groups (a lot of it is in this post from a couple years ago).

Under current laws, teenage entertainers aged 15 and older are allowed to work up to 46 hours per week. However, the ‘Labor Standards Act’ limits the working hours of teenagers in the same age group to a maximum of 40 hours per week. The proposed amendment would then reduce the maximum working hours for teenage entertainers aged 15 and older from 46 hours to 40 hours per week. 

The KMCA statement claims the amendment is being pushed “without sufficient discussion with the recording industry” and “portrays the entire music industry as unfair without a proper examination of the industry’s current environment.” Basically they claim it’ll cause difficulties within groups who use minors, they may be at disadvantages on a global stage, and K-pop may lag. They specifically cite a fear that groups such as IVE and BABYMONSTER will no longer exist. They then claim that the industry sufficiently self-regulates and already adheres to the Popular Culture Industry Act that limits the working hours of ages under 15, and that teaching kids singing and dance is a comparable curriculum to standard school. They also throw in the usual “think about our nation’s soft power” appeal.

I’ve said this before, but this effectively is saying that the industry cannot thrive without child labor that exceeds that of adults working a regular 9-5, and a manual labor workweek as well.

They also seem to just be arguing for the hell of it because the laws already in place are only a handful of hours more per week as it is and idols are still being exhausted. That makes sense since it’s questionable how oversight would actually be done for this and there are ways to getting around it. Really then, what it seems like is they just don’t want to go down a slippery slope where they can’t debut minors anymore, as it seems like the reason there aren’t idols younger than 15 is because of previous changes.

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Oh right, the KMCA.

At some point in recent years, I’ve noticed K-pop fans have started to see KMCA as some neutral actor in these discussions, presumably because they’re new. Hopefully, this kind of stuff will disabuse them of that notion, as they’ve opposed basically every contract dispute brought by artists, including those that led to the reasons we don’t have slave contracts anymore. They effectively are a lobbying group formed by all the K-pop companies and distributors, so … caping for them is like one step above being a company stan, an extra level of pathetic. Maybe you liked what the KMCA said about a group you hate or something, so you began to inadvertently (?) bootlick, but if you like the entertainers instead of corporations then you probably shouldn’t give much thought to what they say.

If that’s not enough, then it seems like as good a time as any to remind people that their chairman is Kim Chang Hwan, an industry veteran with a storied career dating back to the 80s who was also convicted of aiding and abetting child abuse in The East Light case. This is also not a new thing, as Kim Gun Mo lightheartedly talked about being hit and abused while under his guidance as a junior in the 90s, and he suddenly left his company back then despite enormous success.

I’ll let you interpret the fact that all these companies don’t seem to have much problem with somebody who has been convicted in relation to child abuse as they advocate for how the K-pop industry is handling its treatment of kids just fine.