America-based singer song-writer Jenny Hyun made a name for herself penning tunes for Girls' Generation, one of Korea's biggest pop groups and Nintendo DSi product pitch girls. But this week, Hyun made a bigger name for herself with a racist twitter rant.
On Feb. 16, Hyun loaded on Twitter, apparently spewing a diatribe of hate speech that attacked African-Americans. The incident seems to have been sparked by a tweet by boxer Floyd Mayweather that came off as dismissive about basketball star Jeremy Lin.
Via Twitter, Hyun called Mayweather names, before going on to express her desire for the "eradication" of black people, among other horrible remarks. Her comments are hateful and awful. Hyun has since made her Twitter account private; however, website Soompi has screengrabs of her tweets (viewable here).
Fans of her music, as well as K-pop fans, asked Hyun to stop. On her blog the following day, she posted an image of a chicken that read, "I regret nothing." Then the day after that, Hyun offered an "official apology", adding that people where threatening her by saying they knew her address and were roaring their car engines outside her house. Then, she got on Twitter again and made more insensitive remarks.
On Feb. 19, another apology appeared on Hyun's site. It stated that the songwriter was admitted to the hospital. "She is a paranoid schizophrenic and has been battling mental illness, a debilitating disease for many years," the apology read. It extended an apology for all the harmful statements Hyun made during this recent psychosis episode.
One of the greatest thing about both the internet and social networking sites is that both allow people to open up and reveal their inner most thoughts and say things they may never utter aloud. This is, as Hyun's recent incident confirms, is also one of the worst things, allowing us to see sides of others we never want to see and learn things we never wanted to know.
K-Pop Songwriter's Racist Tweets Spark Outrage [Soompi via FuckedGaijin]
(Top photos: Lockerz)