Kaachi, a "k-pop" group from the UK, debuted recently with their first single 'Your Turn'. Kaachi is the first self proclaimed "k-pop" group that debuted outside of Korea. It consists of 4 girls; Nicole, Dani, Coco, and Ruth. Coco is the newest member to the group, joining after 2 other members had left, and she is also the only Asian member.

  Within a little more than 2 days after their official music video was released, it garnered over 700k views. If you were to scroll down to read or write comments, you would be unable to as Kaachi has turned off the comments. This is the case in all of their videos; turned off comments and disabled viewing the like and dislike count. Most reactions are found on either Twitter or the social platform Tik Tok, where they have individual accounts and a main Kaachi account. They have recieved a very large amount of backlash on those public accounts, and no one should be surprised. 

  The vocals are very poor alongside the rapping. It is clear they have not had the proper vocal training needed to debut as a music group. Even in their music video, where they could repeat things as many times as they wanted, their dancing was out of sync and moves that were so simple came off as lazy. If you watched a previous video where they preformed live, their dancing seemed even more poor and they lacked the stage presence any other artist could have. Overall they aren't a coherent unit.

  Setting aside the skill level of Kaachi, the biggest issue is how they label themselves as k-pop. K-pop stands for Korean pop. It is a new type of industry that deviates from regular pop music, and is extremely competitive. Idols in the k-pop industry train from months to years to even get a chance to debut in a group, and even then they could get cut or their group could fail and be forced to disband. They go through extensive, exhausting, and mentally draining training- something that clearly Kaachi did not go through. Idols also have a contract they must sign consisting of things such as rules the must follow (e.g. no dating, what they eat, how long they work, how to act). They also all train in South Korea and those who do debut, debut under a Korean label. The "Big 3" labels include JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and SM Entertainment. Ever since BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) entered the picture and began to grow, that number may change to the Big 4.

  These 4 girls are walking into an industry with a fast pass, not going through the extensive training other idols do, not even debuting under a Korean label. This really shows the privileges some countries have and use for personal benefit- even if it is unfair to others. These girls (besides Coco) aren't fluent in Korean, which poses as another issue. Even though there are foreigners in the k-pop industry such as Lisa from BLACKPINK who is Thai, she still is fluent in Korean and went through the training. In all reality, labels treat foreign trainees very differently and push them harder than they would a native Korean. So posing the argument "there are other foreigners in the industry," it immediately becomes invalid because those idols went through the exact same thing everyone else did.

  In a video posted on Kaachi's YouTube channel, the producer of Kaachi said "Through Kaachi, I hope they can create a wave of change in the perception that k-pop is no longer a Korean music genre, but a global one." 

   This defeats the purpose of it being called k-pop. It is a whole industry based around the Korean language and if you are trying to make it no longer a Korean music genre, it is no longer k-pop. It is stripping Korea of an industry they built, and bringing it down. K-pop is already global, as it has global listeners. This is thanks to big groups such as BTS, BLACKPINK, Twice, EXO, Got7, Stray Kids, Loona, and the list goes on. Attempting to make it worldwide takes away the "Korean" aspect of the industry.

  This hasn't been the only trouble Kaachi has faced. They are now in scandals with Blinks, ARMY, and are already being accused of plagarizing and copying other artists. 

  3 of the 4 members were once in a dance group, and in one filming session they were dancing based on different emotions or attitudes like sad, happy, etc. Then they were asked to dance lazily. However, the guy who was instructing them to do so said "Lazy, like Jennie from BLACKPINK." Big mistake. They issued an apology on twitter, however it is not seen as genuine as there was already a comment on youtube they replied to which they said it was just a joke and that they loved Jennie, despite their apology saying they thought nothing of it and leaving it in it was an accident. If it was an accident, you could have easily editted it out of the video. It was not live streamed- they clearly were mocking Jennie on purpose. It was hard to take their apology sincerely when they were also laughing in the now deleted video.

  They came into collision with ARMY (BTS fans) when one of the members Ruth, whose stage name is Chunseo but I refuse to call her that because she is not Korean, shipped herself with Jungkook. No idol ever ships themself with another idol and even regular fans shipping themselves with their idol is frowned upon. It paints a very bad image for Ruth already. Kaachi also had said "I blue you" to their fanbase 'Koochies' (oh no why) which is a direct rip off of BTS's phrase "I purple you;" the member V came up with as a way to express his love and appreciation towards ARMY. Using the new phrase "I blue you" has no underlying value and is simply copying for a reason still unknown.

Finally, the plagarism accusation. The edited graphics are a direct rip off of Tomorrow X Together's Crown MV, certain dance moves are identical to BLACKPINK's, and ITZY's MV for Icy is also very clearly integrated. Here are some tweets pointing that out:

  Kaachi could have very well been better off as a regular pop group. What they have done is almost disrespectful towards the k-pop industry and the community. Overall there is a very very low chance of them succeeding, and in the future they will more than likely be forgotten. It has happened before where something new pops up on the market and garners a lot of attention, but in a month it is gone like no one knew what it was. Almost like a trend.

  Hopefully other companies do not bandwagon off of this and see from the backlash how bad of an idea it was, and the k-pop industry is left alone to thrive like it has been for so long. If the girls want to go to Korea and become actual trainees, learning to be fluent in Korean and going through the process of becoming an idol, then that is a much more respective way to get your name onto the k-pop market. Working hard and earning a spot in the industry.