Fight for Wonho

By Yuli Atta 

This piece is part one of an assessment for university that I had to do. Part 2 you can find HERE.

On a cold autumn afternoon Valentina Buhin came back from school and started checking the different fandom news. She was in so many fandoms, it was unreal.

            October was such an eventful month for the K-pop industries. There were so many different and amazing comebacks from all of her favourite bands like Stray Kids who were her all-time favourite idols, Ateez, Oneus and so many others. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of negative things happening. First, there was Sulli’s passing, after that Hwall left The Boyz, and then – her eyes watered thinking about it – Woojin left Stray Kids after just a year and a half of being in the band. ‘Nine or none,’ was their motto and yet…they were now eight. She sighed, remembering all of that and decided to check YouTube for some new comeback stages.

The most recent one was Monsta X’s Follow which she had been anticipating for a long time. She had been a monbebe, which is what the Monsta X fandom is called, for just ten months but she always gets excited about comebacks. The stages the idols performed on were always so beautiful and extra and she loved it. What was even better was the way they performed. It was clear to her that they put their all in the performances, not just Monsta X but all K-pop bands. She typed in the search engine ‘Monsta X Follow comeback stage’ and didn’t find anything. She found it weird but sometimes it would take a few days for the channels to upload the stages as some of them needed to be edited. She shrugged to herself, ignoring the dreadful feeling of foreboding. The last time she wasn’t able to find many comeback performances was when Woojin announced his departure from Stray Kids. She didn’t want to live through this again.

Tina decided to check her phone in case somebody had said something about it. Her Romanian friend Iuiliana was a big fan. She opened Instagram and saw the message from Iuli.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

She quickly double-checked, hoping it was her English and that it was the language barrier and that it didn’t actually say what it said.

Wonho was no longer a part of Monsta X.

Yep, that’s what she had written. Tina read it over and over again.

Wonho had left Monsta X.

She knew that there had been some rumours and controversies going around about Monsta X. It was first Shownu with his alleged affair with a married woman which was disproved and now it was Wonho…

…who wasn’t in Monsta X anymore.

She had to go on Twitter, she had to triple check.

The hashtag ‘fight for Wonho’ was trending worldwide. According to the information she found Wonho had been accused of owing money to an old friend, smoking marijuana with her and being in a juvenile detention centre for a while. All of this was coming from Jung Da-eun and her friend Han Seo-Hee who were famous for ruining idols’ careers by spreading rumours. However, nobody knew how true they were. Both Starship Entertainment and Wonho had released statements saying that he would be leaving. Her heart hurt for him, he even thanked the fans and asked them not to be too hard on the rest of Monsta X. But what about you? She wanted to ask. How are you? What are you going to do now? He had said before that music was the only thing he was good at. Why did this have to happen to him?

‘Wonho is a good person,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘He’s the most caring person I’ve heard of. He loves his fans, he even wears a “Monbebe” necklace all the time.’

As her eyes watered, she continued checking the hashtags on Twitter. One of them was called ‘monbebe won’t back down’ which was showing just how much the Monsta X fans loved Wonho. Understandably so, even though Tina’s bias was Jooheon, she loved all of the rest equally and Wonho was the centre of the group.

Monsta X had lost their centre.

Tina clicked on the icon in the lower right corner and typed in: “#FightForWonho”.

Iuliana Asoltanei was at the bus stop when she found out that one of her favourite bands would never be the same.

‘Hey,’ Iuliana messaged one of her best friends. ‘Is it true? Has Wonho truly left Monsta X?’

She had been busy at university, so she hadn’t checked her phone all day and when she finally did, that’s what she found. That’s what you get when you’re having a good day. Her friend hadn’t even told her. Maybe she didn’t know? Iuliana checked her phone.

‘Yes, I’m sorry for not telling you just yet. I didn’t want you to get upset.’

Too late for that, Iuli thought as she wiped her eyes with a cold hand. She just sat at the bus stop, reading different articles on her phone through her blurry vision. She even messaged all of her other friends who were also fans of Monsta X, she wanted to talk to Tina about it but she wasn’t back from school yet.

She saw the company’s official statement in which they explained why Wonho was leaving Monsta X which was her ultimate K-pop band. On their Twitter account she found out Wonho’s handwritten letter to the fans and the rest of the members, apologising to them and thanking everybody for the good years. Her mood worsened with every line she read. He himself admitted to having done bad things in his past but once he had become a trainee, and then an idol, he had made sure to be a good citizen. That’s what he was getting for it.

The information about Wonho’s past mistakes wasn’t anything new to her. She had known that he had some dark stuff happen in his past but he was clearly a different person now. He had a caring and a kind heart, why would somebody want to ruin that. What surprised her the most, however, was that the company didn’t defend him. Instead, they kicked him out.

Why? Why kick him out when they could have investigated and made sure that this was all sorted. Even if it was true, this all happened six years ago.

She wiped at her eyes again and checked Twitter.

Wonho was probably one of the reasons for Monsta X’s success. In her opinion, he was one of the benefactors for their worldwide recognition, not just because of his kind heart but because of the role he played as a part of the group. He was the lead vocalist and lead dancer of the band, and the centre of the group, she couldn’t imagine the boys without him. Iuliana had discovered Monsta X two years ago on YouTube because she had been drawn to a thumbnail showing Wonho. From watching a lot of videos about them, she could see how kind-hearted he was. Sharing a lot of posts on the fan cafe, constantly updating fans, making amazing songs and openly supporting the LGBTQ community.

Iuliana smiled as she saw all the trending hashtags. There was a new one in the top 25 trending each day since he left.

‘Yes, I will fight for Wonho,’ she said to herself. ‘And I will have hope for him.’

She was utterly heartbroken over his departure from Monsta X, she couldn’t even imagine what the other members were feeling. She was familiar with Han Seo-hee and what she has done before. This explained so much of what she had seen in their one and only performance of Follow as seven. It had looked wrong and soulless to her when she first watched it but she had assumed it was because of Shownu’s rumours. Now she knew why. However, one thing made her happy and that was the love monbebes were showing. As a part of the fandom she wouldn’t back down.

She tweeted: ‘#FightForWonho’.

Special thanks to Iuliana Asoltanei and Valentina Buhin for the interviews.