Is aespa Losing Its Spark? — Latest Performances Trigger Fierce Debate

From the very beginning of their career, aespa established themselves as one of the representative girl groups of the fourth generation, ruling over charts and hearts simultaneously. But is the crown slipping now?

Recently, the group came under intense scrutiny for their “embarrassing” live performance on Good Morning America. Karina, in particular, has received some scathing criticism for it.

Koreans “Embarrassed” By aespa’s Recent Performance In America

A post on the popular Korean community site, Nate Pann, recently went viral, where the OP (original poster) discussed their concern for Karina and the group. The OP listed some of the obvious gaffes the aespa leader has been caught up in recent months, and also expressed their disappointment with the lack of consistency in the group’s performance quality.

I’m hesitant to bring this up because I don’t want it to come off as unnecessary hate, but I’ve been feeling a bit concerned about Karina lately.

At the last awards show, aespa won the grand prize, but her speech ended with just laughter, and it felt a bit careless. Ningning and Giselle had to step in to manage the situation, especially since it was during a time when public opinion around Karina was already shaky due to her political controversy. The mood was really tense, and the moment felt poorly handled.

Then during the ‘Dirty Work’ encore stage, she made a mistake with the lyrics and just laughed it off again. And most recently, during their GMA performance, she messed up the choreography but reacted with a smile. That moment, too, felt disappointing.

aespa’s group dynamic is fun — a lot of fans enjoy their playful, high-school-girl energy. But sometimes, it feels like the more central members get a bit too relaxed. As the leader and the oldest member, Karina should be the one to set the tone when things need to be taken seriously. That’s something people have been pointing out for a while now, but it still doesn’t seem to be improving.

Skills can always be improved with practice — if the performance quality goes up, public opinion usually follows. But in situations like these, attitude really matters, and I think she needs to be more mindful of that going forward.

— OP’s post

The post has garnered significant attention, having racked up over 32,000 views within a few hours. While some of the comments agreed with the OP, others felt that the criticism was blown out of proportion.

• “It’s not like Karina mocked students or took someone’s life or anything.”
• “Just counting the times Karina’s been unfairly hated by you guys, it’s to the point where Pann community users should be the ones apologizing to her.”
• “The encore criticism is definitely baseless hate, though.”

• “Winter also couldn’t stop laughing by herself on stage — she kept laughing and couldn’t even dance properly. I don’t get it…If someone kept laughing like that at work, they’d probably be kicked out right away.”
• “It got to this point because everyone kept babying them. When people were saying ‘lip-syncing is just a genre’ and making excuses, and when there was attitude controversy, it was all ‘our girl can make mistakes.’ If that hadn’t happened, none of this would’ve.”
• “Honestly, none of the members seem to show any real drive or desperation…and I’m not just talking about this incident, it’s in general. The same goes for their concert. A ton of people dropped out of the fandom after going to the concert lol.”