Oli London comes out as Korean - WTF?

Hello everyone, you might have heard about British influencer Oli London coming out as 'Korean' and 'non-binary'. Since Oli wants us to use the pronounce they/them to avoid the topic of his their gender, I shall respect that so please get used to it and don't get confused if you see me write they/them/their when you expect to see he/him/his instead. I must admit, I have never taken any interest in their music or presence on Instagram but since this issue is about cultural identity, it has certain caught my interest. I am going to first focus on the cultural aspect of a white person trying to claim to be 'Korean' whilst dealing with the whole non-binary gender identity thing a little later in this blog post. So to put this in perspective for those of you, Oli London is a 31 year old music artist from England who has spent a lot of money having an astonishing 18 plastic surgeries to look like his idol from BTS Park Jimin. This was controversial of course and I get the feeling people like Oli deliberately court controversy as that's the way they get attention on social media but many people seem to have a huge problem with a white British guy claiming to be Korean after having a) lived in South Korea, b) learnt the Korean language and culture and c) undergone extensive plastic surgery to look more Korean. So in today's piece, I'm going to try to find out why Oli has ruffled so many feathers over this issue and if Oli can legitimately claim to be Korean. 

There are people who think that there is a difference between your ethnicity which is assigned to you at birth and your cultural identity; thus in Oli's case, most people would see him as a British/English person who takes great interest in Korean culture but regardless of what he chooses to do with their life, he cannot change the fact that they are British/English. Can Oli claim to be Korean and if so, what is the benchmark of 'Korean-ness" that Oli must attain before that claim is validated? Well allow me to use myself as a case study: I moved to the UK in 1997 as a student, that was 24 years ago and I have since naturalized as a British citizen. People don't question whether or not I am British as I can simply prove my nationality by showing my passport and if necessary, all the paperwork for my naturalization process. There are two exams that one has to pass in order to naturalize as a British citizen: the first is a language test, so you must have a high enough standard of English and the second is a 'Life In The UK' test which tests your knowledge of British culture with topics from politics to religion to history to geography to even the royal family. Actually, it is not like the tests are that difficult really, but at least British citizenship is denied to people who do not speak English (well enough) and know absolutely nothing about life in the UK. But once you've fulfilled all the requirements and passed those two tests, you can proudly naturalize as a citizen of the UK. Thus you're either a British citizen or you're not - it is a very straightforward matter to settle. Does Oli need to get hold of a South Korean passport before he can legitimately claim to be Korean if by definition, a Korean person is someone with Korean nationality? Now, that is a tough question to answer. 

You see, many people actually make a distinction between my nationality (which is British - it is the only passport I have) and my ethnic roots, which they would then defer to my parents. This is why we get stuck with clunky double-barreled terms like 'British-Asian' and 'Korean-American' to try to encompass both the nationality and the ethnic identity of the person. In my case, the terms 'British-Chinese' or 'British-Asian' may be used to describe me, even though I prefer to avoid those terms if I can simply because I feel it should be sufficient to describe myself as just 'British' and if you want to find out more about my cultural identity, you should take the effort to get to know me better rather than default to a label like that. So would a South Korean passport allow Oli to more legitimately claim to be British? Well if Oli wanted to do that, it isn't impossible - Oli would have to be a legal resident of South Korea for at least 5 years (all he has to do is get a job there), avoid any kind of trouble with the law there in that period, prove that they are financially stable (in 2017 that figure was set at an annual income of 30 million KRW which is approximately £19,200, S$35,700 or US$26,500) and then pass the relevant exams on Korean language and culture. This process can take one and a half to two years to complete - the process may be slow and bureaucratic but it is possible to naturalize this way as a South Korean citizen. But even if Oli did get hold of a South Korean passport this way, would the locals see Oli as just a white person from England who has gone to great lengths to get their hands on a Korean passport or would the Koreans actually then acknowledge that by virtue of their Korean passport - they would be as Korean as any locally born Korean person there? 

This then begs the question: who gets to decide if Oli is Korean enough to be considered Korean? Should it be something Oli can decide for themself? Or would it be down to the Koreans to say "Oli is indeed one of us, Oli is now Korean." I really struggle to see how Koreans will totally accept Oli as Korean given that Oli's Korean is so limited. In their Youtube videos when Oli is in Korea, Oli often speaks in English to the locals instead of using Korean and I'm like, can you even speak more than the very basics? If Oli is singing in Korean, then that doesn't count as they have simply memorized the lyrics. But when they are speaking in basic Korean, Oli has a super strong accent but hey, almost all non-Koreans trying to speak Korean will have some kind of accent. I follow quite a number of western Youtubers in Japan and Korea as they make Japanese and Korean culture accessible to an English-speaking audience and sure, most of them speak Japanese and/or Korean fluently but they inevitably have a bit of an accent as well. So am I being too harsh on Oli failing to master what is a difficult Asian language? Perhaps, as someone who speaks Mandarin, I judge learners of Mandarin by how well they can get the tones right - by that token, I know some white people who speak better Mandarin than me. Whilst I speak Mandarin fluently, I struggle when it comes to reading/writing in Chinese, which is my third language after English and French. So by that token, these white friends have more of a right to claim to be Chinese than me, even if I have parents who identify ethnically and culturally as Chinese. Besides, this is a moving goal post as Oli could always improve their standard of Korean (with a lot of hard work) - how good you become in a second/foreign language depends entirely on how much effort you invest in that endeavour - this is a problem that can actually be fixed. 

The fact is there isn't a one-size fits all approach to this but different groups have different rules when it comes to extending their 'membership' - allow me to use myself as an example. I speak Welsh fluently, it is my fifth language; unlike my struggles with Chinese, thankfully I can read and write in Welsh as well as I speak it. There are about a million people in the world who claim to have 'some knowledge' of Welsh, but that includes thousands who have been forced to learn it whilst at school in Wales but no longer remember more than a few words of it and thus no longer have a functioning knowledge of Welsh. Thus a more realistic estimate of the true number of people who actually have a reasonable working knowledge of Welsh is more like 500,000 - though the more relaxed about what you consider 'a working knowledge of Welsh', the bigger that number. Some people have put the actual number of fluent Welsh speakers as low as 60,000 but even I think that's a bit strict. Given that the population of Wales is 3.1 million, then less than 16% of Welsh people who actually speak Welsh as well as I do. The vast majority of the rest speak only English. Can you imagine if only 16% of the population of South Korea spoke Korean? It would be absolutely unthinkable as we just assume that Korean people would speak Korean. Thus even amongst Welsh people in Wales today, the vast majority are so anglicized that they do not have a strong sense of Welsh identity - they are simply English-speaking British citizens who happen to live in Wales but for the 16% who are fluent in Welsh, their identity is very much Welsh and at the very center of that identity is having their own language - speaking Welsh (instead of English) is an act of patriotism for them. 

That's why when two Welsh speakers meet each other and realize they can speak to each other in Welsh instead of English, something magical happens. This really only happens when two people who speak a minority language get together - thus by that token, I have been afforded 'honorary Welsh status' by my Welsh speaking friends as I speak more Welsh than the vast majority of Welsh people in Wales. Yes it is clear that I am an immigrant who lives in London and has never even lived in Wales before, but yet I have been welcomed with open arms into the inner circles of the Welsh speaking community because of the fact that I can speak their language. Of course, the Welsh speakers who are fiercely proud of their language would embrace someone like me because they can then use me as an example and say to the Welsh people who can't speak the language, "see that guy who moved to London from Singapore? Even he took the trouble to become fluent in Welsh despite not even living in Wales - what is your excuse? You are born in Wales, you live in Wales yet you can't even make the effort to learn your own language?" But allow me to point out one thing: I never 'came out' as Welsh. This 'honorary Welsh status' was something that Welsh-speakers have given me; oh it would be extremely arrogant to 'claim' that my Welsh is so good that I'm more Welsh than most Welsh people. But if native Welsh speakers wish to give me that honor and title by accepting me as one of their own, then I graciously accept that as a compliment. Oli ruffled many feathers by claiming his 'Korean-ness', rather than waiting for Koreans to offer him that title.

Another country which has extended the arm of acceptance to me is France - let me to explain how I had proven my credentials to the French that I am one of them. I have studied at one of France's top universities, I have lived and worked in France, I speak French fluently at near-native standard, it is my second language and most of all, my first language is English and not Chinese. If I may be blunt, one criteria for Asian immigrants to become accepted as totally French is giving up their Asian culture, identity and language; I have done that by allowing French to replace Chinese as my second language. I have effectively kowtowed to the French and acknowledged, "your French culture is vastly superior to my inferior Asian roots, please kindly accept me as one of your own. I promise to abandon and forget my Asian roots." Ironically, I think this makes France the least racist country in the world (I know some of you might disagree with me on this) because if you embrace all things French, then they gladly accept you as French regardless of the colour of your skin. The reason why racism still exists in France today is because there are immigrants who refuse to totally assimilate the way I did when I lived in France. You can be black or Asian and be considered 100% French if you do assimilate - we're not talking about merely integrating here, we're talking full-on 100%, all or nothing assimilation. I must point out that I never had to 'come out' as French. Instead, I get accorded honorary French status when I am with French people, when they treat me as one of their own - this is very different from what Oli did by coming out as Korean. 

I have the humility to realize that my opinion of Oli doesn't matter, so I did some research and watched quite a few videos on Youtube about Korean people reacting to Oli. The overall reaction is extremely negative - most see him as a clueless troll who has offended a lot of Koreans with his cultural appropriation. Allow me to compare Oli to a friend in Singapore who is in fact trying to do what Oli is doing - let's call him Leo. I have known him since my army days and I know that Leo is obsessed with all things Korean, having lived and worked in Korea for a few years. Whilst Leo does like K-pop, he has demonstrated a far deeper understanding of all aspects of Korean culture beyond just K-pop. Leo has an alter-ego on Instagram and he often posts in Korean or at least makes his posts bilingual in Korean and English. Is Leo Korean? No, he is in fact Chinese-Singaporean but he wants people on social media to come away with the impression that he is Korean and not Singaporean, that he thinks it is more cool to be Korean than Singaporean. Did Leo 'come out' as Korean? No, he is simply posting a lot of Korean content on his social media feed. He did go as far as to change his surname though - he is using the Korean equivalent of his Chinese surname on social media but hey, so many people don't use their real names on social media. But here's the thing: Leo has done everything he can on social media to give people the impression that he is Korean. Thus Leo doesn't have to come out as Korean - in Leo's case, he could probably pass quite convincingly as Korean as he is Chinese and he doesn't need plastic surgery like Oli to look Korean. 

Just how Korean do you need to be to be considered Korean? Meet my Korean friend John - I got to know him a few years back when he was studying in London and we trained gymnastics together. Yes John has a Korean name, but he prefers to go by John when with non-Korean friends like me. He isn't typically Korean per se, for example he finds K-pop annoying and thinks that the target market for K-pop is 12 year old girls. He prefers pizza and pasta to gimbap and tteokbokki. John speaks English fluently, he consumes a whole range of media in English from the US and UK instead of sourcing entertainment from Korea. In fact, John doesn't seem to do 'Korean' things the way Leo does - a quick look on his social media feed and he posts exclusively in English, I suppose this is because he has friends like me who don't speak Korean. So John doesn't do Korean stuff like he doesn't listen to K-pop, doesn't eat Korean food, doesn't watch K-dramas, doesn't posts videos of himself on Instagram discussing the quality of the kimchi at his local Korean restaurant in Korean (that sounds like the kind of thing Leo would do). But would anyone dispute the fact that John is Korean? Of course not, he holds a South Korean passport, he was born and bred in a rather wealthy neighbourhood of Seoul. He has served his national service in South Korea and of course, he speaks Korean as a mother tongue/first language and has an intimate knowledge of all aspects of Korean culture. No one would ever challenge John's right to be Korean. Thus this begs the question: is the right to be Korean solely for people like John who were born in Korean and have Korean blood, then and no matter how hard people like Leo and Oli may try to be more Korean than John, can they never ever be considered as truly Korean? And what about my friend John from Seoul then - does he need to maintain a minimum level of Korean content in his lifestyle to retain his right to be Korean; could someone like John ever stop being Korean?

Let me contrast Oli's coming out with Mark Roswell, otherwise known as Dashan 大山 in China. Dashan is an very popular Canadian comedian and TV personality in China. He speaks Mandarin perfectly like a native after having lived in China since the late 1980s - whilst he is relatively unknown in the West, he is a massive star in China. He has been dubbed the most popular/famous foreigner in China because he established himself in Chinese media back in 1988 when it was really rare to see a white guy speaking Mandarin fluently. Nowadays, seeing foreigners who live in China speaking Mandarin fluently has become a lot more common but back in 1988, Dashan was simply at the right place at the right time to become an overnight sensation in China. He could have easily disappeared into obscurity after his 15 minutes of fame but he had a unique combination of business acumen, stage presence and tenacity to carve himself a successful and lucrative career by being the white guy who speaks Mandarin fluently. So in the last 33 years, he has done everything from acting to presenting to product endorsements, Dashan has become a household name in China, has he ever had the nerve to 'come out' as Chinese? No, he is a lot smarter than that - he would only invite ridicule if he had the audacity to make such a claim but hey, Dashan doesn't need to. He is more famous than a lot of Chinese celebrities these days, you can go into the smallest village in deepest, darkest Gansu province and they would still know his name. This is the kind of acceptance that is hard earned after 33 years, not simply demanded through a 'coming out'. 

But let's focus on the aspect of 'coming out' - traditionally, it is what happens when you tell the world that you're gay or lesbian. One of the most recent coming outs involving a celebrity was Nikkie de Jager in January 2020 - the famous Dutch Youtuber also known as Nikkie Tutorials. I became a massive fan of Nikkie after she took part in two seasons of the popular Dutch reality TV programme Wie Is De Mol (in fact she won the second time she took part). She decided to tell the world that she was born a boy and had transitioned into a woman during her childhood and teens. In her video 'I'm Coming Out', she revealed that she was being blackmailed by someone who threatened to go public with the information that she was transgender and thus decided to get it off her chest by making that information public. Many people never knew that she was actually transgender - many thought that she was simply a woman but after coming out as transgender, she has been a vocal supporter for LGBT rights and the coming out has only boosted her popularity since. But Nikkie wanted to make public a piece of information involving her private life - she wanted people to know the truth: she didn't want people to think that she was born a woman and she wanted to share the story about her journey to get to where she is today so others who feel trapped in the wrong body may draw strength from her story. However, it's not like people didn't know that Oli liked all things Korean (just look at their social media content); so technically speaking, you can't reveal a 'secret' that is already public knowledge so really, Oli is misusing the concept of 'coming out'.

Nikkie had surgery to transition from a man to a woman and by the same token, Oli's plastic surgeries are supposed to make him more Korean. How different are those processes to though? The way I see it: you have to earn the right to be accepted by people from that country or community (the way I have with the Welsh and the French and the way Dashan has with the Chinese) but how have Korean people in South Korea reacted to Oli coming out as Korean then? The answer is simple: no, Oli has been rejected by Korean people - let's examine the range of reactions out there on social media by Korean people on this issue. Firstly, there is outright ridicule by those who think that Oli can never be Korean even if he lived in Korea, had even more plastic surgeries to look more Korean and studied Korean to a very high standard because Oli's parents are English - Oli doesn't even have a drop of Korean blood in them so no matter how hard Oli tries, Koreans will view him as some kind of freak show. Secondly, there are those who feel sorry for Oli and worry about them - some people do think that Oli is just a Sasaeng: one of those K-pop fans who are so obsessed with BTS to the point where they have lost touch with reality and would do anything to just try to get closer to their K-pop idols and get their attention. They feel that Oli is mentally unstable and needs psychiatric evaluation, in order to receive professional help. These concerned people want Oli to love themselves for the person they are rather than resort to undergoing such extensive plastic surgery to become just like his favourite K-pop idol and yes, I tend to agree with them. 

Thirdly, there are those who have been nice and kind to Oli - they leave positive feedback encouraging Oli to follow their dreams and express himself but stop short of saying, "because you have done all of those things, you are now really Korean." After all, most of the feedback in these videos have been incredibly hateful and nasty - most people either see him as a freak desperate to do anything for attention or someone who is so psychologically unbalanced they need help urgently. This group of people basically have the message: back off, leave Oli alone, let Oli do whatever they want, it is none of your business. Even if you don't agree with what Oli is doing, Oli isn't hurting anyone as he pursues their dreams so there's absolutely no room for bullying or hate. Your judgement is uncalled for so back off - Oli doesn't need your approval or permission in any case; they have the right to do whatever they want and we should all respect Oli's right to express themselves. So this is basically an anti-bullying stance and thankfully, this does balance out all the hatred online. I failed to find though are any comments from real Korean people who wrote something along the lines of  "Oli is now Korean, as a Korean person I accept Oli as Korean." It is just impossible for me to read every comment on social media on the issue but even if there are comments from Korean people out there accepting Oli as Korean after their coming out, those have been impossible to find. There is some kindness out there for Oli but if the aim of Oli 'coming out' as Korean was to get Korean people to accept him as legitimately Korean - then this mission has failed miserably I'm afraid. 

Just how hated is Oli on Youtube? A good way to measure it is to look at his music videos on Youtube and to see the ratio of the thumbs up vs the thumbs down, then we can some numbers to look at rather just read the hateful comments. 

Mirror Mirror 19K likes : 185K hates

Plastic Is Fantastic 1.4K likes : 17K hates 

Koreaboo 5.4K likes : 105K hates

Christmas In Korea 20K likes : 237K hates

Troubled Bitch 1.7K likes : 24K hates

Lockdown City 3.8K likes : 40K hates

Last Christmas 4.6K likes : 42K hates

Heart of Korea 8.3K likes : 105K hates

Butterfly Anxy mix 2K likes : 27K hates

Butterfly 3.8K likes : 42K hates

Perfection 17K likes : 173K hates

As much as I like statistics, where do I even begin? Oli gets about 13 hates for every like they get - now don't get me wrong, even if we look just at the likes alone, that's a lot of likes for anyone on Youtube but it is the staggering amount of hate that he gets. I couldn't resist going into the comments section - it makes for good reading, but they are ridiculed and hated. To put things in perspective as to just how hated Oli is, a song that went viral for being so bad was Friday by Rebecca Black. If you don't know that song, back in 2010 an American mother thought it would be fun to treat her 13 year old daughter to a music video and paid some record producers to create a music video for Rebecca. The result was the song' Friday' and it was so cringe-inducing and crass that it went viral for all the wrong reasons - you have to remember at the heart of all this controversy was a 13 year old girl who suddenly was receiving so much hate from all over the world. It's a whole other story for another day but even as we look at the video for Friday on Youtube right now, there are 1.3M likes to 3.9M hates, that's still a ratio of 3 hates for every 1 like which is much better than Oli's track record. Rebecca is now much older and has released a music video for her new single 'Worth It For The Feeling' in May 2021 - that video has 17K likes and only 464 hates, so at least Rebecca Black can say, "hey guys, remember that I made that terrible music video when I was just a kid? Well I have learnt from my mistakes - I want you to take me seriously now and look at just how well received my latest material is." Good for Rebecca: she has become a stronger and wiser person and she is going from strength to strength but as for Oli, sigh, they don't seem to learn from their past mistakes. Oli's mistakes have not made them any wiser. Not at all - you know the saying: when in a hole, stop digging? Oli, please. 

But I need to turn my attention to Oli's 18 plastic surgeries: many people have reacted strongly against his attempts to look more Korean through this way because there's something quite fake and disingenuous about plastic surgery. The irony of course is that South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world and loads of K-pop stars go for plastic surgery to achieve the perfect face; loads of Koreans as well would go for eye surgery to make their eyes bigger, to look more Caucasian. Some would follow up as well with a nose job to create a sharper, more prominent European-looking nose, in order to at least try to look Eurasian-mixed rather than just plain Korean. Even in Singapore, famous influencer Xiaxue has had plenty of plastic surgery to look a lot more European yet when she speaks, she still sounds totally Singaporean which I find quite bizarre. That' the complete opposite of what I've done: I've not had any plastic surgery whatsoever yet when I speak, I sound very British - in fact, recently in a meeting, a client asked me if I was second or third generation. I laughed as that was a very PC, careful, tactful way of trying to figure out where I was actually from, if I was born here in the UK or in Asia. I am a banana: I am yellow on the outside and white on the inside, whilst Xiaxue is a Nai Wong Bao - a type of Chinese steamed custard bun (click here for the recipe), she is white on the outside but yellow on the inside. I don't have anything against people who choose to use plastic surgery as an option to achieve the body they want but I prefer to focus on my brain instead of my body when it comes to becoming the ideal person I want to be. 

Thus even if Oli underwent even more drastic plastic surgery to look perfectly Korean, he would still be seen as some kind of fraud as he is still a banana (like me): yellow on the outside but totally white on the inside - he should have spent all that time and money focusing on improving the standard of his Korean instead of focusing on his external appearances; then again, that's my personal response as I am a polyglot geek who takes great pleasure in learning foreign languages. Acquiring the ability to understand another language is what appeals to me and I accept that this may not appeal as much to others. If investing over US$200,000 on plastic surgery makes Oli happy, then sure that's a price worth paying for Oli - even if I would have personally preferred to spend all that money on the best Korean language tutors available to help me become totally fluent in Korean instead. But this is why I do empathize with Oli: I know what it is like to have a face that doesn't match my brain. I know what it is like to try to seek acceptance from a community when you feel like an outsider - like where do I even begin? I am a working class Asian immigrant in London working in financial services: even though I have a good job, I can't help but feel like I have to prove that I belong every single day I am at work. Yet the way I have dealt with this was to build many meaningful relationships with the people around me so I have a substantial network of professional contacts and friends - if I want to be white, I would simply live in England, do what (upper class) white people do and have loads of (rich and posh) white friends rather than undergo plastic surgery to look more white and yes I have faced the same challenges as Oli, but have chosen to deal with it in a very different way. 

You may ask, "I know Oli has an agent, what is Oli's agent doing about this situation? Aren't they taking care of his career development?" The answer is simple, nothing. Having an agent is not the same as having a manager per se - the role of the agent is to help Oli find lucrative sponsorship and product endorsement deals and to be fair, Oli has done a fair number of those to date. When the agent manages to broker such a deal, the agent would take a nice big cut of the earnings. That's quite different from having a manager who would literally be paid to act as a coach/chaperon to ensure that the pop stars gets up in the morning, attends everything that is on their schedule from singing lessons to dance training to interviews with journalists. The manager would also make sure that the pop star wouldn't do something stupid like get drunk in a bar and then get into a fight; the manager is literally there by the side of the pop star 24-7 to protect the investment of the record label. Such arrangements are actually fairly common in the K-pop world where record labels spend a lot of money investing in young stars, thus they feel they have the right to protect their investment but obviously, coming from outside the system, Oli doesn't have a manager as such. His record label is 'Oli London Entertainment' (yes I know, I rolled my eyes too) and his agent is MN2S - they are based in London. So whilst they have no say over what Oli wants to do next, they actually have so many entertainers on their talent roster (from actors to singers to presenters to models to sportsmen to celebrity chefs that they're really not that bothered if Oli totally goes off the rails and becomes provokes yet another big controversy that he cannot recover from, because they have much bigger stars on their books. 

Whilst Oli is free to do whatever they want, the whole 'coming out' as Korean episode badly misfired and this is a reflection on Oli's very poor social skills - sorry but I have to call a spade a spade. Yes it was a PR stunt to grab attention but Oli failed to have anticipated the overwhelmingly negative response to it: that's a big miscalculation on their part. I know some people may argue that there's no such thing as bad publicity but I must disagree with that, at least in the context of this case. Oli did come across as totally clueless about how his 'coming out' as Korean would be received by the public and indeed, if he had known just how negative the backlash would have been, he might have used another method to show the world just how Korean he felt. Someone with better social skills might have anticipated what would have happened or at least have asked a good friend, "hey if I publicly come out as Korean, how would the public on social media react to it? Do you think the BTS fans (aka Army) would like it?" But no, like a completely autistic person, he came up with an idea and went ahead with it without even first considering how others might view it. He then gets upset when people don't react the way he wanted and claims that he is owed an apology and I'm like, woah - this person has never had a real job, have they? Certainly not one in marketing when you have to make sure your message is going to resonate with your target audience. Please, by all means, do feel free to do whatever you want in terms of plastic surgery to create the face and body you want, but when you try to seek the acceptance of others, you put yourself at the mercy of their judgment and that was Oli's biggest mistake: if you are going to be this controversial, then do not seek acceptance. 

Ultimately, I feel sorry for Oli - I think that somewhere along the way, he had lost his way. He started out trying to market himself as a British K-pop star and I thought, okay, that's different. A white guy trying to make it in this genre which really isn't open to non-Koreans but hey, he has a USP and he would stand out in this market. However, after the plastic surgeries and the controversy about 'transitioning' to be Korean after 18 plastic surgeries to look Korean, oh dear. The wheels have come off this bus. Oli had gone from someone who had something different and unique to offer to simply becoming a toxic mix of a a sasaeng and a troll. Oli is so desperate for attention that they don't mind if it comes in the form of death threats - like where do I even begin to explain the problem here? At the end of the day, this is a very tough industry and the big stars like BTS and BlackPink do have marketing and PR experts to help plot every step they take, so everything will achieve the desired effect and that's how they create the perfect image to sell to the fans. Whereas Oli London doesn't use the services of such marketing and PR experts - heck, even if he spent that US$200,000 on the experts, their services do not come cheap and that money won't go far at all. Most pop stars are good at singing rather than sales & marketing - it's a completely different set of skills and even if Oli is a brilliant singer (they are not) who has potential in the K-pop genre (no they don't), it would be wise for them to leave the marketing to the experts in order to avoid all the PR gaffes he has made thus far. It takes a certain amount of humility to recognize when you are out of your depth and when it is time to seek professional help. Thus that's where Oli clearly suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Can someone change their ethnicity by simply coming out as Korean the way Oli did? Or is this a sign of self-entitlement on the part of the strawberry generation? Has all the backlash on social media been too harsh and cruel, does it tantamount to cyber bullying? Is Oli merely a young person with poor social skills who has made some bad decisions or do you believe in the mantra that no publicity is bad publicity? Do you actually think that Oli will wake up one day in the future and regret all this plastic surgery to look more Korean? Have you ever met someone like Leo or John and who do you think between the two of them is actually more Korean? Or do you think that Oli is too autistic to learn from all their mistakes? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.