Remembering The Girls’ Generation Incident That Shook The K-Pop World

While they are now one of Korea’s biggest girl groups, Girls’ Generation are no strangers to scandals and that includes their infamous black ocean incident. Here’s what happened.

| SM Entertainment

Still only a rookie group at the time, Girls’ Generation was invited to perform at the 2008 Dream Concert. Dream Concert is known to be a widely popular concert that happens in Korea every year with all of the hottest idols performing on its stage. With only the hottest stars in the line-up, it makes sense that all their fans would come to support their favorite artists.

At their debut, Girls’ Generation created quite a buzz for being SM Entertainment‘s newest girl group. But being from SM Entertainment meant that these nine girls knew fellow SM artists and that made fans uneasy. While it may be a no brainer to have friendships with one another, fans of SM boy groups did not like that these 9 beauties had close relationships with their oppas, thus beginning the hatred towards the girls.

Not only did these SM groups have prior relationships before the fame, but they also endorsed many products together. This meant that there would be commercials and photoshoots together which meant that the members of the groups would be around each other constantly. That just added fuel to a fire that was already growing.

It didn’t stop there as it was also reported that the fans of Girls’ Generation, also known as SONE’s and the fans of Super Junior, known as ELF’s got into an actual scuffle prior to the concert. At the Dream Concert venue, there were allegations that some SONE’s tore a Super Junior banner in half that was prepped by the ELF’s. This resulted in an even bigger feud between the two fandoms.

| @elfinssi/Twitter

While they were getting ready to perform for the 2008 Dream Concert, the stadium became very dark and it quickly became apparent that the darkness was there to stay. The fans of other artists purposely turned off their light sticks as a protest for Girls’ Generation. The darkness continued throughout their entire performance for a duration of 10 minutes, creating what is now known as a black ocean.

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While the girls can be seen performing with big smiles, anyone could tell that there was sadness behind their eyes. It was also said that while they were on stage, fandoms from different groups would chant Wonder Girls’ name to hurt the nine member girl group even further. What initially started as a little jealousy turned into a bigger scandal than anyone could ever imagine.

They are now one of the most legendary girl group’s that South Korea has to offer and they paved the road for the new generation of girl groups. However, it’s safe to say that their fame and success didn’t come easy as they endured many hardships to get to where they are today.