Edgy?  Nasty?  Negative?  Regular readers will know that this is all a bunch of lies and that Kpopalypse is the most POSITIVE website of all the k-pops!  Just to prove it, it’s time for a POSITIVE post once again!  This time, Kpopalypse takes a look at all the POSITIVE things about Gfriend’s Sowon, and why you should stan!

Of course we all love Gfriend’s Sowon.  But how much?  Let me count the ways.

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #1: Sowon is identifiable

Before a week ago, my ability to tell the Gfriend members from each other basically amounted to the following:

However recently this has changed, due to Sowon hugging a Nazi mannequin and therefore getting her face splashed everywhere across the Interwebs, making her now totally easy to identify because I’ve now seen that same picture of her on every website ever while everyone throws their two cents in.  That’s very thoughtful and convenient, so now I am one step closer to being able to identify every member in Gfriend.

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #2: Sowon is attractive

Look at Sowon serving visuals in the “Mago” music video.  The only reason why Gfriend’s “Mago” didn’t get on the most fappable list for 2020 is that I think glitter disco dresses are fucking ugly as shit.  (Yeah Apink also wore that eye-confusing crap in half of their newer videos, but they’re Apink, they can get away with it. This is Sowon we’re talking about not Hayoung, settle down folks.)  All of Gfriend look great there for about 20 seconds in the second verse though.

Sowon is also about the same height as AustralianSana, another extreme visual with great style who I can’t share any public pictures of because BTS ARMYs kicked her off the Internet for the awful crimes of making lighthearted jokes and having an opinion that was more nuanced than “I must obey the company at all times, the company is my life, all hail the company, I give you all my Dogecoin”.

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #3: Sowon is innocent

Really innocent, like a lost fawn in the woods.  You think Sowon knows shit about World War II history?  She doesn’t even know what the fucking toilet paper by the computer is for (Yerin, on the other hand, fucking knows – no positive post for super-streetwise Yerin if she’s seen in Nazi boots next week).  I would actually believe it if someone told me that Sowon didn’t know how to reload an MP-40 submachinegun, or that the luggage compartment of a 1940s Volkswagen is in the front, not the back.  So it’s really not too much of a stretch to say that she thought the mannequin was just a nice handsome tall model in a very sexy coat.  Which isn’t even false, actually.  I mean, look how tall he is.

As previously mentioned Sowon is tall as fuck, but she’s still dwarfed by this dude.  She probably didn’t even see the swastika on his hat, being down that low, but hang on… wait just a fucking second…

Here’s that dashing young man in the grey coat from a different angle.  Even if Sowon was tall enough to be able to see the swastika on his hat, she wouldn’t have, because there isn’t one.  All Nazi insignia on this mannequin has been replaced by generic blobs so as not to offend today’s generation of politically-correct interior decorators, and the iconic red armband is also completely absent. So for all she knew this man was just a “generic soldier” and not specifically a Nazi one (which is arguably true, if nothing on the uniform says he is).  Maybe she thought she was looking at a friendly Russian soldier, like these;

Take away the Russian insignia and it’s basically exactly the same style.

So for Sowon to have avoided trouble here, she would have had to:

• Look at this very tall very handsome dude
• Recognise the uniform he’s wearing specifically as a Nazi uniform purely from very small details like hat and lapel style with no signifying markings to denote the uniform as specifically Nazi Germany as opposed to any of the other similar military uniforms out there (which would be easy for us nerds trained from years of Call Of Duty, WWII movies and stan Twitter debate, but might not be so easy for someone with no interest in military history plus an actual life and things to do who doesn’t care about this nerd shit)
• Weigh up the potential for a photograph with a “generic mannequin soldier in a Nazi style” to get her into trouble
• Refuse to do the photo shoot (assuming she actually has the power to do that, because we all know how in control of their lives k-pop idols are)

Which brings us to:

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #4: Sowon has revealed BigHit Entertainment as potential Nazi sympathisers

While Sowon probably grew up a girly girl who was into stereotypical girl stuff like makeup and dresses and not stereotypical boy stuff like re-enacting the invasion of Poland in the sandpit, and therefore would probably not recognise the exact style of lapel and hat that was used in a foreign conflict that ended before her father was born, the same probably can’t be said for her management at BigHit Entertainment.  We know that BigHit know all about Nazis, because they sent their biggest hit BTS over to Germany’s Holocaust Memorial to take some stylish photos:

You’ve got to admit, he looks pretty good there.  The hand up to the mouth is a nice flirty aegyo touch.

Nice sweeping back of the hair there, smooth – and look at the proximity of them.  Pretty hot, right?

Of course I’m not suggesting that BTS begged and pleaded with BigHit to take a trip to Berlin because they thought the grey monuments would match well their their black suits (although they do).  We all know that idols just go where they are told, and do what they are told, or else.  Just like when Namjoon posed with that Nazi hat because a stylist basically gave it to him and said “wear this, cunt”.

All of this plus the recent Sowon incident makes me wonder though – how come BigHit’s stylist department just seems to have an affinity with Nazi imagery, and just seem to have all of this random Nazi regalia conveniently hanging around, practically screaming “pick me”, just waiting for an opportunity to get one of their idols into trouble?  At best, it’s probably just a bit of harmless sexual fetishism and there’s a secret dungeon underneath BigHit’s headquarters where Bang Si-hyuk pays his trainees to shackle him into a cell and fulfill his masochistic fantasies.  Occasionally the girls might forget to leave their WWII period clothes and props in the dungeon locker and the odd item probably finds its way into the upstairs idol dressing rooms eventually – a Nazi cap here, a guard mannequin there.  The trickle would be nothing all that noticeable but enough for a stylist to grab the odd item, think “this looks cool, why don’t you wear this” and of course idols have to do everything their stylists suggest so they don’t get a reputation as “difficult like Irene” and ten hours with their noses against the wall in the Bad Thoughts Room.  The more harrowing possibility is that Bang Si-hyuk is recruiting a new Nazi army to take over the world with the new base that he’s building on the moon and he’s just trying to make us all a bit more cool about the impending invasion before the UFO fleet arrives.  Either way it’s pretty clear who the villain is in this equation and it’s definitely not the girl who sang “I believe 매일 너를 기다려 love for you 참 고마워 내게 와줘서 널 위한 melody 날 위한 sunshine”.

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #5: Gfriend’s songs are mostly high quality

Did you know that Gfriend are one of the few groups that have had three songs in the top 10 of Kpopalypse favourites lists over the last five years?  That’s a huge feat of k-pop quality given how much of a lottery pick the song selection process in the Korean idol business generally is.  There’s “MAGO” of course, and here’s the other two.

Let’s not be in a rush to cancel groups with such a good hit/miss ratio now.  Gfriend are one of the few remaining k-pop entities that hasn’t gone down the trap shithole on a feature track so we should support them and encourage their general consistency.  If it means that eventually a stylist fucks up again and a few more Nazi armbands get worn one day by some dumbass and a few other people then get upset about it, perhaps their tears are not such a bad price to pay for some decent tunes.

Reason to feel POSITIVE about Gfriend’s Sowon #6: Sowon has pretty good taste in men

I know what you’re thinking, but consider the benefits:

• He’s tall (as previous discussed)
• He’s well built, appears to be quality workmanship
• He dresses to get noticed and make an impression, something that can’t be said for many men
• He’s not jealous or posesssive and fits into her idol lifestyle, he’ll be right there waiting for her when needed, no annoying “when will you be back on set” SMS etc
• He doesn’t say too much at parties, sure he might be a Nazi but he won’t try and mansplain to you about his political views
• He’s a cheap date
• Dating a mannequin won’t be seen as threatening by overly possessive male Gfriend fans, we might have a Nazi imagery scandal but at least we don’t also have a dating scandal
• Not as many plastic parts as a reasonable percentage of Korean idol boys
• Limited likelihood of Sowon becoming a domestic violence victim at his hands
• When the relationship is over he can probably be let down easily (the valve to do this is usually by the feet, or at the base of the spine)

Let’s just hope they’re getting along well.  Cheers to the new couple and don’t forget to stay POSITIVE about Sowon!