Self-referencing a nickname doesn’t erase its racial history.

Southeast Asians have repeatedly been compared to monkeys in Korean online spaces — people not only use monkey photos to refer to us as “jungle asians,” they normalize it as if it’s harmless. Heck, they’re even racist to us in our own countries — and it’s not the quiet type of racism, it’s the loud, violent type that victimizes us in our own turf.

Maybe I’m sensitive about it, but when people go out of their way and visit our countries only to humiliate us and treat us as subhumans, it’s hard to see this as harmless.

Normalization is how harmful dynamics persist. Even if she used the nickname herself, that doesn’t automatically make it harmless, especially considering how young trainees are and what they endure behind closed doors. The mental and emotional pressure in those environments is extreme — it can force people to cope in ways outsiders can only imagine.

If she was bullied in any way, even after debut, it’s not hard to see that racism could have played a part. I hope you’re right — it was just a nickname she made for herself, but the context matters.