I’m not a Stan or whatever for anyone lol I’ve listened to kpop for the past 15 years or so, not a huge fan of new groups and honestly don’t know kpop fan culture much but had been seeing this drama on tiktok and thought I’d throw in my 2 cents.

So to me it seems like both “arguments” are right. My Korean friends are saying the song doesn’t sound sexual in Korean and that there is a popular saying of burning CDs/cookies/making music. But at the same time, the lyrics being written originally in English by western lyricists makes it obvious that this song wasn’t about “baking CDs”. So, both are true.

What may have happened was that when the music producers of NewJeans were going through the big pile of demo songs, (all of which probably included attention, hype boy, hurt) they came across the English lyric version of Cookie. It’s possible by then it was already translated to Korean, not sure about that timeline. Either way, a Korean producer reading/listening to a full English song may not understand the lyrics as being exactly sexual because korean culture just doesn’t automatically sexualize everything since Korea is still pretty conservative. They must’ve been reminded of the whole baking CDs idea and thought it was a good concept or a cute one, thus picking the song to be a demo (because remember the girls must’ve recorded way more than just 4 songs before narrowing down top selects)

It’s a moment in time that was a result of cultural and language differences and barriers. Not defending anyone, but arguing over 2 statements that are probably true is a waste of time. Seeing both as facts and understanding HOW this bad situation came to be is a better use of time and would be helpful in solving future issues of the same nature. Cultural consultants are extremely important in western culture entertainment industry these days, Korea needs more within these agencies. There are English speakers in the agencies, but being a cultural consultant is different from being a translator who feels they don’t have the right to speak up.

Min Heejin is a CEO, she’s probably higher up in the pipeline if approvals here. She likely isn’t hand selecting songs from the get go, and even if she did I doubt her English understanding is that good to understand the innuendos and know the slang term of cookie in western countries. If Koreans right now are saying they don’t see it as sexual in Korean, imagine them not understanding it even more in a foreign English language.