Kpop Artist, Babi Pleads With Malaysians to Stop Making Fun of Her Name

By Karissa Lund  •  04 Jun 2020 in News

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Looks like Malaysians still haven’t learned from the infamous Dua Lipa ‘babi’ case in 2018.

Skip to two years later, Malaysians are being called out again for harassing a Kpop singer and dancer from the group ‘Fly With Me’ because of her stage name – Babi. As most Malaysians know, ‘babi’ is a Malay word for pig and is often used as a curse word.

Babi, whose real name is So Young, took to her Instagram pleading for Malaysians to stop. In the post, she asks “Why are you doing this to me?” and states “I didn’t know your country, but I don’t want to know it anymore” following the pestering by insensitive locals.

 

Malaysians flooded the comments section on her Instagram with jokes calling her “the prettiest pig in the world”. Some even went as far as asking her to change her stage name because “it’s like a curse word (in Malaysia)”.

Take a look:

On Twitter, many Malaysian K-pop fans expressed embarrassment over netizens who harassed her and some even slammed Malaysians for smearing our country’s image by imposing the meaning of their language onto a foreigner’s name.

One Twitter user explained that the word ‘Babi’ over in South Korea is probably pronounced as ‘Bobby’ or ‘Barbie’.

as far as I know, babi (바비) doesn’t have a meaning in korean. usually this is how they pronounce names like ‘bobby’ or even ‘barbie’.

even so, babi in korean is not pronounced like how we do in malay. the actual pronunciation of it is more like ‘pabi’. https://t.co/ApuioWvj10

— 피ches&gravy (@aaaaaaaaalin) June 3, 2020

Come on, Malaysians! With everything going on in the world, let’s learn to be nicer.

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