On Tuesday night, K-Pop Star Sunmi stunned her fans in a moment that immediately went viral. While performing at the Q-Factory in Amsterdam as part of her Warning World Tour, the Southeast Asian idol made an off-the-cuff comment on stage that saw her audience go wild.
When talking about different sides of herself, Sunmi said she had many sides, like “dorky… and LGBT.” In videos posted on Twitter (see below) you can clearly hear the audience erupting in very audible cheers.
Sunmi — who was decked out in a skimpy white mini dress paired with matching gloves during today’s offering — began her solo career in 2013, three years after leaving the popular group, Wonder Girls.
Since then, she has expressed support for the LGBT community on more than one occasion and in more than one way. In March, for instance, she held up a Pride Flag at one of her concerts.
However, the video of Tuesday’s viral comment has drawn attention due to speculation over the singer’s specific sexuality. Fans have been fiercely debating the topic on Twitter since the moment she spoke up in The Netherlands.
After that, a number of fans on Twitter took the comment to mean that Sunmi was coming out. Others, like @glossyerim in this post on Twitter, emphasized that whether or not the singer identifies as LGBT herself, it’s more important that she openly came out in support of the community.
After becoming the No. 1 worldwide trending topic on Twitter as well as the number one United States trending topic on the same social media platform, Sunmi finally addressed the current issue.
The K-pop singer said in a Tweet, “Haha. I was saying ‘I have so many different sides of me like dorky and LGBT queen…’ Yeah, I support LGBT but don’t get me wrong guys.”
Apparently, this huge star did not want her words to be misinterpreted as if she was coming out, as many fans believed.
Regardless, the moment has brought a lot of excitement to her fanbase, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands just on Twitter .
This is the complete sunmi gay video if yall need even more context pic.twitter.com/vqEXSqDUCg
— sannie? ? military army wife (@gowxnnie) June 4, 2019
With June being Pride Month and the South Korea’s Seoul Queer Culture Festival going on this week, the 27-year-old artist’s public expression of support to the LGBT community was well timed. The stigma surrounding LGBT people in South Korea is still a very real thing, and many laud Sunmi for her bravery in identifying herself as an ally.
full vid where she talked more about it:
“there are sides of me that i know very well, like, just like the one i just said. and sometimes there are times when i don’t know myself.” pic.twitter.com/nr9N3Tjodv
— nio¹² (@yvesiren) June 4, 2019
As one Twitter user puts it , “Either way, [Sunmi is] still on our side.” It is nice that someone is talking about the bright side. Maybe that sentiment will go viral.