A member of K-Pop phenomena BTS, Suga, who recently released his mixtape 'D-2' under the stage name he uses as a soloist, Agust D, has come under fire after it was discovered that a sample of Jim Jones' 1977 sermon in Jonestown was used in one of the tracks of the album. In response to the controversy, Big Hit Entertainment, the agency of BTS, clarified its position on the matter.
The agency stated that the decision to use the speech in the track was made by a producer who was unaware of who the speaker was. Also, the controversial part was removed following the discovery, and the song was then re-released, adding that Suga is deeply sorry for the inconvenience he caused.
The topic became hot when netizens noticed during a live stream Suga made on the 29th of May that the track 'What Do You Think?' begins with a man speaking in the background, saying "though you are dead, yet you shall live, and he that liveth and believeth shall never die” and recognised the speech and voice of the American cult leader Jim Jones, who is responsible for the mass murder-suicide in 1978 of 909 of his followers, 304 of whom were children.
That made netizens, particularly Americans, really angry in light of the current situation in the US and mass unrest in the country in the wake of George Floyd's death. They blamed Army (the official name of the fandom) for not exposing Suga for using such a sample in his mixtape.
Army tried to protect their favourite artist, explaining that the song has a political and religious context in that Jim Jones was anti-Korean and the topic of religious cults is quite sensitive now in Korea - one such cult was a source of Korea's COVID-19 outbreak.