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Originally Posted by Sumeragi
I'll be blunt: I see nothing fundamentally wrong with those contracts except they might not be socially acceptable and inefficient investing. Furthermore, while we do have the issue of having minors sign contracts, I find that the potential abuse from exploiting those of majority age when they attempt to break into the idol industry to be of greater threat.
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How can that be a greater threat? People of the age of majority should (in theory) have the judgement necessary to be able to discern a good contract from a bad. A person of the age 10-14 doesn't even have the level of literacy required to read the contract they're signing, let alone fully understand it's implications. Contracts made with minors should not have standing in the courts.
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Of course, the fact that I run myself pretty harsh might taint my views, but I have to ask this fundamental question: What industry is NOT like this, supposing things are as bad as some of the less sensational news providers say they are? The way I see it is that people are only focusing on the visible targets while ignoring the everyday abuses that happens everywhere else.
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Put it this way, my friends(in IT) work at most 50 hours (on average) a week, almost always get a full nights sleep, get paid handsomely and are happily in relationships. Most professions
do not micromanage the lives of their employees. Between 9 and 5 (figuratively) they're "owned" by the company, but outside of that they do what they like. Their private lives are their own business. The extent of control their employer has outside of work hours is simply if they do anything that might be related to their work (let's say they tried to sell company secrets).
The contracts K-Pop artists are under are some of the harshest I've ever heard of. They are quite
exceptionally harsh, at least on western standards. The last time we had conditions like that was in the 19th century.
I can't speak from personal experience at the moment, as I'm unemployed, but everything I've applied to (Engineering work) have quite rigorously enforced labour and safety laws. For instance I interviewed for shift work positions, and even with that unpleasantness your hours were limited and you only had to work 3/4 12 hour days a week.
It's not just for one person to control another, as invariably they'll use that control for evil purposes. That's why we have labour laws.