Music

K-Pop band mistaken for sex workers by L.A. airport

by Jeremy Mersereau

Eight-member Korean pop group Oh My Girl were detained at LAX by Customs and Border Protection authorities as they tried to enter the U.S. The members were held and questioned for over 15 hours, eventually being forced to fly home to South Korea without ever officially entering American soil.

Oh My Girl were scheduled to perform at an event called “Unforgettable 2015” and take part in a promotional photo shoot for their new album, but airport personnel grew suspicious that they might be a group of working women seeking to ply their trade in the U.S, and took the group and their entire entourage aside for questioning.

Apparently, airport officials’ suspicions was exacerbated when one of the crew members traveling with Oh My Girl used the word “sister” to describe his relationship to the group to a customs official (“sister” in Korean can pretty much mean any woman). The official found the use of the term strange and started to focus on the large amount of props and costumes Oh My Girl was lugging around, and decided that, yes, this just might be a huge contingent of sex workers.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency could neither confirm nor deny the reason for Oh My Girl’s detainment. Maybe they just wanted to protect the American populace from the syrupy pop of songs like “Cupid”? Probably.

Footnote: I wonder if this kind of thing ever happens to T.O.P? If anyone looks like a Gigolo Joe-style sex robot, it’s him.