i-dle’s leader Soyeon was accused of copying French singer-songwriter Yseult’s 2024 music video frame-by-frame despite the fact that she only appeared as a featuring artist. Two months ago, Korean producer-turned-singer R.Tee debuted with “Damdadi” featuring i-dle’s Soyeon in the video. On October 10, 2025, Yseult spoke out on X that “It’s a straight up copy of my music video ‘BITCH YOU COULD NEVER’.” She tagged Soyeon alone on Instagram and reposted a post that blamed her solely, which misled and escalated the situation.
i-dle is currently one of the most popular girl groups in South Korea. As the leader and main rapper, Soyeon has also produced many songs for her group, including “Latata”, “Hann (Alone)”, “Oh My God”, “Lion”, and “Tomboy”. R.Tee is known for producing songs for many artists, mostly under YG Entertainment, including Bigbang, Blackpink, and iKon.
The 31-year-old French artist and model Yseult pointed out similarities in color schemes, framing, and choreography. She elaborated, “Director, label, artists everyone involved the least you could do is have the decency to credit your source. To see it get copied like this is wild… but real artistry speaks louder than imitation. And to those trying to guilt-trip me for speaking up : SHAME ON YOU! SILENCING Black women when their work is STOLEN has always been part of the PROBLEM. Not this time!“
This allegation quickly sparked heated online debates. Soyeon’s fans came to her defense that she was not involved in the production or concept of the music video. Even the hashtag “APOLOGIZE TO SOYEON” started trending within hours of Yseult’s accusations.
One fan wrote, “Trying to profiting off of Soyeon’s fame by falsely accusing her of something she didn’t do and then bringing up the race card after being called out, you’re just embarrassing and exposing yourself of being an attention seeker. You need to APOLOGISE TO SOYEON rn.”
Among the criticism Soyeon received, one was: ”I dont understand why people are defending Soyeon. Just because they mistakenly blamed Soyeon first like the point still stands on how the KPOP industry continues to steal from black people and yall will always find ways to villanize and go around the issue“.
It seems K-pop has a long history of drawing inspiration from black artists, with influences seen in the music, dance, fashion, and performance styles. This inspiration has been a key factor in the K-pop’s global growth. So while some fans criticized Yseult for not contacting the creative team behind “Damdadi” first, others supported Yseult and argued she deserved an apology.
The issue has not yet been resolved since neither R.Tee nor the production team has responded to the accusations. Yseult continued to post explicit tweets like “Go eat my black a**,” which many saw as inappropriate. She claimed that copying her video was part of a pattern of “sampling our sound, stealing our moves, and wearing our skin like a costume”.
One fan observed that, “I’m Korean and I love her (Yseult) artwork and I think the K-pop copying is rude because the copy of K-pop always steal just aesthetic of artworks of artist and ignore their cultural context and ruin the quality of original. Even they can’t understand alternative culture and they don’t want to know. The copycats always picking the “pretty part” of alternative culture and ignore every “ugly part” of alternative part.”
