At a certain point, “coincidence” stops being a defense and starts sounding like denial.
Every time people point out similarities between Illit and NewJeans, or between Belift’s creative direction and ideas strongly associated with Min Hee-jin, gllits rush in with the same script: “it’s just a trend,” “they’re just inspired,” “you don’t own concepts,” “it’s all coincidence.”
One coincidence? Fine. Two? Maybe. But when the styling, branding language, visual framing, editing style, concept rollout, choreography presentation, marketing tone and even specific aesthetic choices keep overlapping over and over again, people are naturally going to notice a pattern.
And that’s the key word here: pattern.
Nobody is saying NewJeans invented teenage fashion, natural makeup or y2k nostalgia. The issue is that people are noticing a repeated replication of a very specific identity package that was carefully built and publicly associated with both NewJeans and MHJ’s creative direction. There’s a difference between following trends and mirroring a recognizable formula so closely that audiences instantly make the connection without being prompted.
What makes the defense even weaker is how selective it is. K-pop fans are usually the first people to detect “copying” over the smallest details. Suddenly, when it involves Illit and Belift, everyone is expected to become aggressively obtuse and pretend that repeated similarities appearing across multiple areas are random accidents.
At some point, “you’re reaching” becomes less convincing than the evidence piling up in front of people.
And honestly, if there was truly nothing there, the conversation would have died naturally months ago. The reason it keeps resurfacing is because new parallels keep appearing. That’s why people are still talking about it.
Fans also need to stop acting like acknowledging obvious inspiration or imitation is a personal attack on the members. Criticizing a company’s creative decisions is not the same thing as hating idols. Most people blaming Belift are specifically talking about management, branding and direction, not saying the girls themselves are evil masterminds.
The irony is that gllits constantly insisting that every single similarity is “just coincidence” only makes the situation look more suspicious. Because statistically, how many coincidences are people supposed to ignore before they’re allowed to admit there might actually be intentional borrowing involved?
You cannot spend months dismissing dozens of parallels as isolated incidents when the similarities themselves are what create the larger picture.
