The 2023 MelOn Music Awards were held on December 2, with a variety of different K-Pop artists taking home the many awards announced at the music show.

SM Entertainment sent several of their artists to the show to perform and participate in the awards ceremony, including aespa, NCT DREAM, RIIZE, and SHINee.

The boy group labelmates ended up posting a picture together of themselves at the show, and upon first glance, it seems like a normal photograph of K-Pop idols from different groups getting to cutely interact.

SHINee, NCT DREAM, and RIIZE together | SM Entertainment

However, upon closer inspection you can see that there is some obvious photoshopping done on the picture, making the idols’ skin look unnaturally smooth and blurred.

And it gets weirder, because it seems that the only idols in the picture that have such photoshopping done to them are the members of NCT DREAM! The idols in RIIZE and SHINee appear to have no, or at least much less, photo editing done to them.

Netizens online that made this discovery are bewildered at SM Entertainment’s choice to not only blur their idols, but to do so to only one specific group. Many also think that those who are unedited actually look better than those that are, even though the opposite effect was likely the goal!

It’s unclear why SM Entertainment’s photo editors made this decision for this image, but one thing is for sure: It’s definitely not subtle.

 “And yet the ones not edited look better 😭”