They all look alike, or maybe sound alike?

Eh...yeah, they goofed, but they're not the only ones. Philip DeFranco also made a similar mistake by showing a pic of RM (Kim Nam-joon) instead of Kim Jonghyun. But, in fairness, it was only one pic out of two that was wrong and he copped to the mistake the very next day.

And, yeah, a news outlet should double and triple check stuff like this for big stories but...let's be honest...how big of a story is this in the West?

Not very.

The overwhelming majority of the western population has likely never heard of K-pop, let alone has ever heard of either of these guys or the groups they're in. But, you know, the internet's gonna internet. If there are any Korean or East Asian people partaking in the Twitter hate, then it's kind of understandable, but not really given that this was American news media and not South Korean. But, I wouldn't doubt that most of the English-based Twitter rage is just a bunch of dog-piling pearl clutchers who have nothing better to do with their time.

I could gather 100 Western teens right now and ask them who listens to K-pop (unironically) and actually knows who these performers are, and I'd be surprised if even 10 of them raised their hands (well, I somewhat take that back, because BTS has actually charted over here once with one of their albums a little while back. So, maybe 25 of them). Those are just the teens. The percentage would sharply drop off if we polled across all age groups.

This entire thing was basically a Western news media company reporting on a South Korean singer most people over here have never heard of, from a South Korean group most people over here have never heard of, from a genre of music most people over here have never heard of, and their main crime was accidentally playing a clip of the South Korean version of *NSync while reporting on a member of the South Korean version of the Backstreet Boys, because they accidentally did the equivalent of mixing up the name of the South Korean N'Sync's "Justin Timberlake" (Kim Nan-joon) with the South Korean Backstreet Boys' "Justin Bunderbake" (Kim Jonghyun).

This is a dumb thing for the internet to get mad at, especially given that the majority of the western people complaining on Twitter who are suddenly big enough fans to be mad at this mistake, likely weren't fans until they knew something existed on the internet that they should be mad at, and will likely forget this guy's name by this time next week.

All that said, it is very tragic that a young kid took his life and I think sharing his suicide note was a mistake, given how impressionable kids are who fall into the age range of his fans.


ETA: In response to your "they all look alike" title, yeah they kind of do I suppose, but they actually really do. It's a real phenomenon that affects all races (i.e., it's not racist, it's just a psychological artefact determined by the ratio of exposure we have to our own race compared to exposure to other races).

I mean, yeah, the reality no one wants to admit is that most Asians (and black people) do look alike to white people. But I lived in Korea for almost two years and I can tell you that the reverse is absolutely true - Koreans, especially those who haven't met a lot of Westerners, absolutely have trouble telling any two vaguely similar size-and-shape white people apart. Hence always being told you look like whatever white movie star has approximately your height and hair color.

So, it's an understandable mistake on a human level, but absolutely one a news agency should not have made.