Hate us if you will. Just don't ignore us.

That seems to be the attitude new Taiwanese girl group Super-7 is displaying.

The seven-member pop outfit, which made its debut last month, hopes to succeed in the Taiwanese music industry with its repertoire of Hokkien songs.

Then, it decided to insult nine-member Korean superstar Girls' Generation in public, telling the Taiwanese media that the members of the Korean group looked "plastic".

"There are a few Girls' Generation members that can sing and dance well but the rest of the members have no special appeal.

"(They) have all undergone plastic surgery, but we are natural beauties and their bodies can't even compare to ours," said the members of Super-7, who touted their supposed "all-natural" C-cup chest sizes.

The remark has stirred up a hornet's nest among fans of the popular Korean group, who have hit back with much vitriol.

They were especially incensed because Super-7 appeared to have obviously modelled itself after Girls' Generation.

The similarities were evident from the start. The music video for the Taiwanese group, released in mid-October, for its debut single Mai Luo Suo (Hokkien for Stop Nagging) on YouTube, was much talked about on the Internet for all the wrong reasons.

The girls' outfits - tiny shorts and knee-high boots - resembled the costumes worn by the Girls' Generation members from its music video Hoot. Even the way the two videos were shot was similar. Both opened with a black and white scene.

After the Mai Luo Suo music video was released, a report on the backlash on K-pop entertainment news website allkpop.com attracted more than 4,000 comments.

Girls' Generation fans here, who are eagerly awaiting the group's performances at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Dec 9 and 10, were split into two camps over the controversy - some were amused, others were indignant.

Art director Gavin Loke, 22, said: "I think it's flattering to have a group want to imitate you and then do it so poorly at that.

"If anything, it makes Girls' Generation look even better. I think the insults were unnecessary but it just makes Super-7 look bad, so good luck to them."

Student Ong Ming Kai, 20, felt Super-7 was leveraging on his idols' popularity as its members, "have nothing going for them".

He said: "The copying of the (Girls' Generation) look, clothes and dance moves is gross.

"They (Super-7) know this is the only way to make people take a second glance at them. How desperate can they get?"

Cried

Super-7 didn't take the online criticism of its music video lightly and it poured out its unhappiness to the Taiwanese media.

The group was quoted as saying: "At first we were so offended so we cried a lot, but we now understand why the music video might have upset the fans.

"We also feel that criticism is another form of interest (that the public has in us) and (this has made us) deal better with negative comments."

And in a bid to relieve the sting of their earlier comments about Girls' Generation's members allegedly going under the knife, they added in the same report: "We're not saying that we will ever be able to be better than Girls' Generation, but we will view them as our role models."

When Super-7 performed Mai Luo Suo at the 46th Golden Bell Awards last month, curious music fans went online to find out just who this "preposterous" new group was.

Wrote netizen sch211 on its performance: "I wondered who actually allowed them to perform on such a prestigious award show when they have disgraced music by being such obvious copycats."

Super-7 released its debut album under Chia Chia Record late last month.

The number of dislikes on YouTube for Mai Luo Suo and the group's other videos has been steadily climbing daily. Mai Luo Suo had 19,708 dislikes at press time, out of 1,202,531 views.

Local music industry experts The New Paper spoke to doubted that Super-7 would go far.

Mr Alan Chan, the CEO of Alpha Entertainment who is grooming Singapore's first K-pop girl group, said Super-7 is headed for probable career suicide if it continues down the road of dissing successful K-pop bands.

He said: "K-pop is huge in Taiwan now so Super-7 didn't do itself any favours when it criticised such a popular girl group (Girls' Generation).

"My advice to those girls would be to retract their statements and tell the public that they didn't mean their earlier comments."

Mr Chan added that a new group has to first show that it has what it takes to make it in the music industry because "by competing in this way and not doing any damage control, you're (as good as) dead".

Hype Records head honcho Ken Lim said that if Super-7's goal was popularity - even though it takes "bad publicity" to achieve it - then it had achieved what it wanted.

He said: "If Super-7 wants to appear in (variety) shows and the like, then it will get hired for the job because people are curious and want to see more of them. "It will be able to survive if it makes good music, but if it doesn't, this popularity will be short-lived."

In the midst of the media storm, Super-7 has managed to win over some people, like student Becky Lim.

Miss Lim, 18, who caught the Mai Luo Suo music video on YouTube after a K-pop-loving friend forwarded it to her "in disgust", said she liked Super-7's "sass".

She said: "The biggest difference to me between these two groups is that while I don't understand Korean songs, I can relate more to Hokkien songs.

"So to me, Super-7 is more appealing. They are very sexy and pretty too."

This article was first published in The New Paper.