To debut in big companies, all idols must pass the background check.
However, some idols are said to be whitewashed at all costs despite their shady pasts just
because of their outstanding visuals and popularity.
If you’ve been following the K-Pop scene for the past two years, you must have heard
that some extremely notorious cases have been settled smoothly by money and power.
LE SSERAFIM’s Sakura
Sakura is currently among the most famous female idols of K-Pop but before all this
fame and power, did you know that she used to be accused of having an extremely contentious
past before Produce 48?
I’ve made a little recap about what happened as you probably haven’t known about that:
Things all started after Sakura managed to be the center of AKB48 despite only stopping
at the 4th rank, then accused of body shaming her peer but mistakenly used the official
Twitter account then tried to cover it up by posting nonsense things and saying her
account was hacked, then said to disrespect another senior in AKB48, telling this member
to “Get lost!,” and the peak of all, accused of skipping several hand-shaking events with
fans due to “adult reasons” though just several days ago, she had implicitly ran a
long rant about how unprofessional her peers were when skipping the hand-shaking events
JUST BECAUSE of their illness.
However, after all that, Sakura still managed to get further into Produce 48.
According to some sources, HKT48 was colluding with Mnet to whitewash Sakura’s past and
rebuild her a new angelic image.
Right at the first episode of the show, people had already complained about how Mnet always
made the whole episode revolve around Sakura and HKT48 also seemed to sacrifice a more
rounded artist of theirs, Jurina, just because Sakura had the visual.
Another sign was Sakura's A rank in the first episode and according to both Japanese and
international netizens, this was ridiculous because even in her home country, Sakura had
already been infamous for her lackluster singing and dancing.
One of the solid proofs was how she didn’t even try to hide the lip-syncing for a two-minute
straight solo singing though she was literally standing still and made zero moves.
Then for other live singing and dancing videos…
Well, somehow most of them are gone with little trace on the Internet and the only thing you
can easily find was the allegedly questionable performance at Produce 48.
There was also a huge outrage when Sakura was passed as an A-ranked trainee while people
believed she should have been in the D or F categories, and according to K-net, the
game was rigged so bad that it should have been called “Sakura and the Produce 48.”
The hype around Sakura was so out of hand that on the Internet, topics like “Why Sakura
so popular?”
was literally mushrooming on famous forums.
However, to the surprise of people who believed Sakura was problematic, answers to these questions
were all about her stunning visual and wholesome personality.
Stray Kids’ Hyunjin
Back in February 2021, a male netizen came forward anonymously on social media and said
that Hyunjin had been verbally abusive when they were in middle school.
According to the BBC, StrayKids' agency, JYP Entertainment, conducted their own investigation
when the accusations first came to light.
JYP had interviewed the anonymous poster, Hyunjin's former teachers, and other classmates.
At the end of the investigations, the company claimed that Hyunjin was 100% innocent and
anyone daring to defame him like that would be taken legal actions against.
However, as the alleged victims didn’t back down and as time passed, more and more of
Hyunjin’s former classmates spoke up about their terrible experiences with him on social
media, JYP Entertainment ended up releasing another statement, which was ironically in
contrast to their previous denial when the scandal first broke out.
Probably with a view to cooling down the anger and ease the pressures of netizens asking
Hyunijn to leave StrayKids for good, JYP Entertainment said in the notification that they would let
Hyunjin on an extended hiatus to reflect on his past actions instead.
Besides, they also said Hyunjin was sincerely apologetic and hoped that those involved could
heal from the wounds.
However, as the reaction was still fiery, they tried to better the image of Hyunjin
by stating he had been dominating and volunteering during his self-reflection time.
Some netizens later said that they had even heard on the grapevine about how JYP Entertainment
had been paying the victims to shut up to save Hyunjin’s face.
Because the scandal was super big at the time, especially when Hyunjin was the most famous
member of StrayKids, questions like “Will JYP Entertainment let Hyunjin go?” immediately
popped up on the Internet.
However, as some had already seen the future and how entertainment companies would always
prioritize money above anything, they all agreed that JYP would never let such a money
tree go over some mediocre scandals, which they could easily use power and money to solve
thoroughly.
The proof pointed out by a netizen was that Hyunjin’s bullying scandal actually started
around 2018 but JYP was quick to shut it down.
However, the victims came back stronger in 2021 so Hyunjin and JYP had to back down and
Such an irony to see how JYP Entertainment, a company that values dignity more than anything,
debuted many idols that got involved in big scandals.
Everything started back in June 2021 when a former classmate of Lia accused her of bullying
and moving on as if nothing had happened.
Initially, JYP denied it and said that they would take legal actions against the accuser,
which they indeed did, but somehow, the table was turned and the police concluded that the
classmate was freed from defamation lawsuit.
Because things gradually developed to be on the victim’s side, JYP decided to take more
proactive actions.
At first, they kept denying the accusations and asked for a re-investigation though the
police had already proven the classmate innocent.
Then, when the outrage grew bigger, ITZY’s manager tried to reach the victim for a possible
settlement but ended up being exposed by her because all she wanted was just a direct apology
from Lia.
The victim also clearly stated that JYP even hired a detective to talk to her and when
things failed to go their way, the director of JYP’s Artist Division 2 even directly
convinced her to have an in-person talk with Lia to solve the mess.
It's not clear what happened next but it seems JYP's methods worked in the end.
Soon after that, there was no more information about Lia’s bullying and in ITZY’s comeback
with Loco, Lia was still there promoting on all fronts with the group.
LE SSERAFIM’s Kim Garam
At this point, LE SSERAFIM could overtake IVE as the most contentious rookie as besides
Sakura, Kim Garam was also said to be a member whose past is so controversial that the HYBE
and Source Music had to pour tons of money into whitewashing her image and hoping netizens
go easy on her.
If you're a kpop fan, you're definitely no stranger to her series of scandals over the
past month.
Besides being accused of being a hardcore bully back in the secondary and highschool
day, Kim Garam was also said to have constantly been pulling sex jokes at schools and always
being part of the rebellious gang.
However, instead of kicking her out of the group like Starship Entertainment, Source
Music decided to still keep Garam on board.
The most annoying thing to netizens was also that, the whole thing took Source Music a
few hours to say they were looking into the matter and roughly a day to release an official
statement, claiming that Garam was actually the victim and they would take take legal
actions against the alleged victims that were desperately asking for justice.
Then, netizens also saw holes in posts defending Garam, pointing out that all the photos in
the defending posts had the same stains at the same positions, highlighting the possibilities
that these were marks Source Music made when filtering out evidence to protect Garam.
Plus, the wording in these posts were also awkward and trying too hard to be more like
teenagers.
Then, when all efforts were hopeless, Source Music was seen to ignore the accusations and
kept releasing more teasers like there wasn’t an elephant in the room, which of course fueled
the anger but also managed to get Kim Garam some fans.
The most apparent evidence was that she had already had a master fansite starting to post
pictures at the end of April, and as some anti-Garam suspected, probably because Source
Music had used money to shut the victims up, no allegations really rose up though the debut
of LE SSERAFIM was coming near.
So, do you think these idols actually did those terrible things and then got whitewashed,
or they were being played by antifans?