Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
ZB1 member Kim Jiwoong was recently in hot water with fans for allegedly being disrespectful on a fancall. However, despite him and the company denying the charges, fans and netizens weren’t buying it and were sending protest trucks to demand his withdrawal. Well, the company apparently did actually do a forensic investigation into things, and the Korea Forensic Science Service concluded he wasn’t the one who swore.
The report did say that all three spoken parts were legitimate, but doubted he was the one behind the latter two parts.
The KFSS two materials: The audio from the video clip and the CCTV footage from the event. KFSS analyzed three parts of the audio extracted from the three-second video sized 95.6 MB, shared to Twitter by the Original Poster (OP): Part A (F1-F5), when “Thank you” can be heard, Part B (F6-F8), when “Shibal” can be heard, and Part C (F9-F12), when “How weird” can be heard. Then, KFSS compared the three-part audio to the visual recorded in the CCTV footage.
According to the KFSS, “Part A” comes from one person—Kim Jiwoong. The CCTV footage confirms that Kim Jiwoong is the voice in the video, too.
“It can be assumed that the audio recorded belongs to the person in the CCTV footage. [Kim Jiwoong’s] mouth moves in accordance to the formant (acoustic resonance) derived from Part A.” – Dr. Lee
As for “Part B” and “Part C,” though, KFSS stated that “It is impossible to confirm whether Kim Jiwoong is the person behind the voice(s)” in Parts B and C. In addition, because the OP’s video does not provide visual for Parts B and C, KFSS concluded that it is not verifiable whether the voice(s) in Parts B and C belong to Kim Jiwoong.
Further analysis shared that the frequencies in Parts A to B and B to C are different. While the transitional pitches in all three parts were not distorted, meaning that the audio was not altered and was recorded in one continuous take, the frequencies in the three parts were different, meaning that the audio included multiple voices.
Apparently the conclusion is that somebody else was the one who swore on the fancall.
In other words, KFSS concluded, “It seems that the speaker of Part A and the speaker of Part B are different.”
“The movements in the OP’s video and the movements of the subjects in the video suggest that there are multiple devices being used to record the interaction. Based on the analysis of such factors, Part B seems to have been inserted into the audio from an external voice.” – Dr. Lee
Unsurprisingly, since it wasn’t possible to see Kim Jiwoong at that time on CCTV, a staff member also testifies in his favor.
As for the CCTV footage, KFSS stated that another member’s head was blocking Kim Jiwoong’s face, so Parts B and C could not be matched to any mouth/lip movements. However, Dispatch added that, in an interview with a “Staff Member” who was present at the video call, it was clarified once again that Kim Jiwoong did not curse.
According to Dispatch, there was one staff member assigned per group member while running the video calls. “Staff Member D,” a representative of the record label, was assigned to Kim Jiwoong. “Staff Member D” sat across from Kim Jiwoong as he went through the video calls. “Staff Member D” was wearing an earphone connected to the device that Kim Jiwoong was using, listening to the contents of the video calls alongside Kim Jiwoong in real-time (to provide interpretations and/or additional assistance as needed). “Staff Member D” told Dispatch that they had no recollection of Kim Jiwoong cursing.
“I don’t remember the specifics of the call that the OP had with Kim Jiwoong. But I can guarantee that Kim Jiwoong did not curse. I did not hear him utter such a thing. And the other members were all doing their own video calls next to Kim Jiwoong. It was not the place or time where Kim Jiwoong could have cursed, even if he wanted to (and I’m not insisting that he would’ve wanted to). He did not curse, I did not hear it.” – Staff Member D
Well, it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from fans and netizens to this, as they typically don’t react well to anything that might suggest they got it wrong after extensive backlash. Doubly so since this isn’t resoundingly exonerating.
——
Obviously I personally took the stance that it was a stupid mistake but a relatable one, so the backlash was overblown even if he did do it. Thus, now all of this looks even dumber to me.
======
Update
WAKEONE have released a statement confirming the report.
“Hello. This is WAKEONE. Over the past five days, our company had called for a special analysis of the video that has been spreading on various online communities and social media through the law firm Sejong. These are the results. As per the results of analyzing the special traits of the voices in the video, the voices of the people who said “thank you” and the person who cursed have different pitches and heights in terms of their voice waves, and it was determined that they came from different people.
It was also determined that the video was recorded not by the device that did the call, but an external one, so there is a chance that the curse was from an external source. We have verified that this can be used as means to judge that the curse was not made by our artist. We ask for your understanding that this took some time for us to announce, as we were trying to accurately verify the facts through special analysis, despite our trust in the artist and the various testimonies. We are sorry to everyone that was concerned. In the future, we promise not only to protect our artist from harm on the basis of truth truth, but also put in our best to prevent the loving fans from being hurt. We will do our best for a healthy and mature K-Pop culture. Thank you.”
