Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Days after it was revealed they were acquired by RBW, DSP Media has officially disbanded their embattled girl group April, who have been inactive since bullying allegations were brought forth by former member Hyunjoo.
“Hello, this is DSP Media. We are informing you that our artist APRIL has disbanded. After a long period of discussion and debate, our agency and the APRIL members decided to have the group disband and go their separate ways. We ask that you give lots of support and interest to the six members, who will be walking a new path that is not part of APRIL. Furthermore, we would like to once again thank the fans who supported and cheered on APRIL for the past six years.”
When I said it seemed ominous that RBW didn’t even mention DSP’s artists in their statement, I knew that April were among the groups approaching the end of their contract, but I didn’t expect it to be this abrupt.
Even before the bullying scandal, April were probably not in the best shape as they were in the midst of a period in the dungeon, so it’s understandable that RBW wouldn’t want to have any mess ominously hanging over the acquisition of their “new IP”, as they would be so excited to call it.
Update
Related to the members writing individual letters to fans, member Yena took to Instagram Stories to say that while she dropped her individual lawsuit against Hyunjoo, she still denies bullying her.
Yena wrote on Instagram Stories, “As you have seen in the news, APRIL has decided to disband today. In order to prevent false claims and baseless rumors from spreading about our disbandment news, I am writing this. We are absolutely not disbanding because we acknowledge our controversy to be true or that we are in any way ashamed. After that issue came up, the name APRIL was terribly hurt and kept on being hurt, to the point where the company and the members recognized that it was difficult to recover. We finally decided on disbandment as the best thing we could do at this moment. We have also judged that pursuing further legal action is now meaningless. For the past year, we have gone through a psychologically difficult time due to this controversy. The things that were alleged did not happen, but I don’t know how to prove that they did not, and the legal resolutions have also been frustrating, and after experiencing again and again that this can’t be resolved properly, I’ve decided to cancel my personal lawsuit. But my personal statement on this has not and will not change. I will continue to employ a legal representative and will respond strongly to malicious comments that cross the line and baseless rumors.”
