On ‘4 Things Show‘, Eunjung spoke out about the bullying scandal that has essentially relegated T-ara to the second or third tier of girl groups in Korea.
“The truth that the public knows and believes, a huge part of it is not what the actual truth holds.” (Eunjung wants to say that a huge part of what the public believes in is not true and does not encapsulate even a small part of what the actual truth holds.)
So that should be interesting if she actually addresses it in any type of specifics.
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Given that this is gonna come back up again, some people are asking me, “Oh, but what happened?”
In short?
T-ara had a concert in Japan, Hwayoung performed one song at said concert and apparently got hurt, so she left and went to do her nails (hence the nails jokes in KPOPAYLPSE posts). After the show, all the members except Qri and Ahreum started throwing shade at Hwayoung, insinuating that she wasn’t determined enough (hence those jokes).
And that’s about it.
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I agree that T-ara were dumb for getting so frustrated that they took an internal conflict public, and that Core Contents Media was dumb to not handle it quicker and with more grace, but what that has to do with the idiocy that followed is beyond me.
And what followed is netizens jumped to the conclusion that Hwayoung was being bullied and started looked through T-ara’s entire group history to play e-detective so they could use confirmation bias to validate the hypothesis that she was being tortured by these iljin thugs. Then their delusion and conspiracies slowly got exposed as complete fabrications, but by then, most people had already committed to vilifying them, and so you get comments like this:
1. [+6,514, -205] Whether it’s the truth or not doesn’t deny the fact that they can’t go back to the positive image they had in the past
“WELP EVEN IF NOTHING HAPPENED WE FUCKED YOU GUYS SO HARD AT THE TIME SO YOU CAN’T GO BACK TO YOUR CAREER LOLZ SORRY”
It’s telling that even at Netizen Buzz, home to the ground swell for international T-ara bandwagon hate, the best they can do nowadays is variations of, “Well, T-ara and CCM could’ve handled it better.” Yeah, true, and you can say that for basically every single PR situation in Korean entertainment, and those don’t turn into national-level witch hunts.
Seriously, go back through the T-ara tag on NB and it’s beyond hilarious to look at the slow walking back of all the hate and the certainty of their opinions by both Korean and international netizens.
Bottom line is, to this day, people cannot ground with the fact that they were wrong about the situation that was basically an argument about one member fucking around during work time and some other members being unhappy about it. So remember guys, when you do a group project and your group argues with somebody who you guys feel is not pulling their weight, YOU ARE BULLYING THEM. Apparently.
Cliff Notes: People are stupid.