Starship Punishes Staff who Shared Post Calling IVE’s Yujin a Sl*t, Takes Legal Action
On January 15, Starship Entertainment, the agency of girl group IVE, published a statement regarding a previously incident where the company’s official Weibo shared a post that insulted IVE member Yujin.
The full statement is as below:
“We, at Starship Entertainment, would like to offer our sincerest apologies to our artist, AN YUJIN, and to her fans for the unfortunate incident that occurred on January 9th.
We deeply regret the distress caused by the mishandling of a China-based social media account by a member of our staff.
Upon thoroughly reviewing the situation, we have determined that the incident resulted from a failure in our internal protocols.
AdvertisementAs a corrective measure, the staff member involved has been reassigned from all related responsibilities, and the most stringent disciplinary actions have been taken. Additionally, we are actively enhancing and refining our internal processes to ensure that similar incidents do not recur.
We deeply regret the harm caused to AN YUJIN, and we are committed to addressing the damages incurred as a result of this incident. To protect all parties involved, we are also taking legal action against individuals who spread false information or engage in defamatory behavior.
Once again, we sincerely apologize to all fans for the disappointment and concerns this incident has caused. Moving forward, we are dedicated to learning from this experience and growing as a more responsible and mature company. We will continue to work diligently to restore your trust and ensure that such an incident does not happen again.
AdvertisementThank you.
Starship Entertainment”
Meanwhile, previously on January 9, Starship Entertainment faced criticism after it reposted an offensive fan-generated post on its official Weibo account. The post contained insults about IVE’s Yujin and included AI-generated photos of her intended to criticize her.
The post, which included derogatory comments, such as calling Yujin inappropriate names, caused immediate backlash from fans. The caption of the post read, “#JangWonYoung good baby. #AnYujin sl*t that loves kissing old men,” further fueling the outrage. Fans quickly raised concerns about Starship’s involvement in sharing such harmful content on an official account.
An Yujin C-bar expressed their dismay, questioning Starship’s actions, “Isn’t Starship a crazy b*stard? What are they doing? They’re RT-ing an AI photo made by a hater on the official account. What do they mean by that? Is their head filled with poop? Is this what a human would do?” Fans were left wondering whether this was a simple mistake or whether it was a result of negligence, especially as Weibo requires a double-prompt confirmation before reposting content.
The repost was allegedly created by a fan of IVE’s Wonyoung, known as a “Wonyoung akgae” (a term for extreme and solo fans of the artist).
In response to the growing criticism, Starship Entertainment issued a public apology a few hours later.
Hello, this is Starship Entertainment.
We would like to update on the incident that happened on Starship Entertainment’s Weibo today. The incident happened when our staff was reporting malicious posts, and the post has since been deleted.
We would like to sincerely apologise to the artist and fans who may have been affected by this incident. We will work on managing our account better, to prevent similar mistakes from happening again.
Once more, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused.
Meanwhile, IVE recently unveiled pre-release title track “‘REBEL HEART” from their upcoming album “IVE EMPATHY” on January 13.
