Recently, IVE, a top-tier 4th-gen girl group under Starship, made a comeback with their EP “IVE EMPATHY” and two MVs for the double title tracks “Rebel Heart” and “Attitude”.
On the morning of February 4, Rebel Heart surged on domestic music charts, officially achieving its first Realtime All-Kill (#1 on all real-time charts within the iChart system). Previously, the group was rumored to have lost its appeal and relevance due to poor achievements and lackluster discussion around their new release, despite returning at a time when K-pop was not too competitive, but this new achievement has proven the haters wrong.
However, while group fans of IVE are celebrating the new achievement, intense internal conflicts among individual member fan bases have erupted. In particular, fans of Jang Wonyoung are accusing Starship of mistreatment, taking advantage of Jang Wonyoung’s fame and “stealing” her signature concept.
Particularly, these fans pointed out that Starship did not allow Jang Wonyoung and solo schedules during the “I AM” comeback and tried to hide the fact that the female idol had to get 7 stitches after being injured on set, even trying to block media contents shedding light on this issue.
In the “IVE EMPATHY” comeback, Jang Wonyoung was not only completely covered in a choreography path, but also barely had any screen time in the MVs. Additionally, Starship attempted to rebrand Jang Wonyoung’s famous “Lucky Vicky” concept into “IVE Mindset”, causing fans’ anger at this “stealing attempt”.
As a result, fans of Jang Wonyoung are leaving scathing remarks all over the net, thought they do not call for a boycott, citing that the female idol was credited for “Attitude”, so they still want to show support for her.
