T-ara,
a K-pop (South Korean) girl group, made their debut in July 2009 with
six members: Boram,
Qri, Soyeon, Eunjung, Hyomin and Jiyeon. They worked hard and gradually became popular, but
things went badly wrong in 2012 when their reputation was ruined by
rumours that one member of the group was bullied by the others.
In
December 2010 Ryu Hwayoung, then 17, or 18 in Korean age, was added
to the group by the CEO, Kim Kwang Soo (KKS), supposedly as a rapper. She
did not appear to be needed, as they already had Eunjung and Hyomin
who could rap well enough. Putting her in T-ara was a risky move, as
she might upset the dynamic of the group, and one which was unlikely
to add anything of real value unless she was a good singer. Hwayoung
had only been training with the company, CCM, for about six months,
and was severely lacking in certain areas. She had no experience of
the business and lacked the social skills that she would need to cope
with being put into an already successful and well-bonded group.
Despite that, she performed admirably as a dancer and rapper
throughout her time in T-ara. It's difficult to assess her singing
because she never has any solo lines, but from what I can hear she
seems adequate for what she was asked to do.
There
was persistent bullying, but it was done by the CEO. He made the
group suffer for years, then when they complained early in 2012 about
being overworked and not having had a single day off in more than a
year, he threatened to replace members, and announced two more new
members, Areum and Dani (who never became a member) to show he was
serious.
[OP-ED] Is T-ara's member change a way for Kim Kwang Soo to punish T-ara? | allkpop.com
KKS continued to work the group as hard as before, and some sort of
breakdown was inevitable. With
the six original members having the strongest bond it was always
likely that the first victims would be Hwayoung and Areum, and that
is the way it turned out.
On 23 July 2012, Hwayoung sprained her
ankle after a performance in Ulsan, and when they returned to Seoul she went to a hospital accompanied by a manager, and then to another with her father. According to reports from KKS and staff the manager reported that the first hospital said there was nothing wrong and she was fit to perform.
The next day the
group flew to Japan for two concerts at the Budokan, a prestigious
14,000 seat arena in Tokyo, on 25 and 26 July. The members had had three hours of sleep, but Hwayoung must have had less. On arriving in Japan she went to a third
hospital seeking further treatment for her ankle, and after that she asked to be taken to the hotel
to rest instead of attending the rehearsal. Her absence angered the other
members, and others who were working to put on the show, because they
had to rearrange all their routines and the rehearsal took far longer
than it would normally. The severity of Hwayoung's injury is
disputed; it seems that the other members thought it was not as bad
as she claimed, while she thought they were underestimating it. I
think they were, because it is hard to imagine that she would want to
miss such a big event which was the climax of their Japanese tour. An
hour before the first concert, at which Hwayoung performed only one
song, sitting on a chair, one of the members, Hyomin, wrote on
Twitter about differences in determination and four other members,
Eunjung, Jiyeon, Soyeon and Boram, retweeted and added to it. That
was a catastrophic mistake. Criticizing another member of the group
in public gave the impression that they wanted to humiliate her and
opened them up to be attacked. Hwayoung responded to the tweets,
saying "Sometimes determination is not enough," and thus
confirmed the obvious inference that they were about her. The two
members who took no part in the Twitter episode were Qri and Areum.
As
result of those tweets, rumours started on the internet that T-ara
had been bullying Hwayoung throughout her time in the group. On 27
July they were back in Korea to appear on a TV show, Music Bank,
singing the same song that Hwayoung had performed at the concerts.
They had a discussion at which they apparently sorted out their
problems and apologized to each other for what they had done. After
the camera rehearsal, Areum received some threatening messages from
Hwayoung's twin sister Hyoyoung, who was angry about Areum not
supporting Hwayoung in the argument that had been going on, but which
by this time had been resolved. This part of the story was kept quiet
for a long time, for reasons that I will examine later.
I
think Hwayoung was rather shy and in awe of the others when she
joined. She tended to be a bit withdrawn and didn't integrate very
well, but she was more sure of herself with Areum, who was younger
and a late recruit like her, so she became Areum's friend and had
been helping and encouraging her. Others will tell you that's not
true, but these suggest it is, and in January 2018 Areum said that
Hwayoung was a friend and who cared for her a lot. (Reference in Part
2)
That
is why Hwayoung was upset about not having Areum's support, and she
must have moaned about it to her sister, not expecting her to react
the way she did. What Hyoyoung did was bad and there is no excuse for
it, but it would not have happened without T-ara's tweets and there
is no excuse for those either (although the threat was certainly worse). As you would expect, Hyoyoung's
messages shook the group up again and KKS told Hwayoung not to take
part in the performance. On 30 July KKS announced that Hwayoung was
being dismissed for behaviour that hurt teamwork, after complaints
from 19 staff members, and for refusing to go on stage at Music Bank,
even though he had told her not to.
Did
KKS tell Hwayoung not to go on stage so that he could use her absence
as an excuse to fire her? It seems strange that Hwayoung's behaviour
was suddenly thought to be such a serious problem just after the
scandal started. If she was so bad why wasn't she removed before? The
most likely explanation, and one that was quite popular at the time,
is that KKS sacrificed her to save T-ara from a big scandal, thinking
that if he portrayed her as a trouble maker, the public wouldn't care
about the bullying issue, but that was not entirely successful. The
public wouldn't swallow it, but some T-ara fans did. It would have
been better to keep Hwayoung in the group, as the other members
wanted, give her ankle time to recover, and try to sort out the
problems in the way she dealt with the staff.
By
this time the bullying scandal had taken hold and Hwayoung's
departure from T-ara only intensified it. Since then, Hwayoung has
been very loyal to T-ara, making it absolutely clear that
the bullying rumours were false, wishing them success, expressing
sympathy for the persecution they suffered and never blaming them for
what happened to her, but T-ara fans accused her of pretending she
was bullied and “playing the victim.” It's not true, and why
would she want to do that? The reason they usually offer is to
improve her image, but that would be a terribly risky strategy. If
she was lying and the truth came out, her reputation would be ruined.
Hwayoung had another reason to want the the scandal to stop, and that
is to protect her sister and herself. If someone leaked the story of
Hyoyoung threatening Areum, Hyoyoung would be vilified, and many
people would blame Hwayoung for it too. She really had nothing to
gain from the scandal and no reason to encourage it. A lot of people
claim that Hwayoung took advantage of the scandal to gain sympathy
and keep herself in the public eye. She did have sympathy, mostly for
something she said didn't happen, but that is all it was. She had no
work for two years, but she she eventually started to get acting
roles, and after about four years she got a good one.
T-ara,
meanwhile, have been similarly loyal to Hwayoung, apologizing for not
making her feel more secure as part of the group, saying nothing
about the problems caused by her behaviour and never blaming her for
what happened to them. Both sides felt they had been wronged, but
they forgave each other, so they have been able to move on from their
problems. They were on opposing sides in their dispute, but they have
always been on the same side in the scandal. On the other side are
those who accuse T-ara of bullying and those who accuse Hwayoung of
wrecking T-ara's reputation. Sadly, many fans did not understand that
and felt the need to choose between T-ara and Hwayoung. By doing that
they chose the side of lies and hate instead of the side of truth and
reconciliation. Many of the fans who did not abandon T-ara became
fanatical Hwayoung haters, and even after six years they still claim
that Hwayoung tried to ruin T-ara by claiming she was bullied, but
that is completely false.
T-ara's
popularity plummeted; they became the most hated group in Korea, a
petition calling for them to be disbanded attracted 200,000 names,
and they suffered years of abuse. They had to concentrate on other
countries, and did very well, particularly in China. Areum left T-ara
in July 2013 after performing with them for one year. The hate that
T-ara received was one of the things that affected her, another was
the ridicule and abuse directed at her for some photographs taken
after she painted her face for Halloween. There were also rumours of
T-ara bullying her, which added to her troubles, but they never took
hold in the same way as they did with Hwayoung, despite Areum's
Instagram post, four months after she left, saying “The people I
hate the most right now are the CEO, unnies, and the journalists!”
Like Hwayoung, she was not happy at the time of her departure, but
since then she has been as loyal to T-ara as Hwayoung has.
In
February 2017 Hwayoung and Hyoyoung appeared on a TV show called Taxi
and talked about life after Hwayoung left T-ara. There was really
nothing in that interview that should anger any T-ara fan, but it was
widely misinterpreted in the most spectacular fashion. Nearly
everyone seemed to think that Hwayoung talked about being bullied and
said she had a terrible time in T-ara, but there was no mention of
bullying or any sort of mistreatment. A former staff member was
enraged, or perhaps just took advantage of the outcry for personal
vengeance, and he or she revealed the story of Hyoyoung's threat to
the press. along with some other things that I will examine later.
Even though it told us nothing about how T-ara treated Hwayoung, the
new information about Hyoyoung was taken as proof that the twins were
evil and had been bullying T-ara all along, so they were now the
baddies, and it followed in a simple step of non-logic that T-ara,
who had previously been evil bullies, must be the goodies, so they
were seen to be vindicated and their reputation was restored. The
question of why Hyoyoung was so angry seems to have been conveniently
ignored, and there was a widespread backlash against the twins. Areum
didn't want that story to be revealed, and to make matters worse the
reporter who was given the Hyoyoung story used the old pictures that
had brought Areum so much abuse to accompany it, which upset her
further: “The pictures bring up such hurtful memories that you
wouldn’t even begin to understand and it makes me feel like I’m
dying. Why would you use me in such a way?”
Areum begs reporters to stop leaking her photos, says she feels like dying - Koreaboo
In
January 2018, Areum said that Hyoyoung had apologized to her years
before the story was revealed, and that she was on good terms with
the twins:
“It’s
true that Hyoyoung sent me a threatening message. However, she
contacted me after I left the group. She apologized and worried about
me a lot. She said she was really sorry.”
“Hwayoung,
who was a T-ara member with me, honestly took care of me a lot. She
treasured me a lot because we were both new members.”
“At
that time, I was very upset that Ryu Hwayoung and Ryu Hyoyoung
received a lot of criticism from the public because of what happened
between us. It was because, in a way, they were the people I was most
grateful to.”
“I’m
really fine now. I let go of the past and started anew. I hope many
good things will happen to them and me.”
It
is strange that Hyoyoung apparently waited until after Areum left
T-ara a year later to apologize. It may that there is a problem with
the translation and Areum means after Hwayoung left the group. That
makes more sense. I always thought that Hyoyoung would not have been
allowed to stay in the company if she had not apologized, and
Hwayoung would have made Hyoyoung apologize if she didn't do so very
quickly. If the apology was given soon after the incident then the
rest of the group and the staff would surely have known about it.
That would cast further suspicion on the motives of the person who
leaked the messages. If he or she knew that Hyoyoung and Areum had
made their peace, and that Areum did not want the story to come out,
what sort of character are we dealing with here? We need to know
whether the translation is correct.
Further
reading
