Mongrolian

Seriously. On the one hand, it does demonstrate he's still bothering to make any kind of effort to cast them in a positive light (I've been wondering about Mr. Kim's efforts with regards to T-ara lately) - on the other hand, it's kinda like the "trainee refuses endorsement deals; focuses on singing and dancing practice" scheme I've heard he's done multiple times. Which means this is just smoke and mirrors - Mr. Kim/CCM tweaking events to manipulate the truth for effect. Because no matter what is true in this - and how those things are true - in the end the only reason this gets released to the news outlets is to make the girls look good. And that becomes problematic in that it demonstrates something about the company culture. To cut myself short, it's like if you gave money or food to a beggar and started telling people about it to try to impress them.
And again, that company culture takes most of the credit for most of the problems that T-ara's had that the fans complain about - and the other problems are usually made worse by the company's culture. And the more things stay the same over there, the more troubles the T-ara members have to deal with, the more drama the fans have to put up with.
At the very least, though, I hope the ladies have their fun, even if I more hope they find some way to improve their situation.

stop blaming netizens for t-aras misfortune. this has everything to do with KKS and his poor decision making. removing hwayoung from the group was a terrible choice and everything that unfolded because of it is what they call JUSTICE. (or karma)
its just a shame t-ara and the people close to them have to suffer as well.
KKS wants the fans (And everyone else) to just forget what happened. remove hwayoung, fill her role with someone else and just continue on like its no big deal and that a key member being removed wont have any backlash on t-ara.
that sends thee mssage that the members are easily replaceable. not just hwayoung, any of them. imagine how the others feel. why do you think soyeon was all "OMG I CANT NOT FILM MY DRAMA EVEN AFTER I ALMOST BROKE MY NECK!!" she cant look lazy in front of KKS. she must work no matter what!
but u also cant expect fans to just be like "ok hwayoung is gone, whatever". and if you do have that mentality, you are just eating out of KKS hands like a puppet. sure u want to support t-ara and all that. but by mindlessly supporting t-ara you are also hurting t-ara by supporting KKS and his dictatorship.
fans, netizens anyone need to stand up to KKS and show him his actions were wrong.
i will not support KKS, and if that means i have to also not support t-ara in the process i am willing to do that. i will not purchase or watch anything t-ara without hwayoung involved.
and again if it is revealed hwayoung doesnt want to come back to t-ara (which i couldnt blame her after all this) then i will have no problem accepting it. cant say id still feel the same way about t-ara or comfortable supporting them meaning that money is going to the poopface KKS.
KKS damaged t-ara and is unwilling to admit fault and take the steps needed to fix it.

boo hoo hoo. stop crying. this is exactly what i talked about in another post. t-ara fans will blindly stick up for t-ara and thats exactly what KKS wants. he expects all the fans to love t-ara no matter what. i said it before ill say it again.
i will not support KKS, and if that means i have to also not support t-ara in the process i am willing to do that. i will not purchase or watch anything t-ara without hwayoung involved.
and again if it is revealed hwayoung doesnt want to come back to t-ara (which i couldnt blame her after all this) then i will have no problem accepting it. cant say id still feel the same way about t-ara or comfortable supporting them meaning that money is going to the poopface KKS.
KKS damaged t-ara and is unwilling to admit fault and take the steps needed to fix it.
take a stand and save t-ara. dont sit back and let KKS win.
HWAYOUNG FOREVER

Yee hee hee, we agree on something. It's nice to agree with smart people, it validates me.
Except that you seem to hold T-ara more culpable than I would (taken as a whole), given that half of them were teenagers when they signed on - and even Eunjung seems to have started her entertainment career as a minor, and under what sorta sounds like a, uh, "helicopter mom" or something, I forget what they call it. Anyway, a kid gets raised to make certain assumptions, and I assume they've never taken critical thinking courses or one whit of what gets called a liberal education, so to a certain extent... yeah, but that's not a big deal. And anyway, they all still abide by the game, but again, blah blah.
Anyway, I guess as for the older thing, maybe, "if you were an actor" and "you'd appreciate being dealt with in this way." There is a certain appreciation for a job well done (and I wouldn't go so far as to call this quite that) - of the game being well played.
But I don't know if a sports analogy would do? Like this wouldn't happen, but a great soccer player getting benched and then transferred because the kit sponsor disagreed with the player's stance on a political issue and threatened to withdraw their support. Would that player have professional (and not just emotional or personal) grounds upon which to disagree with the decision?
But even that's just sake of argument stuff, not what I want to get at. Almost PMed, maybe will if you want to continue along this line, but I'd be satisfied if we just disagree on this or that.
I guess there's also the question of things being the way they are, and what we should do about it (things being the way they are). I've had the thought, the problem with being a good guy is that you've sorta got to succeed in spite of being a good guy, otherwise you're just a guy who makes it look like being a good guy's not a good thing to do (to the people who wouldn't choose to do so themselves anyway - you won't change any minds, maybe, being what I mean, or you'll just dishearten people who want to be a good guy).
As for the corporate side, from a certain standpoint, the most effective way to win a war (and to keep from having to fight future wars with the same people) is to kill all of your enemies - like, all of them, without considerations of age or gender or whatever. But, we have, like, the Geneva treaty, or whatever kind of agreement it gets called, that keeps things from reaching that point - and international pressure from people more or less on the sidelines to remind everyone to play fair. Or now we do, anyway. It may be not so clear in the various areas of business, but there is some level of agreement as to what to call "business ethics."
Like, the business world could be called the eternal struggle between descending into the absence of humanity and ascending into business models that would be unviable (and so leave everyone to starve, taken to a certain extreme). Like, hopefully we can still get all the things we want without just always being total jerks to each other, say, meet somewhere in the middle.
But one of the reasons the SBS producer didn't do a good job, if we're talking about the game, is that he's the only one with an egg on his face (that might be seen as defending their interests, but it's not a very clean victory, as below). I'm not too well-informed, but do we know what product placement people complained about Eunjung's presence? Were they piano manufacturers or something, something relatively difficult to replace? Like why didn't SBS producer guy play a little bit of hardball back and say something like "we'll just replace you with another sponsor and then you won't get seen on tv anyway?" SBS guy dealt that one from a position of weakness, and now he and his production look like a mess, his product, the 5F show, looks at least that much worse, and again, so far he (and his staff, company, to a certain extent his talent) look to be the only ones taking negatives from this. Maybe, it might be said he picked the choice that (from his available intel) looked to lose him the least overall, but I don't know. I doubt that?
Just before some onlooker gets at me for it, yes, Eunjung did lose the role (and undertook all the relevant shock from the whole situation), but on the bright side, there does some to be a positive spin on the situation. Whether that is only apparent, and whether that will turn into future opportunities for her remains to be seen, but she has that opening to exploit, given enough savvy, luck, and will. As for the SBS team as a whole, they still do have a show to put on, just to be thorough, even if there's a lot of negative publicity - and then the old saying about publicity always being good...
And just to end, is there the question of being humans first before being executives, actresses, sponsors, or like, scientists and geographers and whatever?
To tone down the rhetoric a little, I guess it's kind of like being a dad who's fine with his kids hating him so long as they can survive better for it (it does, in cases, and it does not, in cases), or a dad who raises kids who have a healthy relationship with him but are perhaps less ambitious or otherwise able to make it out there (again, it's mostly a case to case thing). Anyway, you do need some of both, but of course, this hypothetical dad probably can't do both very well, and so on and so forth, "choices to be made" and whatever.
Edit: Further on the SBS guy...
Developing the idea, looking to the future, that SBS guy, what could he be trusted with? At best he might be useful as some kind of scapegoat guy - and depending on how SBS uses that, they might give him a nice golden parachute if he has to end his career over something like this - but for now he's just a guy who 1) caved under pressure/apparently negotiated poorly 2) apparently bungled in handling the announcement (at least a little) and 3) built negativity around his project. People forget and de facto forgive a lot of things, but at the very least some acting talent will have a distaste for dealing with him for a while. From (my assumption of) the point of view of the sponsors, he probably just looks like a ninny they can use/push around, and who might cave over this or that thing when it doesn't serve their interests, not exactly someone they can trust to do a good job or create a positive environment for marketing purposes. Again, such a person can be used, but...
And just for speculating purposes, what exactly was it that just had to involve Eunjung's character so specifically? Again, like the pianos that every character uses? Some fashion label? Like if it was just a soda or other food product, one could assume they might not have so much sway in a project like this, or that they could be replaced or might be appeased by just having their product be only minimally associated with Eunjung's character (like she always eats/drinks other stuff, or doesn't stand next to the street-level ad in whatever scene, things like that).
If we give free rein to rampant theorizing, one might even guess that SBS guy himself wanted to make the call about Eunjung, and built up the idea that he was pressured by sponsors as a mild cover story for doing so.
Oh, and also on the last thing of the original post, about being "human first," there's also the question of what that means, but yeah.
Lastly lastly, hopefully last edit lastly, these guys' decisions affect lots of people, and when they aren't "nice," it, uh, affects lots of people. When a person creates negativity in another person, that other person, he could go and get drunk and beat his kids, or she could get dissatisfied with life and start having an affair, or he or she could be a jerk in traffic or to his or her friends and so on and so forth, potentially creating more negativity in the people around them. The specific outcomes, of course, will depend on the proportions involved and the natures of every relevant character and good old chance, but they'll all have their causes (and then, of course, causes for those causes, and so on). I mean, "so people have a bad day," isn't just that. If a CEO lays a good worker off because he wants to put his favorite in the other guy's office, and the laid off guy goes and offs somebody, it's not exactly the CEO's fault (certainly not legally), but, like, there's the grey of everything again. Like the old joke goes, "maybe he just wasn't hugged enough as a kid," if that saying can ever be applied seriously. Anyway, all this as kind of a caveat to the idea of prioritizing profits - again, you said something about that, so it's not exactly for your benefit, but I like to run with a thought.

Funny, didn't they sign a new contract with a separate agency to handle the acting side of their careers? Just something to keep in the back of your minds about this all. I was a little surprised at how... normal their reaction sounded in the above report.
Anyway, it's a shame, all this. There are "big picture" things to this, but I'll let it rest. Anyway, it's not the first time advertisers were overly sensitive to goings-on. And it's not the first time network folk bowed to pressure from the moneybags.
... and it's not the first time Mr. Kim opened up a can of worms that dismantlee years of hard work, crippled careers, caused immense personal trauma and actively invited onlookers to see Korea and Koreans in a negative light.

Just remember, who's making the call to still do jack squat nothing with all these goings-on... But seriously, if ever there was a time for the girls to defy that man, it'd be now. Even if it were messy, emotional and inarticulate, I'd feel like it were... a response fitting to the situation. I get the feeling it wouldn't be met well by the Korean public, so I hope that they can manage a composed response, but hey.
And yeah...
Backbone, that element lacking in those responsible for Eunjung's sacking. Or, I guess, maybe worse, they're really just creating a situation where their originally intended actions would be more palatable to the public eye. Like what Pilot did, for those of you who know that part of the bible.
But man, this is why Mr. Kim is a stain on the prestige of the kpop industry. Yeah, they (Koreans) deal with things in some ways that I (and others) disagree with. Yeah, it's not all fantasy land magic with kisses and rainbows. Yeah, it's not everything it presents itself to be. But, Kpop is a legitimate entertainment option, and one of its main draws was, really, that they could do those entertainment things without having the same hangups as the American entertainment industry. Not to give too much sway to like, stereotypes, but Kpop is making it in the Arab world. And I've read, blogs and stuff from Americans, that the thing about Kpop is that it isn't rife with the same cynical, jaded viewpoints we get all the time in America (even in our mf-ing children's movies, for foss sake), and that America is exporting to the rest of the world, all the f-ing time. And that is still true - Koreans care about different things than Americans do, they deal with things in a different way, all those little things that are different across cultures, but they could still produce a polished, purchasable, and (generally) positive product.
And again, even if backstage, things aren't like on the stage, you take that as a given (once you figure that stuff out) - you still like it, it's still fun, you still listen to it and watch it and talk about it. But can you imagine this situation being as bad as it is if any other company were involved? I mean, arguably we wouldn't even have any kind of crisis as we're having, because other companies wouldn't have given the rumor mill a free hand for five days and then decided to fire the very person that everyone in the public was siding with, and they wouldn't have built a reputation such that people were willing to speculate that you orchestrated a car accident involving four people aside from one of your stars just to gain sympathy, and they wouldn't just sit on their hands after gaining the personal satisfaction of getting your "rebel" star to apologize to you in private. Not only is his company losing money, not only is T-ara having all the problems they're having, but all of Korea is looking jacked right now to the casual observer, not just the Kpop world - and right when it's building momentum across the world.
I mean, if I were a fan on a website talking about American stuff, I would sound like I hated the USA - there's just that much to complain about, seeing things from the inside (and I'm sure people around the world have their complaints too) - okay, maybe I wouldn't, discretion and all, but if I were to complain about American stuff... But kpop is relatively new to the international stage, and aside from people's opinions about Koreans and Asians in general, they just don't need another reason to look down on it. And yet here we have all this.
Mr. Kim may not have created Korean society, he may not have dictated everything about this situation, but he sure as s did his durndest to make things as ridiculous as they've gotten - starting with just being so easy to hate.
But luckily, something distracted me before I bored you even more.
Just because I just saw it, if you're gonna talk about "idols," I mean, what exactly did T-ara do that was so unworthy? Hwayoung, for not not going on stage, or for tweeting about feeling like she was alone in an argument? The other girls, for tweeting words of encouragement that were twisted around to look like mockery? I only take my trash out in the middle of the night - does that make me guilty of making someone think I have something in my trash that I want to keep hidden?
See? This is why I stopped coming here back in April. I just keep going.
Man, before then, I was happy answering questions like "do you like Hyomin with glasses or without?"

Just remember, who's making the call to still do jack squat nothing with all these goings-on... But seriously, if ever there was a time for the girls to defy that man, it'd be now. Even if it were messy, emotional and inarticulate, I'd feel like it were... a response fitting to the situation. I get the feeling it wouldn't be met well by the Korean public, so I hope that they can manage a composed response, but hey.
And yeah...
Backbone, that element lacking in those responsible for Eunjung's sacking. Or, I guess, maybe worse, they're really just creating a situation where their originally intended actions would be more palatable to the public eye. Like what Pilot did, for those of you who know that part of the bible.
But man, this is why Mr. Kim is a stain on the prestige of the kpop industry. Yeah, they (Koreans) deal with things in some ways that I (and others) disagree with. Yeah, it's not all fantasy land magic with kisses and rainbows. Yeah, it's not everything it presents itself to be. But, Kpop is a legitimate entertainment option, and one of its main draws was, really, that they could do those entertainment things without having the same hangups as the American entertainment industry. Not to give too much sway to like, stereotypes, but Kpop is making it in the Arab world. And I've read, blogs and stuff from Americans, that the thing about Kpop is that it isn't rife with the same cynical, jaded viewpoints we get all the time in America (even in our mf-ing children's movies, for foss sake), and that America is exporting to the rest of the world, all the f-ing time. And that is still true - Koreans care about different things than Americans do, they deal with things in a different way, all those little things that are different across cultures, but they could still produce a polished, purchasable, and (generally) positive product.
And again, even if backstage, things aren't like on the stage, you take that as a given (once you figure that stuff out) - you still like it, it's still fun, you still listen to it and watch it and talk about it. But can you imagine this situation being as bad as it is if any other company were involved? I mean, arguably we wouldn't even have any kind of crisis as we're having, because other companies wouldn't have given the rumor mill a free hand for five days and then decided to fire the very person that everyone in the public was siding with, and they wouldn't have built a reputation such that people were willing to speculate that you orchestrated a car accident involving four people aside from one of your stars just to gain sympathy, and they wouldn't just sit on their hands after gaining the personal satisfaction of getting your "rebel" star to apologize to you in private. Not only is his company losing money, not only is T-ara having all the problems they're having, but all of Korea is looking jacked right now to the casual observer, not just the Kpop world - and right when it's building momentum across the world.
I mean, if I were a fan on a website talking about American stuff, I would sound like I hated the USA - there's just that much to complain about, seeing things from the inside (and I'm sure people around the world have their complaints too) - okay, maybe I wouldn't, discretion and all, but if I were to complain about American stuff... But kpop is relatively new to the international stage, and aside from people's opinions about Koreans and Asians in general, they just don't need another reason to look down on it. And yet here we have all this.
Mr. Kim may not have created Korean society, he may not have dictated everything about this situation, but he sure as s did his durndest to make things as ridiculous as they've gotten - starting with just being so easy to hate.
But luckily, something distracted me before I bored you even more.
Just because I just saw it, if you're gonna talk about "idols," I mean, what exactly did T-ara do that was so unworthy? Hwayoung, for not not going on stage, or for tweeting about feeling like she was alone in an argument? The other girls, for tweeting words of encouragement that were twisted around to look like mockery? I only take my trash out in the middle of the night - does that make me guilty of making someone think I have something in my trash that I want to keep hidden?
See? This is why I stopped coming here back in April. I just keep going.
Man, before then, I was happy answering questions like "do you like Hyomin with glasses or without?"

Just remember, who's making the call to still do jack squat nothing with all these goings-on... But seriously, if ever there was a time for the girls to defy that man, it'd be now. Even if it were messy, emotional and inarticulate, I'd feel like it were... a response fitting to the situation. I get the feeling it wouldn't be met well by the Korean public, so I hope that they can manage a composed response, but hey.
And yeah...
Backbone, that element lacking in those responsible for Eunjung's sacking. Or, I guess, maybe worse, they're really just creating a situation where their originally intended actions would be more palatable to the public eye. Like what Pilot did, for those of you who know that part of the bible.
But man, this is why Mr. Kim is a stain on the prestige of the kpop industry. Yeah, they (Koreans) deal with things in some ways that I (and others) disagree with. Yeah, it's not all fantasy land magic with kisses and rainbows. Yeah, it's not everything it presents itself to be. But, Kpop is a legitimate entertainment option, and one of its main draws was, really, that they could do those entertainment things without having the same hangups as the American entertainment industry. Not to give too much sway to like, stereotypes, but Kpop is making it in the Arab world. And I've read, blogs and stuff from Americans, that the thing about Kpop is that it isn't rife with the same cynical, jaded viewpoints we get all the time in America (even in our mf-ing children's movies, for foss sake), and that America is exporting to the rest of the world, all the f-ing time. And that is still true - Koreans care about different things than Americans do, they deal with things in a different way, all those little things that are different across cultures, but they could still produce a polished, purchasable, and (generally) positive product.
And again, even if backstage, things aren't like on the stage, you take that as a given (once you figure that stuff out) - you still like it, it's still fun, you still listen to it and watch it and talk about it. But can you imagine this situation being as bad as it is if any other company were involved? I mean, arguably we wouldn't even have any kind of crisis as we're having, because other companies wouldn't have given the rumor mill a free hand for five days and then decided to fire the very person that everyone in the public was siding with, and they wouldn't have built a reputation such that people were willing to speculate that you orchestrated a car accident involving four people aside from one of your stars just to gain sympathy, and they wouldn't just sit on their hands after gaining the personal satisfaction of getting your "rebel" star to apologize to you in private. Not only is his company losing money, not only is T-ara having all the problems they're having, but all of Korea is looking jacked right now to the casual observer, not just the Kpop world - and right when it's building momentum across the world.
I mean, if I were a fan on a website talking about American stuff, I would sound like I hated the USA - there's just that much to complain about, seeing things from the inside (and I'm sure people around the world have their complaints too) - okay, maybe I wouldn't, discretion and all, but if I were to complain about American stuff... But kpop is relatively new to the international stage, and aside from people's opinions about Koreans and Asians in general, they just don't need another reason to look down on it. And yet here we have all this.
Mr. Kim may not have created Korean society, he may not have dictated everything about this situation, but he sure as s did his durndest to make things as ridiculous as they've gotten - starting with just being so easy to hate.
But luckily, something distracted me before I bored you even more.
Just because I just saw it, if you're gonna talk about "idols," I mean, what exactly did T-ara do that was so unworthy? Hwayoung, for not not going on stage, or for tweeting about feeling like she was alone in an argument? The other girls, for tweeting words of encouragement that were twisted around to look like mockery? I only take my trash out in the middle of the night - does that make me guilty of making someone think I have something in my trash that I want to keep hidden?
See? This is why I stopped coming here back in April. I just keep going.
Man, before then, I was happy answering questions like "do you like Hyomin with glasses or without?"

Just remember, who's making the call to still do jack squat nothing with all these goings-on... But seriously, if ever there was a time for the girls to defy that man, it'd be now. Even if it were messy, emotional and inarticulate, I'd feel like it were... a response fitting to the situation. I get the feeling it wouldn't be met well by the Korean public, so I hope that they can manage a composed response, but hey.
And yeah...
Backbone, that element lacking in those responsible for Eunjung's sacking. Or, I guess, maybe worse, they're really just creating a situation where their originally intended actions would be more palatable to the public eye. Like what Pilot did, for those of you who know that part of the bible.
But man, this is why Mr. Kim is a stain on the prestige of the kpop industry. Yeah, they (Koreans) deal with things in some ways that I (and others) disagree with. Yeah, it's not all fantasy land magic with kisses and rainbows. Yeah, it's not everything it presents itself to be. But, Kpop is a legitimate entertainment option, and one of its main draws was, really, that they could do those entertainment things without having the same hangups as the American entertainment industry. Not to give too much sway to like, stereotypes, but Kpop is making it in the Arab world. And I've read, blogs and stuff from Americans, that the thing about Kpop is that it isn't rife with the same cynical, jaded viewpoints we get all the time in America (even in our mf-ing children's movies, for foss sake), and that America is exporting to the rest of the world, all the f-ing time. And that is still true - Koreans care about different things than Americans do, they deal with things in a different way, all those little things that are different across cultures, but they could still produce a polished, purchasable, and (generally) positive product.
And again, even if backstage, things aren't like on the stage, you take that as a given (once you figure that stuff out) - you still like it, it's still fun, you still listen to it and watch it and talk about it. But can you imagine this situation being as bad as it is if any other company were involved? I mean, arguably we wouldn't even have any kind of crisis as we're having, because other companies wouldn't have given the rumor mill a free hand for five days and then decided to fire the very person that everyone in the public was siding with, and they wouldn't have built a reputation such that people were willing to speculate that you orchestrated a car accident involving four people aside from one of your stars just to gain sympathy, and they wouldn't just sit on their hands after gaining the personal satisfaction of getting your "rebel" star to apologize to you in private. Not only is his company losing money, not only is T-ara having all the problems they're having, but all of Korea is looking jacked right now to the casual observer, not just the Kpop world - and right when it's building momentum across the world.
I mean, if I were a fan on a website talking about American stuff, I would sound like I hated the USA - there's just that much to complain about, seeing things from the inside (and I'm sure people around the world have their complaints too) - okay, maybe I wouldn't, discretion and all, but if I were to complain about American stuff... But kpop is relatively new to the international stage, and aside from people's opinions about Koreans and Asians in general, they just don't need another reason to look down on it. And yet here we have all this.
Mr. Kim may not have created Korean society, he may not have dictated everything about this situation, but he sure as s did his durndest to make things as ridiculous as they've gotten - starting with just being so easy to hate.
But luckily, something distracted me before I bored you even more.
Just because I just saw it, if you're gonna talk about "idols," I mean, what exactly did T-ara do that was so unworthy? Hwayoung, for not not going on stage, or for tweeting about feeling like she was alone in an argument? The other girls, for tweeting words of encouragement that were twisted around to look like mockery? I only take my trash out in the middle of the night - does that make me guilty of making someone think I have something in my trash that I want to keep hidden?
See? This is why I stopped coming here back in April. I just keep going.
Man, before then, I was happy answering questions like "do you like Hyomin with glasses or without?"

Just remember, who's making the call to still do jack squat nothing with all these goings-on... But seriously, if ever there was a time for the girls to defy that man, it'd be now. Even if it were messy, emotional and inarticulate, I'd feel like it were... a response fitting to the situation. I get the feeling it wouldn't be met well by the Korean public, so I hope that they can manage a composed response, but hey.
And yeah...
Backbone, that element lacking in those responsible for Eunjung's sacking. Or, I guess, maybe worse, they're really just creating a situation where their originally intended actions would be more palatable to the public eye. Like what Pilot did, for those of you who know that part of the bible.
But man, this is why Mr. Kim is a stain on the prestige of the kpop industry. Yeah, they (Koreans) deal with things in some ways that I (and others) disagree with. Yeah, it's not all fantasy land magic with kisses and rainbows. Yeah, it's not everything it presents itself to be. But, Kpop is a legitimate entertainment option, and one of its main draws was, really, that they could do those entertainment things without having the same hangups as the American entertainment industry. Not to give too much sway to like, stereotypes, but Kpop is making it in the Arab world. And I've read, blogs and stuff from Americans, that the thing about Kpop is that it isn't rife with the same cynical, jaded viewpoints we get all the time in America (even in our mf-ing children's movies, for foss sake), and that America is exporting to the rest of the world, all the f-ing time. And that is still true - Koreans care about different things than Americans do, they deal with things in a different way, all those little things that are different across cultures, but they could still produce a polished, purchasable, and (generally) positive product.
And again, even if backstage, things aren't like on the stage, you take that as a given (once you figure that stuff out) - you still like it, it's still fun, you still listen to it and watch it and talk about it. But can you imagine this situation being as bad as it is if any other company were involved? I mean, arguably we wouldn't even have any kind of crisis as we're having, because other companies wouldn't have given the rumor mill a free hand for five days and then decided to fire the very person that everyone in the public was siding with, and they wouldn't have built a reputation such that people were willing to speculate that you orchestrated a car accident involving four people aside from one of your stars just to gain sympathy, and they wouldn't just sit on their hands after gaining the personal satisfaction of getting your "rebel" star to apologize to you in private. Not only is his company losing money, not only is T-ara having all the problems they're having, but all of Korea is looking jacked right now to the casual observer, not just the Kpop world - and right when it's building momentum across the world.
I mean, if I were a fan on a website talking about American stuff, I would sound like I hated the USA - there's just that much to complain about, seeing things from the inside (and I'm sure people around the world have their complaints too) - okay, maybe I wouldn't, discretion and all, but if I were to complain about American stuff... But kpop is relatively new to the international stage, and aside from people's opinions about Koreans and Asians in general, they just don't need another reason to look down on it. And yet here we have all this.
Mr. Kim may not have created Korean society, he may not have dictated everything about this situation, but he sure as s did his durndest to make things as ridiculous as they've gotten - starting with just being so easy to hate.
But luckily, something distracted me before I bored you even more.
Just because I just saw it, if you're gonna talk about "idols," I mean, what exactly did T-ara do that was so unworthy? Hwayoung, for not not going on stage, or for tweeting about feeling like she was alone in an argument? The other girls, for tweeting words of encouragement that were twisted around to look like mockery? I only take my trash out in the middle of the night - does that make me guilty of making someone think I have something in my trash that I want to keep hidden?
See? This is why I stopped coming here back in April. I just keep going.
Man, before then, I was happy answering questions like "do you like Hyomin with glasses or without?"

Funny, didn't they sign a new contract with a separate agency to handle the acting side of their careers? Just something to keep in the back of your minds about this all. I was a little surprised at how... normal their reaction sounded in the above report.
Anyway, it's a shame, all this. There are "big picture" things to this, but I'll let it rest. Anyway, it's not the first time advertisers were overly sensitive to goings-on. And it's not the first time network folk bowed to pressure from the moneybags.
... and it's not the first time Mr. Kim opened up a can of worms that dismantlee years of hard work, crippled careers, caused immense personal trauma and actively invited onlookers to see Korea and Koreans in a negative light.

So kids, in the midst of all these goings-on and our various disagreements and various choices regarding what is said here, here's something the whole family can enjoy:
You take a look at all this nonsense, all this bs you're seeing happening, in the news and on other sites, and to those kids over there in Korea who're trying their best to get through this... and you remember all the involved parties who are making the wrong decisions... Mr. Kim... the myriad haters... the advertisers, the producers, the reporters, the kids, the adults, the populace... and you remember how everything's made you feel.
Take stock of your life, kids, what you're doing, what you want to be doing, where you're going, what you'll be doing... You take stock of your life, and decide "I'm gonna do better." Do better than what you've seen play out so far. Find that thing you want, and do a better job getting there, and then do a better job of doing it. Do better for the kids you'll have some day, for the family you have now, for the friends that'll be there for you, for the people you work for and the people who work for you. Do better for yourself. Do better for the people you'll never meet or even know about who'll somehow be affected by the things you do. Hell, do better for T-ara. Take what you're feeling now and do what you can so that at least, maybe, no one has to feel the same way because of something you did when you could've done something better. Really, no matter how things turn out for those poor girls over there, take this personal experience of yours, and make it something better. Do better than what you've seen.

Funny, didn't they sign a new contract with a separate agency to handle the acting side of their careers? Just something to keep in the back of your minds about this all. I was a little surprised at how... normal their reaction sounded in the above report.
Anyway, it's a shame, all this. There are "big picture" things to this, but I'll let it rest. Anyway, it's not the first time advertisers were overly sensitive to goings-on. And it's not the first time network folk bowed to pressure from the moneybags.
... and it's not the first time Mr. Kim opened up a can of worms that dismantlee years of hard work, crippled careers, caused immense personal trauma and actively invited onlookers to see Korea and Koreans in a negative light.

I'm thinking there was some discussion going on behind the scenes but the news ended up being released prematurely.
Quite the mess they've made for themselves really...

You've put together a good thing, it is important for the kids to have places where they can come together and see and share acts of, like, love, away from the rest of the internet. Kinda wish there was a way to impress upon them that it's probably not best for their states of mind to go checking out hater hangouts, but whatever, you've got something on the positive side. Good on ya, engineering mentor.
But as far as this thread goes, is that website more or less what you had in mind?
One thing, though, not sure if you and your cohort have the means to execute anything like this, if in case the comeback moves forward as planned and Sexy Love is released by the end of the month, those fans in Korea will probably have their hands full with the how T-ara is received when they perform on the music shows and all. Like if they have to bug their friends and neutral acquaintances to go to more of those shows than they normally would, try to skew the numbers a little so that more of the crowd are T-ara supporters or at least people who won't respond negatively to seeing them on stage? But maybe my fears are, say, disproportionate, but it's a concern. If, like, we have to get the word across to Korea somehow, or something.

So who knows, maybe they should have an issue-specific appearance? I don't know, I'm pretty short on answers, but given Mr. Kim's whirlwind of activity at the beginning of the month, he's coming off as somewhat complacent given that the commentary over anything T-ara is still ongoing. But I guess it's not his uh, tookus on the line right now, and since that flare-up early this year I've been of the opinion that Mr. Kim's willing to leave T-ara to the wolves, whether they're making bank or not - that is, he's only going to take an active interest in their welfare if the company's on the line, otherwise he'll just let things go as they go.
Anyway, can you imagine T-ara going on stage before people are ready to stomach seeing them again? I mean, if you're another masochist who reads the comments on akp articles, at the very least it's clear that there's still a lot of people who, like, are disgusted with T-ara right now - and not for fandom reasons, but for supposed moral reasons (so they tell themselves). We're already half-way through August, that means Mr. Kim is hoping that the audiences will fritter away their negativity in under two weeks? Maybe, maybe if nothing appears in the news about them in that time, people would run out of things to talk about, if there were nothing to remind the haters of how they feel about T-ara in that time, maybe, by the slimmest of margins one could expect that T-ara could be greeted by at least a lukewarm reception by the non-fans (neutrals and worse). But we've still got Eunjung's press conference coming, which, again, will remind everyone what they think of the whole situation, and that'll at least flare things up for a few days - so if Eunjung appears later this week, it'll keep T-ara in people's minds for at least the weekend, and then there'd be just one week of (maybe) no specific T-ara news before they release. But then, they'd need to drum up the usual press announcements regarding the release, so no, there wouldn't be that one week of buffer time to let people forget more or less what they think of T-ara. And that besides, three of them will frequently be plastered on tv screens in their respective roles, those shows will be advertised in commercials and billboards and whatever, serving as another constant reminder of what's been going on.
And if they're talking full-on comeback, that means stage performances? In front of crowds that haven't yet gotten over the whole thing? I mean, the Queens, the fans, whatever, unless they come out in force and buy every ticket to those performances (or whatever - I mean fill every seat), there's gonna be a lot of people there who won't approve of seeing T-ara. It's something of a distant memory now, but anyone remember the "black ocean" SNSD stuff? And that was just over petty jealousy - the T-ara haters think they have a moral mandate to hate on these girls. I seem to remember fights breaking out back then in the SNSD thing, and really, if you, as a fan of T-ara were standing in the crowd at one of those performance shows and other crowds of people were booing T-ara or whatever, shouting hate slogans and what-not, I mean, what would you do? And given what's been going on already, I imagine the haters won't take too kindly to anyone cheering for T-ara either. And not to paint too clear a picture, but the girls will be standing on stage, what will they see and hear and what will they think and feel?
Madness! I hate just thinking about all this stuff and finding new reasons to, like, just hate Mr. Kim, but so far I don't think I've seen him back down from any of the cockamamie schemes he's announced to the press. There's no need to test the waters - it should be abundantly clear where the populace as a whole stands on the T-ara issue. I can still imagine sales being at least manageable, but it would be straight up torture to throw the girls on stage like this. Again, those stages on Inkigayo and Music Bank and whatever else, those aren't T-ara events, there won't just be T-ara fans there, like at a concert of theirs.
Like, vaya con Dios, T-ara and the fans, especially the ones in Korea, you'll see and probably do things that'll surprise you. I don't know, maybe it would be possible to somehow flood the studios, like recruit neutral friends of yours (if there are any), people who normally wouldn't go, and have them agree to cheer T-ara on or just not to cheer against them? Sounds like an unlikely plan, but short of locking down the place I'm low on ideas as to how to keep things from getting ugly.
I don't know, does anyone here have connections with the fandom in Korea? Because those fans will really need to, like, that is if they aren't already, they need to brainstorm, or just be ready.

Scattershot...
People talk a lot about having rose-colored glasses on, but then there are also um, "trash-colored glasses" too?
Said without idiom, just because things aren't as good as you once thought they were, that doesn't mean they're as bad as the worst you can imagine either. For those of you feeling down about any of this, try to take it in perspective. I've heard that older people are more accepting of different people than young people are. Maybe it's because they've dealt with disagreements enough to know that most people are at least okay.
Hey hey, yes let's. There was actually more maybes I wanted to throw out there but I guess it wouldn't help anything.
But just about the turtle thing, I'm pretty sure Hwayoung also said something about things happening for a reason too.
But mostly, yeah, I'm sorry I used the word "bullying" too, even if I qualified it or used q. marks or whatever I did. Buzz words, you know? 'Cause yeah,
It could just be that she went a little far in her reaction.
I don't want to get anyone down, but I have some experience in dealing with negative feelings. The old Girl's Day song, Nothing Lasts Forever. I know the lyrics don't really go with this, but the English lines... even if the song sounds pessimistic, they sing that line with a kind of joy that kind of turns the rest of the song on its head. No, it might not last forever but what it was! Wasn't it something?
We should accept the transience of things, but we should not focus on it - it's like a fireworks show. There is only a flash - but what a flash it was.
Folks, whatever we got coming, it will still be life. Hyomin still did IY, Eunjung and Jiyeon still did their stints on Dream High, Hwayoung still did come up big in this latest release, Soyeon still has that dramatic voice, Boram still put graphics on her selcas, Qri still "doubled" for Jiyeon in Lovey Dovey, and yes, Areum still debuted well as a performer, and Dani did what she had to in the vid.
Thing is, you probably don't remember or even know the worst things about yourself, but if people knew those things about you, they'd have reason not to like you, you know? But they'd still be wrong to turn their backs on you.
Peace, folks. Peace.

Scattershot...
People talk a lot about having rose-colored glasses on, but then there are also um, "trash-colored glasses" too?
Said without idiom, just because things aren't as good as you once thought they were, that doesn't mean they're as bad as the worst you can imagine either. For those of you feeling down about any of this, try to take it in perspective. I've heard that older people are more accepting of different people than young people are. Maybe it's because they've dealt with disagreements enough to know that most people are at least okay.
Hey hey, yes let's. There was actually more maybes I wanted to throw out there but I guess it wouldn't help anything.
But just about the turtle thing, I'm pretty sure Hwayoung also said something about things happening for a reason too.
But mostly, yeah, I'm sorry I used the word "bullying" too, even if I qualified it or used q. marks or whatever I did. Buzz words, you know? 'Cause yeah,
It could just be that she went a little far in her reaction.
I don't want to get anyone down, but I have some experience in dealing with negative feelings. The old Girl's Day song, Nothing Lasts Forever. I know the lyrics don't really go with this, but the English lines... even if the song sounds pessimistic, they sing that line with a kind of joy that kind of turns the rest of the song on its head. No, it might not last forever but what it was! Wasn't it something?
We should accept the transience of things, but we should not focus on it - it's like a fireworks show. There is only a flash - but what a flash it was.
Folks, whatever we got coming, it will still be life. Hyomin still did IY, Eunjung and Jiyeon still did their stints on Dream High, Hwayoung still did come up big in this latest release, Soyeon still has that dramatic voice, Boram still put graphics on her selcas, Qri still "doubled" for Jiyeon in Lovey Dovey, and yes, Areum still debuted well as a performer, and Dani did what she had to in the vid.
Thing is, you probably don't remember or even know the worst things about yourself, but if people knew those things about you, they'd have reason not to like you, you know? But they'd still be wrong to turn their backs on you.
Peace, folks. Peace.

Okay, here we go...
On the 25th five of the girls made a series of tweets on Twitter after their performance at the Budokan. At first nobody paid any attention to them as the messages seemed to be fairly innocuous in tone and even seemed to be very encouraging. The messages were all basically going on about determination, selflessness, manners, and working hard.
Then Hwayoung tweeted a message saying that sometimes determination simply wasn't enough, and that there's a reason for everything that happens; that's when things started getting messy. Hyoyoung (Hwayoung's twin sister) jumped in, saying that she hurt for her sister and that Hwayoung should still be treated like a person, even if she was physically hurt. She went on to make another tweet about how being pretty on the outside has no value if you're not pretty on the inside as well. Then Tarae (Hwayoung's rapping coach) joined in, calling some unknown people "bitches" and remarking that they needed to remember that, at one point, they were nobodies as well. Both Hyoyoung's and Tarae's tweets are thought to be directed at one or more members of T-ara; Tarae went on to rescind his original tweets, claiming they were actually aimed at Nicki Minaj and Beyonce, oddly enough.
It's about at this point that netizens caught wind of the situation and the whole thing spread like wildfire online, with many speculating that the original tweets were T-ara's way of "bullying" Hwayoung and questioning her dedication to the group as she was unable to perform at the Budokan due to her injury. Soon people were putting together elaborate conspiracy theories that speculate that Hwayoung has ALWAYS been bullied by the other T-ara members, even going so far as to compile collections of gifs and pictures that show that Hwayoung has been neglected this whole time; some of these examples are really, REALLY reaching (they've also simultaneously chosen to ignore the pics and videos that show Hwayoung getting along fantastically with the members, but that's another story for another time). Furthermore, CCM has made the mess even worse by stating that the tweets were, in fact, insults, but they claimed that surely the girls wouldn't have made such hateful comments, so what do they do? They claim that five of the girl's Twitter accounts were simultaneously hacked. Highly unlikely.
So, since this situation has only become a million times worse, it's now been announced that KKS will make an official announcement regarding his stance on the issue on July 30th, 2012 at 1:00 P.M., Korean standard time (roughly 8 and a half hours from now). People are speculating that members will probably be kicked out, and at the very worst the group may be disbanded. It's gotten bad enough that people are calling for Hyomin, Eunjung, and Jiyeon's heads (especially the latter), and to a lesser extent, Soyeon and Boram's, who ultimately ended up deleting their tweets, and now there's a petition on Daum requesting that the group officially disband. Anti-fans and casual onlookers are just having the time of their lives watching all of this happen, and none of the comments are very pleasant to read at this point, so it's probably best to stay away from general K-Pop forums like AKP or H8 for the time being.
So now all we can do is wait to see what happens. In any case most people have thrown their support behind Hwayoung, while openly bashing the other girls without proper knowledge of what's truly happened. The whole ordeal just keeps getting messier and messier, and nobody is stepping up to clarify anything or take a stance. I've actually heard that now people are wondering if Hwayoung is as innocent as she's making herself out to be, so even she's starting to get a bit of negative attention for the role she's playing. Right now it's basically a jumble of rumors, theories, speculation, ambiguous, vague Tweets, hurt feelings, and people throwing the word "bully" around a bit too liberally. No doubt that there are problems in T-ara but I doubt that it's a case of bullying. It's a sad situation, to say the least.

Woo hoo hoo. Even I the big quitter couldn't stay away from this. It's my two gigantor cents time, so be fore-warned, I will be book-writing and all the chapters will be mixed up because I'll be jumping back and forth a lot, it's all aswim up in the head. So call me irresponsible (and whatever else) but it'll be a mess. And oh, the re-tread - I will try to quote and so on, but please bear with me on rehashing stuff. So no pressure to read this, it's more so that I can pretend to myself I was heard. And another thing, I'll fight hard to resist to urge to check back in, sorry, but I really, really do need to not get too into this. A part of me wants to get into this, but yeah.
But first, I quit being active here - and for a while, I couldn't deal with listening to T-ara songs either - but I'm still a fan, if you go to an older definition of that word, and not, like, what that seems to mean now. Not so old as "short for 'fanatic,'" but I'm boring you now.
So it's true that they're all living separately now? Like diviso et conquerrat, my stupid fake Latin for "divide and conquer." Perhaps Mr. Kim thought it would make it more difficult for them to coordinate in opposition to him, but now it looks like the collateral damage is more or less this situation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I checked out Oniontaker's post on all this on his personal... tumblr? Anyway, some real comedy to be found in the rap coach guy's predicament. Of course, it's also sad, but hey, laughter makes you cry for a reason, right? Anyway, his subsequent responses to what has been going on has enough of the ring of truth for me, so I feel comfortable having a laugh about that working father's predicament.
For all you kids, remember to place all this outrage in the context of your own personal lives - like, you could talk about Hwayoung being (cyber-)bullied, about the antis bullying T-ara, you could even talk about the T-ara fans "bullying" this or that member, and then you could talk about people in your personal circles being bullied (or, those outside of your circles). Like, really, you hear something about someone you don't really know, "that kid," and suddenly you do meet that kid and you're on guard because "well, I have heard..." And et cetera. You've probably heard about this kind of thing somewhere, so just remember that this is an example of all that.
But yeah, I'm not taking a harsh stance on any of them because, hell, even with some of my disagreements with some of the T-ara members' decisions and their judgement, I've done like ish in my own lives, and under heaploads less pressure than they are and have been under. And another funny thing about all this stuff is in my small circle, watching Hwayoung and hearing about her contributing to the lyrics and all that, we were all joking about "The Rise of Hwayoung" and all. There's this little moment at the beginning of a perf, she steps up right in the beginning and the camera is low in front of her, there's a look (we called) exhilaration, a kind of nervous excitement. They're wearing blue, and I think it was two weeks ago now. Oh well.
More to the meat of the matter. First, a general insult of your choosing directed towards Mr. Kim. Yon chickens come home to roost, all that. Speaking of leadership (and you management-minded kids could learn something from this)... Mr. Kim sets the tone for his company. And for T-ara. He set the rules, both the written ones and the un-written ones based on the way he's dealt with them and with things, so he creates the culture in his house. You create tensions between people, talking about competing for places internally, and snap at people calling them lazy and unprofessional, and you create unrest and uncertainty with frequent changes and disregard for your people, what with the leader changes and all the work load. You create negativity. And you don't address that negativity, you just keep hounding people and pushing them, they still nurse that negativity, on top of all the new frustrations you add and the random stuff that happens in peoples' lives, hell, you wind up with angry people.
My small understanding of Hwayoung's entry into the group, Eunjung said something about being against adding new members initially - and then Hwayoung is added, Eunjung is deposed and replaced with Boram, who, it seems, can only be charitably called a figurehead leader, if any kind of leader at all. I was wondering what was going on with Soyeon's "rebellion," and I guess Mr. Kim's (assumed) long-term goal of undermining her influence by throwing her into a situation she couldn't deal with is coming to a head (to clarify, having her instigate a situation that would snowball with other pressures that were known to come, others known to be building, and then the unknown ones). You can only bank on other people's forbearance for so long.
Ah, anyway. The first little go-around of tweets (for reference I'll treat Oniontaker's material as the "authoritative" translation), could be taken as the usual "cheer up" stuff, but yeah, the implication behind claiming they were hacked statements cannot be ignored. Perhaps Soyeon at first treated it as the cheer up stuff at first, but then deleted her comment when she found out there was more going on - after all, even if we understand that she knows what's going on within the group, why couldn't she have just seen Hyomin's tweet and been all, "lets all work hard today as well?" I don't know, maybe using the word "difference" is just her quoting the original words Hyomin used - Hyomin was first, right? And then Boram too for that matter, the other post-deleter.
And, on the negative side, you could think Soyeon was at best being patronizing but supportive, or at worst fully on the bandwagon. Like if "difference in determination" was a phrase they'd used before and that Soyeon would have recognized... but if that's the case, see below about the other three.
Qri, thanks to Google translate, I know she and Boram were tweeting something about not having makeup on. There is humor everywhere. Ho ho ho, maybe, maybe it's like an inside "joke" between her and Boram going on about not having to be performers anymore? Is that me being a jerk? Stay in school, kids, or you wind up like me.
Hyomin, Jiyeon and Eunjung... is the preferred portmanteau Eunjimin? Just looking at the tweets themselves, you could come up with whatever you want. Look what I did with the Qri thing, and I was just messing around. If we add the context of the press release, and from that assume that this is a part of ongoing disagreements... First, using the internet is very unnatural. People lose their self-awareness very quickly when they're "talking" to people by punching in letters on an input field using a keyboard or their thumbs and then mouse- or finger-clicking a little square that says "tweet" or "post" or "send." And then, being a celebrity is totally weird. Imagine what it's like, to go to school, and like, people are taking pictures of you, someone touches your hand and starts crying, and strangers are screaming about wanting to marry you. Someone bumps into you and out of no where fifty people rush up and start hating on that person for "hitting" you and, when you say, "dudes, I'm all right, leave him alone," suddenly those folks turn around and starting clapping and praising you for being so merciful and kind. Or, people from around the world send you packages of food.
To take the general into the specific - your boss has encouraged you to tweet often and about any trivial thing, because it's good, cheap publicity - Soyeon actually quoted Mr. Kim as having the attitude that any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, you tweet weird stuff like that Eunjung thing about the grass pot-human thing and people are all "oh, she's so cool and creative." You tweet sad stuff that gets your fan base in a bother about your unfair working conditions and they encourage you. You have a dispute, both with your boss, and now, with another member, and the message gets mixed up - you tweet about it, however innocuously, because "there's no such thing as bad publicity," you're getting back at your boss as part of this ongoing disagreement with him, even if you're talking about someone else. Maybe they thought the connection wouldn't be made, maybe they were trying to start something - as an outside possibility, maybe they really were playing nice, and Hwayoung was just complaining about something else, but because Mr. Kim's publicity machine got it wrong, maybe they're sticking to their guns because they think they can use it against him. But yeah, somewhere there was a disagreement, and it's been addressed on or because of certain tweets. I won't be more critical of them other than to say that it's generally unwise to air private matters in a public forum.
I get it, you reprimand people for behavior you disagree with. That's one of my big reservations with the netizen stuff in kpop - the various netizen groups frequently come off as reactionary jerks, but on the other hand, it's just part of keeping a society in line. And aren't the cultural values (expressed through their celebrity culture and entertainment media) a pretty big part of what makes Korean entertainment so likable? But everyone says I either refuse to take sides, or that I'm always on someone else's side. I mean really, even if EJH really have been negatively critical of Hwayoung, like, I'd disagree with their apparent treatment of the situation, but really, I've seen worse from better people, you know? And anyway, I've got nothing to do with it other than click my tongue from a distant sideline.
And Hwayoung. She's in her own spot too. Even if I didn't know about all the stuff I'm now reading about with regards to how close she was to everyone else (all taken with that grain of salt, of course), there's just no way she could be as close to the others as they are to each other. They can be real close, real tight with each other beyond any relationship I've ever had, but unless she just clicked with one or two of them, her relationships with any of them will be less than those between the other six with each other. So no, she won't be able to draw on them for the same kind of support, she won't be able to feed her own determination with the collective energy as the other six. She also won't have the same commitment to their collective fortunes, whether because she simply hasn't been a part of the group (and through all the same experiences) as long, or if she really was always treated as an outcast in the group. Everyone agrees this year's been a real effed situation, all told. Wherever her breaking point is, maybe she's just getting there. I mean, if she is talking about quitting or not being able to keep up any more, or if she's just been in really low spirits for an extended period... aren't all those things what the fandom's been saying would be the end result of Mr. Kim's harsh policies? That poor kid that Gen. Patton slapped couldn't handle the war back then, and maybe Hwayoung's having a difficult time dealing with everything on her plate. And yeah, the fallout from most of the Hwayoung episodes seem to have been good publicity for her personally - that is, she's come out looking good to the fans most of the time. Maybe this is about some campaign to push her forward, given Mr. Kim's general pattern of dealing with things. But if we assume she's not getting a big warm feeling from the group, maybe she turns to the fandom at large, who have mostly responded positively to her in situations like this. Where do we turn when we find ourselves up against a wall? If you're really up against it, it'll probably just be the first thing you think of.
Hyoyoung's tweets most specifically indicate that something's going on. Even if we treat them separately, it's clear from the first post that Hwayoung is "suffering," and from the second that someone in pain is being treated unfairly (in her opinion), and, we may also assume, that the person being unfair is attractive. She kinda wraps a big bow on the whole "bullying" idea, unless she really is just playing the twitter world for fools (and doing so by selling out her twin).
So few fishes left swimming... how much have I forgotten?
Here's something: They say Eunjung took painkillers to perform on injured knee (ankle?). Others say she was or may have been forced to do so by the management - against her will, or under duress, what have you. Imagine how easy that is to turn around in one's memory by saying "I did it then, why can't you?" even if you didn't want to do it back then? And maybe, just maybe Hwayoung wasn't pressured to take painkillers in this more recent event - but again, it would still cause negativity to the aggrieved parties.
But as for all this twitter stuff, given the volumes dedicated to the scenario, it's hard to imagine that as little as ten sentences or so could be the basis of all this. There's not even a lot of continuity between the tweets. The twins are obviously talking to each other, and Jiyeon and Eunjung both refer back to Hyomin, but there's swathes of empty space between even each individual statement. Talk about economy of language.
I mean, maybe the lack of corrective statements from the members... maybe they're all tired of it all too. Like they just decided, "I can't duck my head and toe the company line this time." Hah. It's only been a few days, but maybe they've already met among themselves and decided that if Hwayoung can't take this, then the rest just aren't going to deal with it all either - given that their fortunes are tied to each other, some collective position must be reached. But then, for contractual purposes, they can't up and say something like that, so they have to press the impression that they're feuding and hope they get bailed out by some misstep by Mr. Kim. Ah, idle speculation.
Lastly, people are more interested in being able to judge other people for their misdeeds than on applauding their merits. This is because problems get more attention than things that go smoothly, but still.
But also, why "Sometimes dedication alone is sometimes not enough?" Just tossing them out before I starve, is she saying "I really can't do it (no matter my amount of dedication)," is she (hee hee) simply disagreeing with Hyomin's statement, is she displaying a hint of fatalism, is she suggesting something like "you also need the support of those around you" or that she's running out of reasons to keep going... etc.
And just again, whatever the mettle or character of these T-ara kids to begin with, Mr. Kim screwed them up. He's also throwing a shady light on Kpop as a whole.
And lastly lastly, I'll toss out another message about taking all this in the context of your own lives. If you think you're freaking out too much over this, try to remind yourself of your other pursuits in life. It can be hard, but really, there are things that need doing. Like, keeping busy can actually help reduce stress in situations like this.
Sorry folks, if I messed up anywhere! Thanks site folk for having this place where I could say things like this! Thanks folks for whatever, and thanks T-ara for doing all right!
And edit lastly, I really do hope those kids get a break. With the company or not, whatever, I hope they find something else to do with themselves for a while and live better lives and after a year or two look back and treat their CCM tenures as the lesson it was.

Woo hoo hoo. Even I the big quitter couldn't stay away from this. It's my two gigantor cents time, so be fore-warned, I will be book-writing and all the chapters will be mixed up because I'll be jumping back and forth a lot, it's all aswim up in the head. So call me irresponsible (and whatever else) but it'll be a mess. And oh, the re-tread - I will try to quote and so on, but please bear with me on rehashing stuff. So no pressure to read this, it's more so that I can pretend to myself I was heard. And another thing, I'll fight hard to resist to urge to check back in, sorry, but I really, really do need to not get too into this. A part of me wants to get into this, but yeah.
But first, I quit being active here - and for a while, I couldn't deal with listening to T-ara songs either - but I'm still a fan, if you go to an older definition of that word, and not, like, what that seems to mean now. Not so old as "short for 'fanatic,'" but I'm boring you now.
So it's true that they're all living separately now? Like diviso et conquerrat, my stupid fake Latin for "divide and conquer." Perhaps Mr. Kim thought it would make it more difficult for them to coordinate in opposition to him, but now it looks like the collateral damage is more or less this situation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I checked out Oniontaker's post on all this on his personal... tumblr? Anyway, some real comedy to be found in the rap coach guy's predicament. Of course, it's also sad, but hey, laughter makes you cry for a reason, right? Anyway, his subsequent responses to what has been going on has enough of the ring of truth for me, so I feel comfortable having a laugh about that working father's predicament.
For all you kids, remember to place all this outrage in the context of your own personal lives - like, you could talk about Hwayoung being (cyber-)bullied, about the antis bullying T-ara, you could even talk about the T-ara fans "bullying" this or that member, and then you could talk about people in your personal circles being bullied (or, those outside of your circles). Like, really, you hear something about someone you don't really know, "that kid," and suddenly you do meet that kid and you're on guard because "well, I have heard..." And et cetera. You've probably heard about this kind of thing somewhere, so just remember that this is an example of all that.
But yeah, I'm not taking a harsh stance on any of them because, hell, even with some of my disagreements with some of the T-ara members' decisions and their judgement, I've done like ish in my own lives, and under heaploads less pressure than they are and have been under. And another funny thing about all this stuff is in my small circle, watching Hwayoung and hearing about her contributing to the lyrics and all that, we were all joking about "The Rise of Hwayoung" and all. There's this little moment at the beginning of a perf, she steps up right in the beginning and the camera is low in front of her, there's a look (we called) exhilaration, a kind of nervous excitement. They're wearing blue, and I think it was two weeks ago now. Oh well.
More to the meat of the matter. First, a general insult of your choosing directed towards Mr. Kim. Yon chickens come home to roost, all that. Speaking of leadership (and you management-minded kids could learn something from this)... Mr. Kim sets the tone for his company. And for T-ara. He set the rules, both the written ones and the un-written ones based on the way he's dealt with them and with things, so he creates the culture in his house. You create tensions between people, talking about competing for places internally, and snap at people calling them lazy and unprofessional, and you create unrest and uncertainty with frequent changes and disregard for your people, what with the leader changes and all the work load. You create negativity. And you don't address that negativity, you just keep hounding people and pushing them, they still nurse that negativity, on top of all the new frustrations you add and the random stuff that happens in peoples' lives, hell, you wind up with angry people.
My small understanding of Hwayoung's entry into the group, Eunjung said something about being against adding new members initially - and then Hwayoung is added, Eunjung is deposed and replaced with Boram, who, it seems, can only be charitably called a figurehead leader, if any kind of leader at all. I was wondering what was going on with Soyeon's "rebellion," and I guess Mr. Kim's (assumed) long-term goal of undermining her influence by throwing her into a situation she couldn't deal with is coming to a head (to clarify, having her instigate a situation that would snowball with other pressures that were known to come, others known to be building, and then the unknown ones). You can only bank on other people's forbearance for so long.
Ah, anyway. The first little go-around of tweets (for reference I'll treat Oniontaker's material as the "authoritative" translation), could be taken as the usual "cheer up" stuff, but yeah, the implication behind claiming they were hacked statements cannot be ignored. Perhaps Soyeon at first treated it as the cheer up stuff at first, but then deleted her comment when she found out there was more going on - after all, even if we understand that she knows what's going on within the group, why couldn't she have just seen Hyomin's tweet and been all, "lets all work hard today as well?" I don't know, maybe using the word "difference" is just her quoting the original words Hyomin used - Hyomin was first, right? And then Boram too for that matter, the other post-deleter.
And, on the negative side, you could think Soyeon was at best being patronizing but supportive, or at worst fully on the bandwagon. Like if "difference in determination" was a phrase they'd used before and that Soyeon would have recognized... but if that's the case, see below about the other three.
Qri, thanks to Google translate, I know she and Boram were tweeting something about not having makeup on. There is humor everywhere. Ho ho ho, maybe, maybe it's like an inside "joke" between her and Boram going on about not having to be performers anymore? Is that me being a jerk? Stay in school, kids, or you wind up like me.
Hyomin, Jiyeon and Eunjung... is the preferred portmanteau Eunjimin? Just looking at the tweets themselves, you could come up with whatever you want. Look what I did with the Qri thing, and I was just messing around. If we add the context of the press release, and from that assume that this is a part of ongoing disagreements... First, using the internet is very unnatural. People lose their self-awareness very quickly when they're "talking" to people by punching in letters on an input field using a keyboard or their thumbs and then mouse- or finger-clicking a little square that says "tweet" or "post" or "send." And then, being a celebrity is totally weird. Imagine what it's like, to go to school, and like, people are taking pictures of you, someone touches your hand and starts crying, and strangers are screaming about wanting to marry you. Someone bumps into you and out of no where fifty people rush up and start hating on that person for "hitting" you and, when you say, "dudes, I'm all right, leave him alone," suddenly those folks turn around and starting clapping and praising you for being so merciful and kind. Or, people from around the world send you packages of food.
To take the general into the specific - your boss has encouraged you to tweet often and about any trivial thing, because it's good, cheap publicity - Soyeon actually quoted Mr. Kim as having the attitude that any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, you tweet weird stuff like that Eunjung thing about the grass pot-human thing and people are all "oh, she's so cool and creative." You tweet sad stuff that gets your fan base in a bother about your unfair working conditions and they encourage you. You have a dispute, both with your boss, and now, with another member, and the message gets mixed up - you tweet about it, however innocuously, because "there's no such thing as bad publicity," you're getting back at your boss as part of this ongoing disagreement with him, even if you're talking about someone else. Maybe they thought the connection wouldn't be made, maybe they were trying to start something - as an outside possibility, maybe they really were playing nice, and Hwayoung was just complaining about something else, but because Mr. Kim's publicity machine got it wrong, maybe they're sticking to their guns because they think they can use it against him. But yeah, somewhere there was a disagreement, and it's been addressed on or because of certain tweets. I won't be more critical of them other than to say that it's generally unwise to air private matters in a public forum.
I get it, you reprimand people for behavior you disagree with. That's one of my big reservations with the netizen stuff in kpop - the various netizen groups frequently come off as reactionary jerks, but on the other hand, it's just part of keeping a society in line. And aren't the cultural values (expressed through their celebrity culture and entertainment media) a pretty big part of what makes Korean entertainment so likable? But everyone says I either refuse to take sides, or that I'm always on someone else's side. I mean really, even if EJH really have been negatively critical of Hwayoung, like, I'd disagree with their apparent treatment of the situation, but really, I've seen worse from better people, you know? And anyway, I've got nothing to do with it other than click my tongue from a distant sideline.
And Hwayoung. She's in her own spot too. Even if I didn't know about all the stuff I'm now reading about with regards to how close she was to everyone else (all taken with that grain of salt, of course), there's just no way she could be as close to the others as they are to each other. They can be real close, real tight with each other beyond any relationship I've ever had, but unless she just clicked with one or two of them, her relationships with any of them will be less than those between the other six with each other. So no, she won't be able to draw on them for the same kind of support, she won't be able to feed her own determination with the collective energy as the other six. She also won't have the same commitment to their collective fortunes, whether because she simply hasn't been a part of the group (and through all the same experiences) as long, or if she really was always treated as an outcast in the group. Everyone agrees this year's been a real effed situation, all told. Wherever her breaking point is, maybe she's just getting there. I mean, if she is talking about quitting or not being able to keep up any more, or if she's just been in really low spirits for an extended period... aren't all those things what the fandom's been saying would be the end result of Mr. Kim's harsh policies? That poor kid that Gen. Patton slapped couldn't handle the war back then, and maybe Hwayoung's having a difficult time dealing with everything on her plate. And yeah, the fallout from most of the Hwayoung episodes seem to have been good publicity for her personally - that is, she's come out looking good to the fans most of the time. Maybe this is about some campaign to push her forward, given Mr. Kim's general pattern of dealing with things. But if we assume she's not getting a big warm feeling from the group, maybe she turns to the fandom at large, who have mostly responded positively to her in situations like this. Where do we turn when we find ourselves up against a wall? If you're really up against it, it'll probably just be the first thing you think of.
Hyoyoung's tweets most specifically indicate that something's going on. Even if we treat them separately, it's clear from the first post that Hwayoung is "suffering," and from the second that someone in pain is being treated unfairly (in her opinion), and, we may also assume, that the person being unfair is attractive. She kinda wraps a big bow on the whole "bullying" idea, unless she really is just playing the twitter world for fools (and doing so by selling out her twin).
So few fishes left swimming... how much have I forgotten?
Here's something: They say Eunjung took painkillers to perform on injured knee (ankle?). Others say she was or may have been forced to do so by the management - against her will, or under duress, what have you. Imagine how easy that is to turn around in one's memory by saying "I did it then, why can't you?" even if you didn't want to do it back then? And maybe, just maybe Hwayoung wasn't pressured to take painkillers in this more recent event - but again, it would still cause negativity to the aggrieved parties.
But as for all this twitter stuff, given the volumes dedicated to the scenario, it's hard to imagine that as little as ten sentences or so could be the basis of all this. There's not even a lot of continuity between the tweets. The twins are obviously talking to each other, and Jiyeon and Eunjung both refer back to Hyomin, but there's swathes of empty space between even each individual statement. Talk about economy of language.
I mean, maybe the lack of corrective statements from the members... maybe they're all tired of it all too. Like they just decided, "I can't duck my head and toe the company line this time." Hah. It's only been a few days, but maybe they've already met among themselves and decided that if Hwayoung can't take this, then the rest just aren't going to deal with it all either - given that their fortunes are tied to each other, some collective position must be reached. But then, for contractual purposes, they can't up and say something like that, so they have to press the impression that they're feuding and hope they get bailed out by some misstep by Mr. Kim. Ah, idle speculation.
Lastly, people are more interested in being able to judge other people for their misdeeds than on applauding their merits. This is because problems get more attention than things that go smoothly, but still.
But also, why "Sometimes dedication alone is sometimes not enough?" Just tossing them out before I starve, is she saying "I really can't do it (no matter my amount of dedication)," is she (hee hee) simply disagreeing with Hyomin's statement, is she displaying a hint of fatalism, is she suggesting something like "you also need the support of those around you" or that she's running out of reasons to keep going... etc.
And just again, whatever the mettle or character of these T-ara kids to begin with, Mr. Kim screwed them up. He's also throwing a shady light on Kpop as a whole.
And lastly lastly, I'll toss out another message about taking all this in the context of your own lives. If you think you're freaking out too much over this, try to remind yourself of your other pursuits in life. It can be hard, but really, there are things that need doing. Like, keeping busy can actually help reduce stress in situations like this.
Sorry folks, if I messed up anywhere! Thanks site folk for having this place where I could say things like this! Thanks folks for whatever, and thanks T-ara for doing all right!
And edit lastly, I really do hope those kids get a break. With the company or not, whatever, I hope they find something else to do with themselves for a while and live better lives and after a year or two look back and treat their CCM tenures as the lesson it was.

Woo hoo hoo. Even I the big quitter couldn't stay away from this. It's my two gigantor cents time, so be fore-warned, I will be book-writing and all the chapters will be mixed up because I'll be jumping back and forth a lot, it's all aswim up in the head. So call me irresponsible (and whatever else) but it'll be a mess. And oh, the re-tread - I will try to quote and so on, but please bear with me on rehashing stuff. So no pressure to read this, it's more so that I can pretend to myself I was heard. And another thing, I'll fight hard to resist to urge to check back in, sorry, but I really, really do need to not get too into this. A part of me wants to get into this, but yeah.
But first, I quit being active here - and for a while, I couldn't deal with listening to T-ara songs either - but I'm still a fan, if you go to an older definition of that word, and not, like, what that seems to mean now. Not so old as "short for 'fanatic,'" but I'm boring you now.
So it's true that they're all living separately now? Like diviso et conquerrat, my stupid fake Latin for "divide and conquer." Perhaps Mr. Kim thought it would make it more difficult for them to coordinate in opposition to him, but now it looks like the collateral damage is more or less this situation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I checked out Oniontaker's post on all this on his personal... tumblr? Anyway, some real comedy to be found in the rap coach guy's predicament. Of course, it's also sad, but hey, laughter makes you cry for a reason, right? Anyway, his subsequent responses to what has been going on has enough of the ring of truth for me, so I feel comfortable having a laugh about that working father's predicament.
For all you kids, remember to place all this outrage in the context of your own personal lives - like, you could talk about Hwayoung being (cyber-)bullied, about the antis bullying T-ara, you could even talk about the T-ara fans "bullying" this or that member, and then you could talk about people in your personal circles being bullied (or, those outside of your circles). Like, really, you hear something about someone you don't really know, "that kid," and suddenly you do meet that kid and you're on guard because "well, I have heard..." And et cetera. You've probably heard about this kind of thing somewhere, so just remember that this is an example of all that.
But yeah, I'm not taking a harsh stance on any of them because, hell, even with some of my disagreements with some of the T-ara members' decisions and their judgement, I've done like ish in my own lives, and under heaploads less pressure than they are and have been under. And another funny thing about all this stuff is in my small circle, watching Hwayoung and hearing about her contributing to the lyrics and all that, we were all joking about "The Rise of Hwayoung" and all. There's this little moment at the beginning of a perf, she steps up right in the beginning and the camera is low in front of her, there's a look (we called) exhilaration, a kind of nervous excitement. They're wearing blue, and I think it was two weeks ago now. Oh well.
More to the meat of the matter. First, a general insult of your choosing directed towards Mr. Kim. Yon chickens come home to roost, all that. Speaking of leadership (and you management-minded kids could learn something from this)... Mr. Kim sets the tone for his company. And for T-ara. He set the rules, both the written ones and the un-written ones based on the way he's dealt with them and with things, so he creates the culture in his house. You create tensions between people, talking about competing for places internally, and snap at people calling them lazy and unprofessional, and you create unrest and uncertainty with frequent changes and disregard for your people, what with the leader changes and all the work load. You create negativity. And you don't address that negativity, you just keep hounding people and pushing them, they still nurse that negativity, on top of all the new frustrations you add and the random stuff that happens in peoples' lives, hell, you wind up with angry people.
My small understanding of Hwayoung's entry into the group, Eunjung said something about being against adding new members initially - and then Hwayoung is added, Eunjung is deposed and replaced with Boram, who, it seems, can only be charitably called a figurehead leader, if any kind of leader at all. I was wondering what was going on with Soyeon's "rebellion," and I guess Mr. Kim's (assumed) long-term goal of undermining her influence by throwing her into a situation she couldn't deal with is coming to a head (to clarify, having her instigate a situation that would snowball with other pressures that were known to come, others known to be building, and then the unknown ones). You can only bank on other people's forbearance for so long.
Ah, anyway. The first little go-around of tweets (for reference I'll treat Oniontaker's material as the "authoritative" translation), could be taken as the usual "cheer up" stuff, but yeah, the implication behind claiming they were hacked statements cannot be ignored. Perhaps Soyeon at first treated it as the cheer up stuff at first, but then deleted her comment when she found out there was more going on - after all, even if we understand that she knows what's going on within the group, why couldn't she have just seen Hyomin's tweet and been all, "lets all work hard today as well?" I don't know, maybe using the word "difference" is just her quoting the original words Hyomin used - Hyomin was first, right? And then Boram too for that matter, the other post-deleter.
And, on the negative side, you could think Soyeon was at best being patronizing but supportive, or at worst fully on the bandwagon. Like if "difference in determination" was a phrase they'd used before and that Soyeon would have recognized... but if that's the case, see below about the other three.
Qri, thanks to Google translate, I know she and Boram were tweeting something about not having makeup on. There is humor everywhere. Ho ho ho, maybe, maybe it's like an inside "joke" between her and Boram going on about not having to be performers anymore? Is that me being a jerk? Stay in school, kids, or you wind up like me.
Hyomin, Jiyeon and Eunjung... is the preferred portmanteau Eunjimin? Just looking at the tweets themselves, you could come up with whatever you want. Look what I did with the Qri thing, and I was just messing around. If we add the context of the press release, and from that assume that this is a part of ongoing disagreements... First, using the internet is very unnatural. People lose their self-awareness very quickly when they're "talking" to people by punching in letters on an input field using a keyboard or their thumbs and then mouse- or finger-clicking a little square that says "tweet" or "post" or "send." And then, being a celebrity is totally weird. Imagine what it's like, to go to school, and like, people are taking pictures of you, someone touches your hand and starts crying, and strangers are screaming about wanting to marry you. Someone bumps into you and out of no where fifty people rush up and start hating on that person for "hitting" you and, when you say, "dudes, I'm all right, leave him alone," suddenly those folks turn around and starting clapping and praising you for being so merciful and kind. Or, people from around the world send you packages of food.
To take the general into the specific - your boss has encouraged you to tweet often and about any trivial thing, because it's good, cheap publicity - Soyeon actually quoted Mr. Kim as having the attitude that any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, you tweet weird stuff like that Eunjung thing about the grass pot-human thing and people are all "oh, she's so cool and creative." You tweet sad stuff that gets your fan base in a bother about your unfair working conditions and they encourage you. You have a dispute, both with your boss, and now, with another member, and the message gets mixed up - you tweet about it, however innocuously, because "there's no such thing as bad publicity," you're getting back at your boss as part of this ongoing disagreement with him, even if you're talking about someone else. Maybe they thought the connection wouldn't be made, maybe they were trying to start something - as an outside possibility, maybe they really were playing nice, and Hwayoung was just complaining about something else, but because Mr. Kim's publicity machine got it wrong, maybe they're sticking to their guns because they think they can use it against him. But yeah, somewhere there was a disagreement, and it's been addressed on or because of certain tweets. I won't be more critical of them other than to say that it's generally unwise to air private matters in a public forum.
I get it, you reprimand people for behavior you disagree with. That's one of my big reservations with the netizen stuff in kpop - the various netizen groups frequently come off as reactionary jerks, but on the other hand, it's just part of keeping a society in line. And aren't the cultural values (expressed through their celebrity culture and entertainment media) a pretty big part of what makes Korean entertainment so likable? But everyone says I either refuse to take sides, or that I'm always on someone else's side. I mean really, even if EJH really have been negatively critical of Hwayoung, like, I'd disagree with their apparent treatment of the situation, but really, I've seen worse from better people, you know? And anyway, I've got nothing to do with it other than click my tongue from a distant sideline.
And Hwayoung. She's in her own spot too. Even if I didn't know about all the stuff I'm now reading about with regards to how close she was to everyone else (all taken with that grain of salt, of course), there's just no way she could be as close to the others as they are to each other. They can be real close, real tight with each other beyond any relationship I've ever had, but unless she just clicked with one or two of them, her relationships with any of them will be less than those between the other six with each other. So no, she won't be able to draw on them for the same kind of support, she won't be able to feed her own determination with the collective energy as the other six. She also won't have the same commitment to their collective fortunes, whether because she simply hasn't been a part of the group (and through all the same experiences) as long, or if she really was always treated as an outcast in the group. Everyone agrees this year's been a real effed situation, all told. Wherever her breaking point is, maybe she's just getting there. I mean, if she is talking about quitting or not being able to keep up any more, or if she's just been in really low spirits for an extended period... aren't all those things what the fandom's been saying would be the end result of Mr. Kim's harsh policies? That poor kid that Gen. Patton slapped couldn't handle the war back then, and maybe Hwayoung's having a difficult time dealing with everything on her plate. And yeah, the fallout from most of the Hwayoung episodes seem to have been good publicity for her personally - that is, she's come out looking good to the fans most of the time. Maybe this is about some campaign to push her forward, given Mr. Kim's general pattern of dealing with things. But if we assume she's not getting a big warm feeling from the group, maybe she turns to the fandom at large, who have mostly responded positively to her in situations like this. Where do we turn when we find ourselves up against a wall? If you're really up against it, it'll probably just be the first thing you think of.
Hyoyoung's tweets most specifically indicate that something's going on. Even if we treat them separately, it's clear from the first post that Hwayoung is "suffering," and from the second that someone in pain is being treated unfairly (in her opinion), and, we may also assume, that the person being unfair is attractive. She kinda wraps a big bow on the whole "bullying" idea, unless she really is just playing the twitter world for fools (and doing so by selling out her twin).
So few fishes left swimming... how much have I forgotten?
Here's something: They say Eunjung took painkillers to perform on injured knee (ankle?). Others say she was or may have been forced to do so by the management - against her will, or under duress, what have you. Imagine how easy that is to turn around in one's memory by saying "I did it then, why can't you?" even if you didn't want to do it back then? And maybe, just maybe Hwayoung wasn't pressured to take painkillers in this more recent event - but again, it would still cause negativity to the aggrieved parties.
But as for all this twitter stuff, given the volumes dedicated to the scenario, it's hard to imagine that as little as ten sentences or so could be the basis of all this. There's not even a lot of continuity between the tweets. The twins are obviously talking to each other, and Jiyeon and Eunjung both refer back to Hyomin, but there's swathes of empty space between even each individual statement. Talk about economy of language.
I mean, maybe the lack of corrective statements from the members... maybe they're all tired of it all too. Like they just decided, "I can't duck my head and toe the company line this time." Hah. It's only been a few days, but maybe they've already met among themselves and decided that if Hwayoung can't take this, then the rest just aren't going to deal with it all either - given that their fortunes are tied to each other, some collective position must be reached. But then, for contractual purposes, they can't up and say something like that, so they have to press the impression that they're feuding and hope they get bailed out by some misstep by Mr. Kim. Ah, idle speculation.
Lastly, people are more interested in being able to judge other people for their misdeeds than on applauding their merits. This is because problems get more attention than things that go smoothly, but still.
But also, why "Sometimes dedication alone is sometimes not enough?" Just tossing them out before I starve, is she saying "I really can't do it (no matter my amount of dedication)," is she (hee hee) simply disagreeing with Hyomin's statement, is she displaying a hint of fatalism, is she suggesting something like "you also need the support of those around you" or that she's running out of reasons to keep going... etc.
And just again, whatever the mettle or character of these T-ara kids to begin with, Mr. Kim screwed them up. He's also throwing a shady light on Kpop as a whole.
And lastly lastly, I'll toss out another message about taking all this in the context of your own lives. If you think you're freaking out too much over this, try to remind yourself of your other pursuits in life. It can be hard, but really, there are things that need doing. Like, keeping busy can actually help reduce stress in situations like this.
Sorry folks, if I messed up anywhere! Thanks site folk for having this place where I could say things like this! Thanks folks for whatever, and thanks T-ara for doing all right!
And edit lastly, I really do hope those kids get a break. With the company or not, whatever, I hope they find something else to do with themselves for a while and live better lives and after a year or two look back and treat their CCM tenures as the lesson it was.

Woo hoo hoo. Even I the big quitter couldn't stay away from this. It's my two gigantor cents time, so be fore-warned, I will be book-writing and all the chapters will be mixed up because I'll be jumping back and forth a lot, it's all aswim up in the head. So call me irresponsible (and whatever else) but it'll be a mess. And oh, the re-tread - I will try to quote and so on, but please bear with me on rehashing stuff. So no pressure to read this, it's more so that I can pretend to myself I was heard. And another thing, I'll fight hard to resist to urge to check back in, sorry, but I really, really do need to not get too into this. A part of me wants to get into this, but yeah.
But first, I quit being active here - and for a while, I couldn't deal with listening to T-ara songs either - but I'm still a fan, if you go to an older definition of that word, and not, like, what that seems to mean now. Not so old as "short for 'fanatic,'" but I'm boring you now.
So it's true that they're all living separately now? Like diviso et conquerrat, my stupid fake Latin for "divide and conquer." Perhaps Mr. Kim thought it would make it more difficult for them to coordinate in opposition to him, but now it looks like the collateral damage is more or less this situation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I checked out Oniontaker's post on all this on his personal... tumblr? Anyway, some real comedy to be found in the rap coach guy's predicament. Of course, it's also sad, but hey, laughter makes you cry for a reason, right? Anyway, his subsequent responses to what has been going on has enough of the ring of truth for me, so I feel comfortable having a laugh about that working father's predicament.
For all you kids, remember to place all this outrage in the context of your own personal lives - like, you could talk about Hwayoung being (cyber-)bullied, about the antis bullying T-ara, you could even talk about the T-ara fans "bullying" this or that member, and then you could talk about people in your personal circles being bullied (or, those outside of your circles). Like, really, you hear something about someone you don't really know, "that kid," and suddenly you do meet that kid and you're on guard because "well, I have heard..." And et cetera. You've probably heard about this kind of thing somewhere, so just remember that this is an example of all that.
But yeah, I'm not taking a harsh stance on any of them because, hell, even with some of my disagreements with some of the T-ara members' decisions and their judgement, I've done like ish in my own lives, and under heaploads less pressure than they are and have been under. And another funny thing about all this stuff is in my small circle, watching Hwayoung and hearing about her contributing to the lyrics and all that, we were all joking about "The Rise of Hwayoung" and all. There's this little moment at the beginning of a perf, she steps up right in the beginning and the camera is low in front of her, there's a look (we called) exhilaration, a kind of nervous excitement. They're wearing blue, and I think it was two weeks ago now. Oh well.
More to the meat of the matter. First, a general insult of your choosing directed towards Mr. Kim. Yon chickens come home to roost, all that. Speaking of leadership (and you management-minded kids could learn something from this)... Mr. Kim sets the tone for his company. And for T-ara. He set the rules, both the written ones and the un-written ones based on the way he's dealt with them and with things, so he creates the culture in his house. You create tensions between people, talking about competing for places internally, and snap at people calling them lazy and unprofessional, and you create unrest and uncertainty with frequent changes and disregard for your people, what with the leader changes and all the work load. You create negativity. And you don't address that negativity, you just keep hounding people and pushing them, they still nurse that negativity, on top of all the new frustrations you add and the random stuff that happens in peoples' lives, hell, you wind up with angry people.
My small understanding of Hwayoung's entry into the group, Eunjung said something about being against adding new members initially - and then Hwayoung is added, Eunjung is deposed and replaced with Boram, who, it seems, can only be charitably called a figurehead leader, if any kind of leader at all. I was wondering what was going on with Soyeon's "rebellion," and I guess Mr. Kim's (assumed) long-term goal of undermining her influence by throwing her into a situation she couldn't deal with is coming to a head (to clarify, having her instigate a situation that would snowball with other pressures that were known to come, others known to be building, and then the unknown ones). You can only bank on other people's forbearance for so long.
Ah, anyway. The first little go-around of tweets (for reference I'll treat Oniontaker's material as the "authoritative" translation), could be taken as the usual "cheer up" stuff, but yeah, the implication behind claiming they were hacked statements cannot be ignored. Perhaps Soyeon at first treated it as the cheer up stuff at first, but then deleted her comment when she found out there was more going on - after all, even if we understand that she knows what's going on within the group, why couldn't she have just seen Hyomin's tweet and been all, "lets all work hard today as well?" I don't know, maybe using the word "difference" is just her quoting the original words Hyomin used - Hyomin was first, right? And then Boram too for that matter, the other post-deleter.
And, on the negative side, you could think Soyeon was at best being patronizing but supportive, or at worst fully on the bandwagon. Like if "difference in determination" was a phrase they'd used before and that Soyeon would have recognized... but if that's the case, see below about the other three.
Qri, thanks to Google translate, I know she and Boram were tweeting something about not having makeup on. There is humor everywhere. Ho ho ho, maybe, maybe it's like an inside "joke" between her and Boram going on about not having to be performers anymore? Is that me being a jerk? Stay in school, kids, or you wind up like me.
Hyomin, Jiyeon and Eunjung... is the preferred portmanteau Eunjimin? Just looking at the tweets themselves, you could come up with whatever you want. Look what I did with the Qri thing, and I was just messing around. If we add the context of the press release, and from that assume that this is a part of ongoing disagreements... First, using the internet is very unnatural. People lose their self-awareness very quickly when they're "talking" to people by punching in letters on an input field using a keyboard or their thumbs and then mouse- or finger-clicking a little square that says "tweet" or "post" or "send." And then, being a celebrity is totally weird. Imagine what it's like, to go to school, and like, people are taking pictures of you, someone touches your hand and starts crying, and strangers are screaming about wanting to marry you. Someone bumps into you and out of no where fifty people rush up and start hating on that person for "hitting" you and, when you say, "dudes, I'm all right, leave him alone," suddenly those folks turn around and starting clapping and praising you for being so merciful and kind. Or, people from around the world send you packages of food.
To take the general into the specific - your boss has encouraged you to tweet often and about any trivial thing, because it's good, cheap publicity - Soyeon actually quoted Mr. Kim as having the attitude that any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, you tweet weird stuff like that Eunjung thing about the grass pot-human thing and people are all "oh, she's so cool and creative." You tweet sad stuff that gets your fan base in a bother about your unfair working conditions and they encourage you. You have a dispute, both with your boss, and now, with another member, and the message gets mixed up - you tweet about it, however innocuously, because "there's no such thing as bad publicity," you're getting back at your boss as part of this ongoing disagreement with him, even if you're talking about someone else. Maybe they thought the connection wouldn't be made, maybe they were trying to start something - as an outside possibility, maybe they really were playing nice, and Hwayoung was just complaining about something else, but because Mr. Kim's publicity machine got it wrong, maybe they're sticking to their guns because they think they can use it against him. But yeah, somewhere there was a disagreement, and it's been addressed on or because of certain tweets. I won't be more critical of them other than to say that it's generally unwise to air private matters in a public forum.
I get it, you reprimand people for behavior you disagree with. That's one of my big reservations with the netizen stuff in kpop - the various netizen groups frequently come off as reactionary jerks, but on the other hand, it's just part of keeping a society in line. And aren't the cultural values (expressed through their celebrity culture and entertainment media) a pretty big part of what makes Korean entertainment so likable? But everyone says I either refuse to take sides, or that I'm always on someone else's side. I mean really, even if EJH really have been negatively critical of Hwayoung, like, I'd disagree with their apparent treatment of the situation, but really, I've seen worse from better people, you know? And anyway, I've got nothing to do with it other than click my tongue from a distant sideline.
And Hwayoung. She's in her own spot too. Even if I didn't know about all the stuff I'm now reading about with regards to how close she was to everyone else (all taken with that grain of salt, of course), there's just no way she could be as close to the others as they are to each other. They can be real close, real tight with each other beyond any relationship I've ever had, but unless she just clicked with one or two of them, her relationships with any of them will be less than those between the other six with each other. So no, she won't be able to draw on them for the same kind of support, she won't be able to feed her own determination with the collective energy as the other six. She also won't have the same commitment to their collective fortunes, whether because she simply hasn't been a part of the group (and through all the same experiences) as long, or if she really was always treated as an outcast in the group. Everyone agrees this year's been a real effed situation, all told. Wherever her breaking point is, maybe she's just getting there. I mean, if she is talking about quitting or not being able to keep up any more, or if she's just been in really low spirits for an extended period... aren't all those things what the fandom's been saying would be the end result of Mr. Kim's harsh policies? That poor kid that Gen. Patton slapped couldn't handle the war back then, and maybe Hwayoung's having a difficult time dealing with everything on her plate. And yeah, the fallout from most of the Hwayoung episodes seem to have been good publicity for her personally - that is, she's come out looking good to the fans most of the time. Maybe this is about some campaign to push her forward, given Mr. Kim's general pattern of dealing with things. But if we assume she's not getting a big warm feeling from the group, maybe she turns to the fandom at large, who have mostly responded positively to her in situations like this. Where do we turn when we find ourselves up against a wall? If you're really up against it, it'll probably just be the first thing you think of.
Hyoyoung's tweets most specifically indicate that something's going on. Even if we treat them separately, it's clear from the first post that Hwayoung is "suffering," and from the second that someone in pain is being treated unfairly (in her opinion), and, we may also assume, that the person being unfair is attractive. She kinda wraps a big bow on the whole "bullying" idea, unless she really is just playing the twitter world for fools (and doing so by selling out her twin).
So few fishes left swimming... how much have I forgotten?
Here's something: They say Eunjung took painkillers to perform on injured knee (ankle?). Others say she was or may have been forced to do so by the management - against her will, or under duress, what have you. Imagine how easy that is to turn around in one's memory by saying "I did it then, why can't you?" even if you didn't want to do it back then? And maybe, just maybe Hwayoung wasn't pressured to take painkillers in this more recent event - but again, it would still cause negativity to the aggrieved parties.
But as for all this twitter stuff, given the volumes dedicated to the scenario, it's hard to imagine that as little as ten sentences or so could be the basis of all this. There's not even a lot of continuity between the tweets. The twins are obviously talking to each other, and Jiyeon and Eunjung both refer back to Hyomin, but there's swathes of empty space between even each individual statement. Talk about economy of language.
I mean, maybe the lack of corrective statements from the members... maybe they're all tired of it all too. Like they just decided, "I can't duck my head and toe the company line this time." Hah. It's only been a few days, but maybe they've already met among themselves and decided that if Hwayoung can't take this, then the rest just aren't going to deal with it all either - given that their fortunes are tied to each other, some collective position must be reached. But then, for contractual purposes, they can't up and say something like that, so they have to press the impression that they're feuding and hope they get bailed out by some misstep by Mr. Kim. Ah, idle speculation.
Lastly, people are more interested in being able to judge other people for their misdeeds than on applauding their merits. This is because problems get more attention than things that go smoothly, but still.
But also, why "Sometimes dedication alone is sometimes not enough?" Just tossing them out before I starve, is she saying "I really can't do it (no matter my amount of dedication)," is she (hee hee) simply disagreeing with Hyomin's statement, is she displaying a hint of fatalism, is she suggesting something like "you also need the support of those around you" or that she's running out of reasons to keep going... etc.
And just again, whatever the mettle or character of these T-ara kids to begin with, Mr. Kim screwed them up. He's also throwing a shady light on Kpop as a whole.
And lastly lastly, I'll toss out another message about taking all this in the context of your own lives. If you think you're freaking out too much over this, try to remind yourself of your other pursuits in life. It can be hard, but really, there are things that need doing. Like, keeping busy can actually help reduce stress in situations like this.
Sorry folks, if I messed up anywhere! Thanks site folk for having this place where I could say things like this! Thanks folks for whatever, and thanks T-ara for doing all right!
And edit lastly, I really do hope those kids get a break. With the company or not, whatever, I hope they find something else to do with themselves for a while and live better lives and after a year or two look back and treat their CCM tenures as the lesson it was.

Woo hoo hoo. Even I the big quitter couldn't stay away from this. It's my two gigantor cents time, so be fore-warned, I will be book-writing and all the chapters will be mixed up because I'll be jumping back and forth a lot, it's all aswim up in the head. So call me irresponsible (and whatever else) but it'll be a mess. And oh, the re-tread - I will try to quote and so on, but please bear with me on rehashing stuff. So no pressure to read this, it's more so that I can pretend to myself I was heard. And another thing, I'll fight hard to resist to urge to check back in, sorry, but I really, really do need to not get too into this. A part of me wants to get into this, but yeah.
But first, I quit being active here - and for a while, I couldn't deal with listening to T-ara songs either - but I'm still a fan, if you go to an older definition of that word, and not, like, what that seems to mean now. Not so old as "short for 'fanatic,'" but I'm boring you now.
So it's true that they're all living separately now? Like diviso et conquerrat, my stupid fake Latin for "divide and conquer." Perhaps Mr. Kim thought it would make it more difficult for them to coordinate in opposition to him, but now it looks like the collateral damage is more or less this situation. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
I checked out Oniontaker's post on all this on his personal... tumblr? Anyway, some real comedy to be found in the rap coach guy's predicament. Of course, it's also sad, but hey, laughter makes you cry for a reason, right? Anyway, his subsequent responses to what has been going on has enough of the ring of truth for me, so I feel comfortable having a laugh about that working father's predicament.
For all you kids, remember to place all this outrage in the context of your own personal lives - like, you could talk about Hwayoung being (cyber-)bullied, about the antis bullying T-ara, you could even talk about the T-ara fans "bullying" this or that member, and then you could talk about people in your personal circles being bullied (or, those outside of your circles). Like, really, you hear something about someone you don't really know, "that kid," and suddenly you do meet that kid and you're on guard because "well, I have heard..." And et cetera. You've probably heard about this kind of thing somewhere, so just remember that this is an example of all that.
But yeah, I'm not taking a harsh stance on any of them because, hell, even with some of my disagreements with some of the T-ara members' decisions and their judgement, I've done like ish in my own lives, and under heaploads less pressure than they are and have been under. And another funny thing about all this stuff is in my small circle, watching Hwayoung and hearing about her contributing to the lyrics and all that, we were all joking about "The Rise of Hwayoung" and all. There's this little moment at the beginning of a perf, she steps up right in the beginning and the camera is low in front of her, there's a look (we called) exhilaration, a kind of nervous excitement. They're wearing blue, and I think it was two weeks ago now. Oh well.
More to the meat of the matter. First, a general insult of your choosing directed towards Mr. Kim. Yon chickens come home to roost, all that. Speaking of leadership (and you management-minded kids could learn something from this)... Mr. Kim sets the tone for his company. And for T-ara. He set the rules, both the written ones and the un-written ones based on the way he's dealt with them and with things, so he creates the culture in his house. You create tensions between people, talking about competing for places internally, and snap at people calling them lazy and unprofessional, and you create unrest and uncertainty with frequent changes and disregard for your people, what with the leader changes and all the work load. You create negativity. And you don't address that negativity, you just keep hounding people and pushing them, they still nurse that negativity, on top of all the new frustrations you add and the random stuff that happens in peoples' lives, hell, you wind up with angry people.
My small understanding of Hwayoung's entry into the group, Eunjung said something about being against adding new members initially - and then Hwayoung is added, Eunjung is deposed and replaced with Boram, who, it seems, can only be charitably called a figurehead leader, if any kind of leader at all. I was wondering what was going on with Soyeon's "rebellion," and I guess Mr. Kim's (assumed) long-term goal of undermining her influence by throwing her into a situation she couldn't deal with is coming to a head (to clarify, having her instigate a situation that would snowball with other pressures that were known to come, others known to be building, and then the unknown ones). You can only bank on other people's forbearance for so long.
Ah, anyway. The first little go-around of tweets (for reference I'll treat Oniontaker's material as the "authoritative" translation), could be taken as the usual "cheer up" stuff, but yeah, the implication behind claiming they were hacked statements cannot be ignored. Perhaps Soyeon at first treated it as the cheer up stuff at first, but then deleted her comment when she found out there was more going on - after all, even if we understand that she knows what's going on within the group, why couldn't she have just seen Hyomin's tweet and been all, "lets all work hard today as well?" I don't know, maybe using the word "difference" is just her quoting the original words Hyomin used - Hyomin was first, right? And then Boram too for that matter, the other post-deleter.
And, on the negative side, you could think Soyeon was at best being patronizing but supportive, or at worst fully on the bandwagon. Like if "difference in determination" was a phrase they'd used before and that Soyeon would have recognized... but if that's the case, see below about the other three.
Qri, thanks to Google translate, I know she and Boram were tweeting something about not having makeup on. There is humor everywhere. Ho ho ho, maybe, maybe it's like an inside "joke" between her and Boram going on about not having to be performers anymore? Is that me being a jerk? Stay in school, kids, or you wind up like me.
Hyomin, Jiyeon and Eunjung... is the preferred portmanteau Eunjimin? Just looking at the tweets themselves, you could come up with whatever you want. Look what I did with the Qri thing, and I was just messing around. If we add the context of the press release, and from that assume that this is a part of ongoing disagreements... First, using the internet is very unnatural. People lose their self-awareness very quickly when they're "talking" to people by punching in letters on an input field using a keyboard or their thumbs and then mouse- or finger-clicking a little square that says "tweet" or "post" or "send." And then, being a celebrity is totally weird. Imagine what it's like, to go to school, and like, people are taking pictures of you, someone touches your hand and starts crying, and strangers are screaming about wanting to marry you. Someone bumps into you and out of no where fifty people rush up and start hating on that person for "hitting" you and, when you say, "dudes, I'm all right, leave him alone," suddenly those folks turn around and starting clapping and praising you for being so merciful and kind. Or, people from around the world send you packages of food.
To take the general into the specific - your boss has encouraged you to tweet often and about any trivial thing, because it's good, cheap publicity - Soyeon actually quoted Mr. Kim as having the attitude that any publicity is good publicity. So yeah, you tweet weird stuff like that Eunjung thing about the grass pot-human thing and people are all "oh, she's so cool and creative." You tweet sad stuff that gets your fan base in a bother about your unfair working conditions and they encourage you. You have a dispute, both with your boss, and now, with another member, and the message gets mixed up - you tweet about it, however innocuously, because "there's no such thing as bad publicity," you're getting back at your boss as part of this ongoing disagreement with him, even if you're talking about someone else. Maybe they thought the connection wouldn't be made, maybe they were trying to start something - as an outside possibility, maybe they really were playing nice, and Hwayoung was just complaining about something else, but because Mr. Kim's publicity machine got it wrong, maybe they're sticking to their guns because they think they can use it against him. But yeah, somewhere there was a disagreement, and it's been addressed on or because of certain tweets. I won't be more critical of them other than to say that it's generally unwise to air private matters in a public forum.
I get it, you reprimand people for behavior you disagree with. That's one of my big reservations with the netizen stuff in kpop - the various netizen groups frequently come off as reactionary jerks, but on the other hand, it's just part of keeping a society in line. And aren't the cultural values (expressed through their celebrity culture and entertainment media) a pretty big part of what makes Korean entertainment so likable? But everyone says I either refuse to take sides, or that I'm always on someone else's side. I mean really, even if EJH really have been negatively critical of Hwayoung, like, I'd disagree with their apparent treatment of the situation, but really, I've seen worse from better people, you know? And anyway, I've got nothing to do with it other than click my tongue from a distant sideline.
And Hwayoung. She's in her own spot too. Even if I didn't know about all the stuff I'm now reading about with regards to how close she was to everyone else (all taken with that grain of salt, of course), there's just no way she could be as close to the others as they are to each other. They can be real close, real tight with each other beyond any relationship I've ever had, but unless she just clicked with one or two of them, her relationships with any of them will be less than those between the other six with each other. So no, she won't be able to draw on them for the same kind of support, she won't be able to feed her own determination with the collective energy as the other six. She also won't have the same commitment to their collective fortunes, whether because she simply hasn't been a part of the group (and through all the same experiences) as long, or if she really was always treated as an outcast in the group. Everyone agrees this year's been a real effed situation, all told. Wherever her breaking point is, maybe she's just getting there. I mean, if she is talking about quitting or not being able to keep up any more, or if she's just been in really low spirits for an extended period... aren't all those things what the fandom's been saying would be the end result of Mr. Kim's harsh policies? That poor kid that Gen. Patton slapped couldn't handle the war back then, and maybe Hwayoung's having a difficult time dealing with everything on her plate. And yeah, the fallout from most of the Hwayoung episodes seem to have been good publicity for her personally - that is, she's come out looking good to the fans most of the time. Maybe this is about some campaign to push her forward, given Mr. Kim's general pattern of dealing with things. But if we assume she's not getting a big warm feeling from the group, maybe she turns to the fandom at large, who have mostly responded positively to her in situations like this. Where do we turn when we find ourselves up against a wall? If you're really up against it, it'll probably just be the first thing you think of.
Hyoyoung's tweets most specifically indicate that something's going on. Even if we treat them separately, it's clear from the first post that Hwayoung is "suffering," and from the second that someone in pain is being treated unfairly (in her opinion), and, we may also assume, that the person being unfair is attractive. She kinda wraps a big bow on the whole "bullying" idea, unless she really is just playing the twitter world for fools (and doing so by selling out her twin).
So few fishes left swimming... how much have I forgotten?
Here's something: They say Eunjung took painkillers to perform on injured knee (ankle?). Others say she was or may have been forced to do so by the management - against her will, or under duress, what have you. Imagine how easy that is to turn around in one's memory by saying "I did it then, why can't you?" even if you didn't want to do it back then? And maybe, just maybe Hwayoung wasn't pressured to take painkillers in this more recent event - but again, it would still cause negativity to the aggrieved parties.
But as for all this twitter stuff, given the volumes dedicated to the scenario, it's hard to imagine that as little as ten sentences or so could be the basis of all this. There's not even a lot of continuity between the tweets. The twins are obviously talking to each other, and Jiyeon and Eunjung both refer back to Hyomin, but there's swathes of empty space between even each individual statement. Talk about economy of language.
I mean, maybe the lack of corrective statements from the members... maybe they're all tired of it all too. Like they just decided, "I can't duck my head and toe the company line this time." Hah. It's only been a few days, but maybe they've already met among themselves and decided that if Hwayoung can't take this, then the rest just aren't going to deal with it all either - given that their fortunes are tied to each other, some collective position must be reached. But then, for contractual purposes, they can't up and say something like that, so they have to press the impression that they're feuding and hope they get bailed out by some misstep by Mr. Kim. Ah, idle speculation.
Lastly, people are more interested in being able to judge other people for their misdeeds than on applauding their merits. This is because problems get more attention than things that go smoothly, but still.
But also, why "Sometimes dedication alone is sometimes not enough?" Just tossing them out before I starve, is she saying "I really can't do it (no matter my amount of dedication)," is she (hee hee) simply disagreeing with Hyomin's statement, is she displaying a hint of fatalism, is she suggesting something like "you also need the support of those around you" or that she's running out of reasons to keep going... etc.
And just again, whatever the mettle or character of these T-ara kids to begin with, Mr. Kim screwed them up. He's also throwing a shady light on Kpop as a whole.
And lastly lastly, I'll toss out another message about taking all this in the context of your own lives. If you think you're freaking out too much over this, try to remind yourself of your other pursuits in life. It can be hard, but really, there are things that need doing. Like, keeping busy can actually help reduce stress in situations like this.
Sorry folks, if I messed up anywhere! Thanks site folk for having this place where I could say things like this! Thanks folks for whatever, and thanks T-ara for doing all right!
And edit lastly, I really do hope those kids get a break. With the company or not, whatever, I hope they find something else to do with themselves for a while and live better lives and after a year or two look back and treat their CCM tenures as the lesson it was.

There's a lot to talk about, and I'm not being graded, so I won't edit this down, so sorry if it jumps from point to point.
First, I have to say that having seen the members return, more or less, to business as usual, arouses a feeling of disappointment in me. Now, I don't know about their in-house dealings, the specifics of what's going on, so I won't go further than that about this whole thing. Maybe they decided to pull an S.E.S. and will just drop their contract when it runs out or whatever - though they did sign that acting agency deal... if they're savvy enough, that contract restricts any involvement of Mr. Kim, but whatever. That's as far as I want to say about those details.
Just real quick, censoring public statements is not exactly the same thing as an illegal restriction of free speech - and where the question of legality comes in, there are very few internationally accepted standards as to the freedom of speech. Even in America, movie stars will feign excitement about every film project they have, politicians will not buck the party line, and even most athletes will be muted when it comes to their "honest opinions" about in-house affairs, and for the most part this is considered a professional attitude. Also, in America, there is still the question of whether or not a company has the right to access its employees' social media accounts. For a Korean example, SNSD members don't even have Twitter accounts - is this a restriction of their free speech?
Next up, Mr. Kim knows his employees are young adults - not only inexperienced in their industries, but naive in the matters of labor relations. That latter especially, as the idols no doubt have little appreciation of contract law and workers' rights, and by design of their handlers and by nature of the industry, are largely kept from gaining a strong appreciation of such matters (imagine a recent high school graduate running television station and that is something like the idea). Furthermore, in Korea the employer, the boss, the authority is held in relatively higher esteem than in most other places in the world - lurking in the backs of the members' minds is the notion that rebelling against Mr. Kim amounts to rebelling against what makes Korean culture great ("you just don't go against the boss"). Not that he is what makes Korean culture great, but he is the boss, and in traditionally Confucian societies, authority and hierarchy matters that much more. After all, what exactly do you think T-ara's mothers and fathers are telling them about what they should be doing? Even if T-ara members put up a brave face in front of their parents, I doubt their parents know less about what's going on than the fans do.
Also along these lines, somewhere in there is a side-effect to the fact that the T-ara members are being over-worked - this not only reduces the actual time they have to think about their predicament and formulate and execute ideas as to what to do about it, it also reduces their energy and will to do so. It is an exceptional feat, but not out of the ordinary for an exhausted, under-slept and travel-weary idol to rouse herself and smile and converse in front of a camera, but it is quite a different thing for her to, of her own volition, concentrate on the bigger picture of her living standards, and, what's more, actually explore the legal or purely strategic options available to you - and after and on top of all that, actually plan and carry out any such course of action, all the while being undermined by a hostile controlling force that is probably better prepared. Said more briefly and more generally, its easier to push an exhausted body than an exhausted mind. These are simply some among Mr. Kim's advantages.
I agree that the fans should boycott T-ara products. I, for one, just won't buy their stuff anymore - after all, what is youtube but free entertainment? However, what that quoted writer doesn't seem to appreciate (and what Mr. Kim apparently does) is that the fan base is largely composed of people younger than T-ara members. And if, as above, I don't expect T-ara members to have a strong, much less commanding, grasp of business affairs, then it's tough to expect as much out of their fan base. Sure, anything's possible, and I'm often taken aback at how organized and committed Kpop fans are, but again, there are possibilities and then there are expectations - and then, of course, there's what actually happens, reality. One thing I remember from high school - no matter how charismatic and passionate the student council is, each and every one of them will eventually graduate and leave, and the school faculty will remain. The fans will move onto the next big thing, or will simply go and develop other interests, and eventually the members will disband and pursue their fortunes in whatever other areas. I mean, in spite of all the poor decisions and bad public image, Mr. Kim does still run his company (poorly or not). Perhaps he never really thought T-ara would last this long. If we're willing to believe he's all about the bottom line (money), then why do we think he'll care if the fans are badmouthing him? Someone even pointed out that victimizing T-ara tends to create a strong emotional bond of sympathy with T-ara - and if the fans (mistakenly) think all they can do to help or show their love for T-ara is buy their albums, that adds up to exactly what they say Mr. Kim is about, more money flowing into CCM. And I don't know how sales are divided between the domestic (Korean) front and the international front - keep in mind that this may be an "international" site, it's also "just" an English-speaking site. Do they talk like this in Thailand (a stalwart of international Kpop sales I understand), in China, Japan, Indonesia? I mean, Americans decry the low standards of living in sweatshops in developing nations and criticize US and foreign governments for allowing those conditions to continue, but will still buy products produced in those sweatshops because they are inexpensive - just to demonstrate that the Kpop fans are not the only example of this kind of problem. But step further back and note that music sales isn't the only source of income - T-ara shows up on a commercial for clothing, and the fans think "oh yay, I'll buy that now," thinking the money won't go to CCM, so it won't reward the poor treatment of Tara. Even that's not correct. The connections are not concrete, but if T-ara is part of a successful ad campaign, and as long as T-ara has a positive public image, then CCM can charge advertisers more for their endorsements - and more money flows into CCM.
And it's not just Mr. Kim - part of the reason T-ara accepts conditions as they are is that they are making a living this way. Maybe they don't realize it doesn't have to be like this; after all, so go the sayings, "everyone's boss is an idiot," and "every employee will complain about their job." Ultimately, as bad as things have gotten, even T-ara can make the connection - fans still buy albums/still are fans, the company makes money and we have our livelihood, thus, maybe things aren't so bad after all. And again, when they're so exhausted from doing what's being asked of them, it makes it that much harder for them to summon the will to do anything about it. After all, idols are always being complimented and admired for their ability to persevere in spite of their fatigue and the multiple demands on their energies - perhaps T-ara members have been misguided into believing that they must persevere through also this. After all, a game only works if everyone's playing along. But maybe, if the members saw that the fans were concerned enough to stop buying their products, if perhaps the members became convinced that their over-work is not simply the cost of their professional success, if the members could be convinced that staying at CCM was not ultimately in their best interests...
And speaking of fans, the sasaeng fans are loners and outcasts largely because the main line fans shun them - because they don't want to be associated with them, because the main line fans can't stomach the sasaeng mindset and behavior, and also because the mainstream fans just don't want to deal with them. And again, Korean culture is very conservative, not very given to a revolutionary mindset - and, like most people, they're not too open to the idea of outsiders meddling in what they consider "in-house" affairs. So perhaps a Korean fan, frustrated about T-ara's predicament, scans the internet, and sees the international community going on comparing the CEO to Hitler and contemplating acts of murder, or worse, implying that Korean fans want to or should visit personal harm on the CEO (and again, saying so from the "outside"). It seems to me that it would tend to push the Korean fan away from trying to undermine Mr. Kim ("That all sounds very extreme - certainly I'm not like that"). I mean, even I don't feeling like jumping into the conversation when I see some of the more extreme speculation that sometimes comes up when this topic is being discussed.
And let me just throw in a personal appeal to fans, please, please, don't put money into CCM - don't buy T-ara's albums, don't buy their songs online, don't buy their concert tickets. But you can't just do that - repeatedly say why you're doing this. Go online and keep saying it's because you want them out of CCM, out from under Mr. Kim's thumb, write it on those little signs you hold up during live performances, make fan-chants about this - keep it clean, it doesn't have to be alarming or negative, but say that you insist on a better standard of living for T-ara. Make a slogan - "No sales for suffering," or something in Korean. Keep going online and saying you're boycotting things because you want them to live better, leave no doubt that you're doing it to make their lives better. Understand that their sales will go down, understand that it'll look like their popularity is going down, understand that T-ara themselves might make a personal appeal to stop the boycott - T-ara might look sad in interviews and talk about how it's hurting them, and fans who disagree with the boycott will probably do so loudly and openly challenge your actions, but if you keep alive the message that you're doing all this to try to improve their standard of living, then maybe eventually, when their lives are better and their minds are clearer, T-ara will look back on all this and realize that their fans did something amazing, maybe even miraculous for them. Even if this T-ara is disbanded, they won't be out on the street. Hard work and talent will always be rewarded, but we can't continue to reward the way Mr. Kim treats Jeon Boram, Lee Qri, Park Soyeon, Ham Eunjung, Park Hyomin, Ryu Hwayoung and Park Jiyeon. Words will not change Mr. Kim's mind, actions will not change Mr. Kim's mind, not even money will change his mind - he will not change his policies because he sees no wrong in what he's doing. He believes in what he's doing. So don't make this about making Mr. Kim change his mind, make it about T-ara living a better life - and that will only happen when they are out of that company. Help T-ara realize that they have the freedom and the power to change their lives for the better. Help T-ara realize they don't have to accept their current conditions. Help T-ara realize that their careers, their professional success is not dependent on continuing to suffer at CCM. You, the fans already have the power to make a difference with every dollar you choose to spend or withhold, and with every word you utter - please, use both to send the message to T-ara that they have to pursue a better life for themselves.