[12.08.01] T-ara's concert postponed until the end of the year

[Eterry]

Stay strong and hang in there girls. We QUEEN'S will always support T-ara, for everything you have given and shown us.

Hwaiting!

[venessa0307]

At this moment, concert being postponed is not that bad. Since it gives time to both T-ara and those fans or antis to settle down everything first.

Thats Great to hear!

Those who are going to this showcase! Let's make it extra extra extra special for the girls.

Let them know they still have fans who support them no matter what happen.

Hopefully that can cheer them up.

What do you think?

Such a good idea. Omg, I'm so regret that I didn't purchase the showcase ticket. Hopefully there are antis who don't want their tickets and can sell to me

[min young]

Jaemin's support for Eunjung

The Eunjung I know is pure and simple, lonelier than anyone else, and with a personality unlike a celebrity. After returning from Japan, even without sleep, she will still keep her promise to watch her classmates’ performance until the very last scene. She is a friend like that. A friend who thinks that it is only natural to take care of the people around her. Her personality has been like that for the 10 years I’ve known her. She rarely talks about T-ara’s things, and how this incident happened, I’m shocked too. Although I’ve looked it up, even like that, this whole time I’ve always seen her as family, so I feel very sad and heartbroken. You seems to be very tired and burdened now, please stay strong. I pray that as time goes by, everything will be fine. I love you, little sister.

cr: twitter

[felliciousz]

if i was the one of the buyer, of course i'll wait until they recovered! QUEENS please wait for our T-ARA! keep supporting them! ^^

[min young]

Guilty until proven innocent: The lynch mob against T-ara and who’s really to blame

The fallout from Hwayoung‘s split with T-ara has been nothing short of cataclysmic, and resulted in an all-out witch hunt against the current T-ara members. The group has lost endorsement deals, been forced to cancel concerts, fan cafes have shut down, petitions and groups to have T-ara disbanded and to uncover the truth behind the scandal have attracted hundreds of thousands of people, netizens have called for the members to be removed from their current television shows, a music program director has said he will no longer contact T-ara, and much more.

In less than a week, T-ara has gone from being one of the most loved groups in K-Pop to the most reviled and hated. But whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty, and why are the members of T-ara receiving all the vitriol instead of their controversial CEO, Kim Kwang Soo?

The bulk of the anti-T-ara bandwagoning has stemmed from various reports of bullying — virtually all of which have turned out to be either misconstrued or completely false. The situation has gotten so bad that anonymous posts on web forums have been picked up by the media and reported as fact, and everybody has been so desperate for answers that they’re not stopping to separate the fiction from the fact.

A photo of Hyomin accidentally bumping Hwayoung as she raised her arm was transformed by netizens into “Hyomin pokes Hwayoung in the eye!“. A video of Hwayoung opening her mouth for Eunjung to put a rice cake in it suddenly became an attempt at choking by force-feeding, but what netizens failed to mention was that it was a Japanese game show where you had to put sweets into someone’s mouth and then try make a sound with your mouth full. As if things couldn’t get any more far-fetched, a photo of Hwayoung chatting with INFINITE and SISTAR at the ‘Idol Olympics’ broadcast was somehow turned into Hwayoung having to sit with them because T-ara wouldn’t speak to her.

There was never any speculation that Hwayoung had been bullied before last week, yet now all it takes is a photo of her hanging with Bora to serve as evidence that she’s been ostracized by her own group. Does this selca of Eunjung and KARA’s Gyuri mean that they too, are victims of bullying? Anybody can take a photo and fabricate a story around it.

There was even a shocking report that Jiyeon slapped Hwayoung across the face — a report that literally stemmed from an anonymous forum post from somebody claiming to be a member of T-ara’s dance team, Yama & Hot Chicks. When the leader of the dance team came forward to shoot down the false claims, it was too late. The article was already a most-read story across the web, and the damage was done.

It should take more than some out-of-context photos, anonymous forum posts, and unsubstantiated stories to convince the world that T-ara is a pack of evil bullies who tormented and assaulted their bandmate. This is 2012, but right now people are acting like it’s the 1600s and we’re all at the Salem witch trials.

The only thing that seems somewhat accurate in all of this drama is that there was an incident on last week’s Music Bank where Hwayoung was upset for an as-yet-unknown reason, and refused to go on stage for T-ara’s scheduled performance. This caused the other members to have to cover for her at the last minute, and resulted in a mistake being made during the performance. Some T-ara members were then unprofessional and tweeted their disappointment over Hwayoung’s actions, which led to them being labelled as bullies. This information about Music Bank does not confirm that T-ara are bullies, nor does it confirm that Hwayoung is troublesome. All it confirms is that Hwayoung refused to perform on Music Bank –which may or may not have been for a perfectly valid reason– and that the others members disagreed with that decision.

Does anybody remember what happened to the Sugababes back in 2009? Keisha Buchanan was fired from the group amidst claims she was a bully, but fans and the public still took her side and blamed member Amelle Berrabah for the entire thing. People adopted a lynch mob mentality, similar to the one we are currently seeing against T-ara, and eventually their attacks against Amelle were so vicious that she had a nervous breakdown and had to spend three-weeks recovering in a treatment facility. Reports that Keisha had been a bully were never confirmed, the fans eventually calmed down and got over it, and life went on as usual. If only everyone had behaved more rationally and not jumped to conclusions, then Amelle’s unfortunate breakdown could have been avoided all together. (I should know, because I was one of the many people who sent abusive tweets to Amelle at the time!)

While everybody is busy blaming T-ara for Hwayoung’s departure, few seem to be looking at Kim Kwang Soo, who may very well be more responsible for this entire ordeal than anybody else involved.

In my April article about T-ara’s then-announced member changes, I expressed my concern over the way Kim Kwang Soo was managing the group. I said that he was creating an unhealthy environment for the group by encouraging them to compete against one another and by threatening to fire or replace any members who didn’t comply. Now that he’s made good on his threats, it’s T-ara who are being blamed.

In the same article, I also took a look at how severely Kim Kwang Soo had been overworking T-ara. In a nutshell, the group hadn’t had a vacation since their debut in 2009 and hadn’t received a day off in one year, members were performing on top of serious injuries, Jiyeon collapsed on stage from exhaustion, and at times the group’s work load was so heavy that they had 12 schedules in one day.

Now picture the kind of stress that would bring on the members of T-ara, and then remember that Hwayoung was not part of the original T-ara lineup. She was added to the group in 2010. So Hwayoung was added to a group that was already successful, a group that had been together for years (if you include their training days), a group that was being severely overworked in a high-stress environment, and a group that was encouraged by their CEO to compete against one another.

If any of the unsubstantiated bullying claims are true, or even if Hwayoung was simply just an ‘outcast’ in T-ara, it’s not hard to see why.

If you need any more proof that Kim Kwang Soo isn’t the greatest CEO on the planet, then look no further than Nam Gyuri. The idol was a member former CCM girl group SeeYa, before she left back in 2009 for financial reasons and to pursue an acting career. What followed was a messy and very public war of words in which Kim Kwang Soo revealed scandalous information about Gyuri in the press and claimed that she uncooperative and missed schedules, the remaining SeeYa members held a press conference and painted Gyuri out to be a selfish diva, and Gyuri called Kim Kwang Soo “the devil”, denied his allegations against her and implied that it was part of a smear campaign, and claimed her former bandmates were cold towards her and spoke behind her back.

There was probably a little truth to both sides of that story, but at the end of the day, people are going to disagree and have conflicts. It’s a normal part of life, and it’s happened to everybody.

When you’re looking at a Korean girl group, such as T-ara, a CEO is like the teacher or the parent of the group. The CEO has a responsibility to create a safe and healthy environment for the group, both at home in the dorm and at work, and to ensure that any petty issues are taken care of in a proper way so the dynamic of the group can remain positive and professional. Kim Kwang Soo appears to have done the exact opposite of that, and if there is any true disharmony in T-ara, it is he who should be held responsible before both Hwayoung and T-ara.

As of now, the only real bullies in this whole situation are the netizens. Take one look at the comments section in a T-ara post on AllKPop right now, and you’ll either see a hypocritical flood of cruel and mean-spirited attacks directed at the group and its individual members, or just people laughing at the group’s current predicament. T-ara is being torn down for something that nobody even knows if they actually did or not. And if they did do it, then why did they do it? Not everything in life is black and white.

[min young]

[darkskyes]

this is a good decision because from all this, the girls are all stressed and depressed. they need a break and i hope they'll get it. i wish they postpone the comeback too honestly, at least another month or so.

[♕ -]

lets hope things will get better ):

I WANT SEXY LOVE SO BAD...

[ichigo91]

T-ara showcase in Malaysia still unchanger ,i hope i'll be there on the time showcare start...

[PicCaYa]

What a relief ... I know it's sad, I wanted to watch them perform , like you guys! but I can't .

If they perform at 11th August it would be really really bad, horrible !

I'm afraid that some antis that bought their ticket , could throw some things to them... ~.~

and besides this they feel terrible right know, they are constantly crying , they can't perform anyway. :'c

KKS finally made a good decision, but really.... maybe he has to make t-ara suffer until dead to finally get it .-.

oh well... I hope from now on he can do better things for them and SUPPORT THEM!

And oh, t-ara please don't cry , for that, we fans already cry like waterfalls for you :c

https://encrypted-tb...Z9TeIFWAMXDVw7Q

[micikeso]

i found it on youtube: just want to share

Park Shin Hye tweets: News...while reading it from one to ten, it feels as if my body and heart are crying. Lets be strong together, please be strong..

@ssinz 뉴스.. 하나부터 열까지 읽는 내내 온 몸과 마음이 우는 것 같다. 힘냅시다. 힘내요..

Park Shin Hye ask Queen's to stay strong!!!!!!!!!!!

awesome....but i just afraid they cancelled this showcase( i hope not)

i hope they not cancelled the concert. at first i can't go there cause i'll be taking final exam. but i changed my mind just to show t-ara that we will be there for them.

[micikeso]

What a relief ... I know it's sad, I wanted to watch them perform , like you guys! but I can't .

If they perform at 11th August it would be really really bad, horrible !

I'm afraid that some antis that bought their ticket , could throw some things to them... ~.~

and besides this they feel terrible right know, they are constantly crying , they can't perform anyway. :'c

KKS finally made a good decision, but really.... maybe he has to make t-ara suffer until dead to finally get it .-.

oh well... I hope from now on he can do better things for them and SUPPORT THEM!

And oh, t-ara please don't cry , for that, we fans already cry like waterfalls for you :c

https://encrypted-tb...Z9TeIFWAMXDVw7Q

i can't imagine how the other members will faced the public. its really break my heart tho. :'(

[fosiza]

meh, this whole controversial thing is counted as their comeback

now the second comeback at the end of the year will complete the pieces of the puzzle to stardom