On Saturday, a South Korean judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Core Contents Media (CCM), the record label of K-pop girl group T-ara, against clothing line Chatelin.
On Saturday, a South Korean judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Core Contents Media (CCM), the record label of K-pop girl group T-ara, against clothing line Chatelin, after the company revoked their endorsement deal with the group following rumors they bullied former member Hwayoung into quitting in 2012.
In addition to throwing out the lawsuit, the judge ordered CCM executives to return the more than $365,000 they received from Chatelin as advance payment for the endorsement deal gone wrong.
According to a CCM official statement at the time of the original contract termination last year, Chatelin continued using the images of T-ara in their promotional materials, therefor the clothing company still owed them the money.
“They should have stopped [using the images of] T-ara as models [after they terminated the contract], but they kept using them,” the statement read.
Although Chatelin was ruled to be within the terms of their agreement with CCM in terminating the deal, the label had apparently hoped the courts would make an exception.
“[The judge] should cancel the agreement and the compulsory execution should be disapproved,” the statement read.
Often referred to in K-pop forums as “the least liked band in K-pop,” the anger towards T-ara came to a boil in the summer of 2012 after footage that appeared to show band members bullying Hwayoung, mostly gathered by K-pop fans, began circulating online.
In one such incident T-ara’s Jiyeon appeared to mock Hwayoung in an online photo post after she won an online popularity poll in a photo post.
“I won first place in a popularity poll, so I’m sharing this picture,” Jiyeon wrote. “Oh, and Hwayoung got zero votes. Haha. Our poor Hwayoung.”
Other incidents involved the whole group snubbing her onstage and Jiyeon mocking Hwayoung on the reality show “Star Life Theater” for pretending to read a book.
“It’s because of the camera [your're reading a book],” Jiyeon said according to website Soompi. “Wow, you’re really funny. I’ve never seen Hwayoung read a book while being in the same group.”
T-ara band member Eunjung, responded to the allegations that they bullied Hwayoung while she was in the group on the Mnet program “Beatles Code 2,” back in May.
“People might think [we bullied Hwayoung] if you just read everything that’s online,” Eunjung said.
“But even I was rumored to being bullied. To be honest, we had an argument with Hwayoung for about two days during the incident. But it was wrong of us to publicly make statements through Twitter. It was wrong to write about the topic, period.”
Eunjung, now also of the subunit T-ara N4, said the online speculation of K-pop fans and various media outlets only made matters worse, particularly when the band didn’t respond to the rumors directly.
“The more we stayed silent, the rumors and misunderstandings kept growing,” she said. “It was so bad that even we were getting confused. I thought I’d lived without any regrets, but I was pained because I felt I’d become a bad person.”
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