Brown Eyed Girls force apology out of Kang Hyun Soo after media refuses to retract story

Coming from somebody with admittedly low expectations for the Asian media, this Brown Eyed Girls/Kang Hyun Soo story was a bit surprising even for me.

An insider for the management company of Brown Eyed Girls (Nega Network) expressed their irritation with the fallacy with, “Yesterday, Kang Hyun Soo told the press that he is the music counselor to Brown Eyed Girls. It is not true. No one within the company nor the members have considered him as a vocal counselor.”

He continues with, “We tried to take care of the matters quietly by asking writers (of the false articles) to retract editorials but they refused. They continued to move forward with false information and tried to pass it off as true, making the members (of Brown Eyed Girls) feel dejected.”

The insider ended his statement with, “These articles are tarnishing the girls’ hard earned image as skilled musicians. We will take legal measures against him (Kang Hyun Soo) if he does not retract his statement and apologize.”

On February 2, a close friend of Kang Hyun Soo gave the false information to the press. He said that Kang Hyun Soo, with the opening of his new music academy, said, “Brown Eyed Girls have promised to come for vocal counseling.”

The quality of journalism in Korea continues to amaze me.

It starts off relatively normal, as the paper ran news items and editorials based on an anonymous source close to Kang Hyun Soo, which is standard practice if the source is legitimate (one could argue they should have confirmed it before running with it anyway).

However, after the Brown Eyed Girls contacted the paper denying the story, they apparently didn’t bother to check with either: 1) the Brown Eyed Girls 2) Brown Eyed Girls’ company 3) Kang Hyun Soo 4) Kang Hyun Soo’s company. No, they just continued to run with the anonymous source, even in the face of credibility issues from the direct sources involved themselves.

Fucking terrible.

Pick up a phone or open up the e-mail.