Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
The latest turn of events in the Yewon and Lee Tae Im saga is that after not apologizing and hoping this all goes away in the middle of it going viral on a massive, mainstream scale, both Star Empire Entertainment and Dispatch have released apologies like a week late.
Star Empire Entertainment
“We would like to send out an official document regarding the conflict that occurred while filming ‘Tutoring Across Generations.’ First of all, we would like to apologize to those who care for Yewon and Lee Tae Im for causing so much trouble.
We take on most of the fault for rashly releasing an official statement after depending on only the hearsay from the staff, while failing to receive any accurate facts from Yewon. We apologize for the harm we have caused Yewon and Lee Tae Im by judging this issue based on the atmosphere and failing to professionally take on the issue. We will do our best to treat future sensitive issues with more caution. We will also make sure that Yewon takes this as an opportunity to mature.
We hope that you forgive us for sending out such a dated apology and understand our situation with a generous heart. Once again, we send out our deepest apologies to Lee Tae Im and the fans.”
Dispatch
“We learned to ‘always question,’ but we reflect if we had questioned [enough] when it came to the reporting at Jeju Island.
Lee Tae Im and Yewon’s statement were divided. The judgement that Dispatch made was [to trust] the third party. We thought that if both parties gave contradicting statements, then a third party would give the most accurate statement.
So we went down to Jeju Island and met with the female diver who was on site and recreated the scene, but [we realize] that was a mistake when it came to the result. We had blindly put faith in the witness. We should have cross-checked in reference to the witness’s statement, but we have not done so.
What’s clear is that this is not the fault of the female diver, she only told us what she had heard and felt. The female diver remembers Yewon as a ‘kind young lady.’ She might have thought that Yewon’s short words (informal speaking) was an expression of familiarity.
In addition, the female diver was from Vietnam. She probably wasn’t able to catch the different nuances. In Korean language, ‘ah’ and ‘uh’ are completely different.
Everything is our fault. We failed to notice that the testimony would be subjective with the female diver. Why couldn’t we think of this back in Jeju Island? This was negligent of us.
The motto of Dispatch is ‘News is fact,’ so we should have been more careful. If we don’t properly deliver the fact, it could shade the truth.
The reason we always go to the scene of the incident is to find the fact. It’s because we believe that the site has the right answers, but the site did not have the right answers. It only had just the basics.
It’s late, but we’ve realized a lot. We’ve learned the reason why there was no such thing as being excessive when it comes to fact checking. We will look back on what has happened and reflect. We will be much more careful from now on and be more cautious.
Lastly, we want to sent our apologies to Lee Tae Im. Of course, we are not justifying the cursing. However, we acknowledge that our report [on the issue] was rash. We have caused misunderstandings against our own will. We’re sorry.”
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Uh … too little too late, man. Literally the only reason this is happening is because of the terrible combination of public relations and media reporting, and it’s too lame a mea culpa and too late of one. Had everybody simply apologized/done their job at the time, nobody would care anywhere near this level and the opinions would be more split between Lee Tae Im flipping out and Yewon being an asshole (and no, conflicts like this on set don’t usually result in a revolt, just stop), but the extensive nature of the deceit at hand really inflamed this issue.
I doubt these apologies help at all, honestly. I’m usually all for downplaying the significance of a scandal based on netizen comments or whatever, but this is definitely mainstream now, which means it’s actually disastrous (T-ara is the comparison, except not bullshit).
So yeah, good luck.
