Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After a bit of a quiet period in the abuse and mistreatment lawsuit of KG (ex-VCHA) against JYP Entertainment, KG recently revealed her court declaration for the case (a 132-page document) and shared it publicly.
I tried to make some bullet point to briefly summarize things, but it’s pretty extensive:
- KG explained she was 15 when she signed her contract under pressure without understanding its terms, especially because the attorney representing her did not provide meaningful support.
- KG wants to the court to vacate the past approval of her contract given the coercion involved with signing it and the lack of meaningful legal representation.
- KG alleges the training VCHA were subjected to led to major injuries (like her torn shoulder tendon) for multiple members, and that they were forced to continue on with activities without care or rest. She says it took two days for them to address multiple serious injuries to members, which were treated with unknown injections.
- KG claims the training schedules exceeded 60 hours a week, around 10 to 11 hours a day with a ton of pressure to work overtime.
- KG says despite the labor, there was no direct payment and she had instead accumulated $500,000 in debt to JYPE by April 2024 for housing, training, and promotions that were unexplained.
- KG says JYPE weighed the members monthly as a part of their management, enforcing a restrictive diet to not eat anything they weren’t given, that they made comments encouraging eating disorders, and that lunch breaks were mostly taken up by staff scolding them and so they had little time to eat.
- KG alleges that there were hidden cameras installed in their residence to monitor the girls without their knowledge, including in the kitchen.
- KG claims that she and other members experienced mental health decline in the form of depression and anxiety brought on by the aforementioned environment, including a suicide attempt that was allegedly dismissed by a JYPE staff as normal.
- KG revealed text logs where another VCHA member said she also wanted to leave the group, the member says the other members want to leave as well and that none of them are happy, and that KG did the right thing.
Note: If there are any mistakes or glaring omissions, feel free to let me know so I can update it. Not a lawyer either.
Did all of this happen as she says? Obviously I have no idea. Is what she describes an extremely familiar story from current and former idols once they get old enough to speak up for themselves freely? Yeah, it’s completely believable. Normal, even.
And you know, sometimes people use that normalness to justify a lot of this or take the company’s side because “even if it’s true, everybody goes through this” or something of that nature, but obviously that’s literally the problem if you take a step back from the bubble at all.
