On January 9, Starship Entertainment came under fire after reposting an offensive fan-generated post on its official Weibo account. The post contained insults about IVE’s Yujin and included AI-generated photos of her intended to criticize her.
The post, which included derogatory comments such as calling Yujin inappropriate names, caused an immediate reaction from fans. The post’s caption read: “#JangWonYoung, good boy. #AnYujin asshole who loves to kiss old men,” further fueling the outrage. Fans quickly raised concerns about Starship’s involvement in sharing such harmful content on an official account.
An Yujin C-bar expressed his dismay, questioning Starship’s actions, “Isn’t Starship a crazy bastard? What are they doing? They are broadcasting an AI photo taken by a hater on the official account. What do they mean by this? Do they have a head full of poop? Is this what a human being would do? Fans have been wondering whether this was a simple mistake or the result of negligence, especially since Weibo requires double confirmation before republishing content.
The repost was reportedly created by a Wonyoung fan from IVE, known as “Wonyoung akgae” (a term for extreme, solo fans of the artist).
In response to the growing criticism, Starship Entertainment issued a public apology a few hours later.
Hi, I’m Starship Entertainment.
We would like to update on the incident that happened today on Starship Entertainment’s Weibo. The incident occurred while our staff was reporting malicious posts, and the post has since been deleted.
We would like to sincerely apologize to the artist and fans who may have been affected by this incident. We will work to better manage our account, to prevent similar errors from happening again.
Once again, we would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused.
Meanwhile, IVE will release the pre-release title track “’REBEL HEART” from their upcoming album “IVE EMPATHY” on January 13th, despite the recent controversy surrounding the agency.
