On January 9th, Entertainment on the spaceship was caught reposting a controversial fan post on his official Weibo account.
Starship Entertainment Reposts IVE Deepfake Update Mentioning “Sl*t” Yujin and “Good Baby” Wonyoung
Notably, the post included AI-generated photos of IVE‘S Yujin along with the caption “#JangWonYoung, good boy. #AnYujin bitch who loves kissing old men.“
Starship is not a crazy bastard, what are you doing? What does RT mean for an image created with AI synthesis by a malicious commenter on your official account? You got some shit in your head, is that something a person would do?#StarshipProtectANYUJIN @STARSHIPent @IVEstarship pic.twitter.com/o4mVg24GmQ
— An Yujin_AnYuJin0901 (@anyujinbar) January 9, 2025
Shortly after being called out, Starship Entertainment released a statement on Weibo.
“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.”
– Entertainment on the spaceship
However, fans were still not happy with what happened. As a result, the agency released an additional statement in Korean, Chinese and English on January 15. The following is the official statement in English.
“We at Starship Entertainment would like to offer our sincere apologies to our artist, AN YUJIN, and her fans for the unfortunate incident that occurred on January 9th.
We deeply regret the inconvenience caused by the mishandling of a China-based social media account by a member of our staff.
After carefully reviewing the situation, we have determined that the incident was the result of an error in our internal protocols.
As a corrective measure, the staff member involved was reassigned from all related responsibilities and the most stringent disciplinary actions were taken. Additionally, we are actively improving and refining our internal processes to ensure similar incidents do not happen again.
We deeply regret the harm caused to AN YUJIN and are committed to addressing the harm suffered as a result of this incident. To protect all parties involved, we are also taking legal action against individuals who spread false information or engage in defamatory behavior.
Once again, we sincerely apologize to all fans for the disappointment and concern this incident has caused. Going forward, we will dedicate ourselves to learning from this experience and growing as a more responsible and mature company. We will continue to work diligently to restore your trust and ensure that such an incident does not happen again.
Thank you.”
– Entertainment on the spaceship
Apology and commitment to prevent violation of the artist’s rights pic.twitter.com/TWArfzqjFn
— STARSHIP Ent. (@STARSHIPent) January 15, 2025
