Starship Entertainment has issued a public apology after one of their employees shared an inappropriate and harassing synthetic photo of Ahn Yujin from IVE on social media.
On January 15th, the company posted an official statement on its account, titled "Apology and Commitment to Prevent Recurrence Regarding the Infringement of Artist Rights."
In the statement, Starship expressed deep regret, saying, "We sincerely apologize to our artist Ahn Yujin, who was hurt by the serious mistake made by one of our employees managing our Chinese social media on January 9th, and to the fans who were also affected."
The company admitted that the incident was a result of poor management and emphasized that the employee involved had been removed from the duties related to the incident.
"We have taken the strongest disciplinary action and promise to overhaul our internal management system to prevent this from happening again", they added.
Starship also personally apologized to Ahn Yujin, saying, "We will do our best to repair the damage caused and are taking continuous legal action against those spreading false information and defamation about our artist."
The company concluded by saying, "We apologize once again for the disappointment and worry this has caused our fans. We will learn from this incident and strive to regain your trust by becoming a more responsible company."
The controversy began when the person in charge of IVE’s official Weibo account shared a synthetic photo of Ahn Yujin in a disrespectful context on January 9th.
Fans from both Korea and abroad were quick to criticize the mistake, which led to the company’s public apology and promise of action.
Source: [1]
