A complete overview concerning Hwayoung and T-ara’s journey of possible bullying

This post contains all the details of the alleged bullying situation occurring between T-ARA and their ex-member, Hwayoung. All of these facts have been proven to be true unless stated otherwise. This is a nice post to sum everything up for those whom weren’t following so closely along the T-ARA situation.

How it all began.

These are the all the tweets that were given by the T-ARA members, except for Qri and Areum, right after T-ara attended the Budakon concert. Due to her leg injury, Hwayoung was only capable of singing one song before leaving the stage. Fans assume that the tweets were directed towards Hwayoung because they all speak about lack of determination, and Jiyeon’s tweet included that this alleged person was an “acting genius” which led fans to the assumption that she was inferring that Hwayoung was making a bigger deal out of her injury then it really was.

Hyomin - “The differences in levels of determination^^, Let us all have more determination. Fighting!!!”

Jiyeon - “The differences in levels of determination ^^, Always be humble ^^ and sensible ^^ I applaud you, acting genius ^^”

Eunjung - “A position can make or break a person, but determination can make a person too. Sigh, it’s unfortunate. You have to know to take care of the people around you.”

After these tweets, Hwayoung in turn tweeted, “Sometimes, even determination alone is not enough. At times like these, I feel upset but I trust that it’s a blessing in disguise from the heavens. God, you know everything right?”

Fans tied the tweets together, and it was easy to assume that Hwayoung was attempting to defend herself against T-ara’s judgements.

Hyoyoung, Hwayoung’s twin sister then tweeted, “My other half is going through troubles… It hurts my heart …. No matter what people say you can get through this Ryu (their last name).” Hwayoung responded to her by saying, “…..I only have you ….” Later on she then proceeded to tweet, “Having a pretty face doesn’t matter if your heart is evil. Is the person who is hurting not considered a human? I’m hurt too. I honestly want to cry. Let’s just continue to train hard….”

Among the tweets was one from Hwayoung’s rap teacher Taerae, which stated, “Brainless airheads do worthless shit but this is really over the top…. Not even thinking about when they were trash (low level), right?” After being immediately criticized after about his use of language, and the fact that it was most likely relating to the T-ara members, Taerae denied the claims that it was related to Hwayoung’s bullying, but the timing and words leave the fans rather skeptical.

The evidence of bullying. (All of this was found by eagle eyed netizens)

In this video, Eunjung had to choose a member to stuff an overly large rice cake into their mouth, and Hwayoung was the person chosen. You can see Hwayoung’s obvious discomfort towards this action, but Eunjung continued to force the rice cake into her mouth. For those of you whom aren’t accustomed to rice cakes, this a very dangerous action, when you take in both the size and stickiness of the rice cake. There have been many cases of people choking on rice cakes simply due to their sticky texture.

During the shooting of KBS “Star Life Theater,” Hwayoung opens a book to read it in the car. When seeing this the production team asks Hwayoung if she likes reading. As she’s about to answer, Jiyeon interrupts and states “It’s because of the camera. Wow, you’re really funny. I’ve never seen Hwayoung read a book while being in the same group.” This results in the laughter of the other members, but Hwayoung remains looking uncomfortable.

Jiyeon tweeted: There was a popularity poll and because I was first I’ll put up my picture~ Also Hwayoung got 0 votes haha. Our poor Hwayoung….. kkkk

In this scene from Hello Baby, Qri and Hwayoung were both drawing pictures. While the T-ara jumped at the chance to complement Qri’s drawing, not a word was said about Hwayoung’s drawing. Taking notice of this, Hwayoung cutely asked the members to compliment her drawing as well (in aegyo), to which no members responded. Instead, Hyomin immediately changed the subject to talk about something else.

Hwayoung had to sit off to the side of the T-ara members even though there is obvious room on the couch. The room, however, was covered up with multiple coats, which brings fans to the assumption that they had been purposely placed there so Hwayoung could not join.

During the filming of KBS “Star Life Theater,” Soyeon and Boram were given the assignment of cooking the dumplings for the group. As they dropped the dumplings into the pot, they finally ended with Hwayoung’s. Boram then states, “The water’s going to overflow if we put in Hwayoung’s,” to which Soyeon responds, “Yeah, don’t put it in.” Hwayoung ends up not having a dumpling.

During the filming of Hello Baby, Hwayoung asks for a candy, and Soyeon specifically chose a lollipop that fell on the ground before handing it to her. Hwayoung didn’t know and ate the lollipop.

In this photo all the members have their arms wrapped around each other except for Hwayoung (who is located at the very left) and is trying to get a member to wrap their arm around her neck as well.

In this comparison you can see how normal groups help their injured members while T-ara stands idly by and does nothing.

Hwayoung tweeted this cute picture along with the message saying that is was a gift from Jiyeon. The photo consists of a lego dog standing in front of a bowl of acorns. According to an old Korean saying, “Acorn in a dog’s bowl,” is supposed to mean an outcast.

On November 6, 2011, a post was given on an online community form, Nate Pann under the username of Suk Ryu. (Ryu is Hwayoung’s last name) It was titled, “Being an outcast.. Really is difficult and tiresome“ and consisted of this message.

Hello. I’ve been contemplating whether I should post this or not, but have decided to write a few things..

The group I’m in is… A group everybody will know just by revealing the group’s initial.

I’m a new member in the group, so it has been very awkward and because I’m also very timid, I’m unable to approach them easily… That’s one of the reasons why I’m becoming an outcast.

The original members must have strongly opposed my addition to the group…

I’m basically treated as if I’m an invisible at the dorm.
But when the cameras are rolling, they would suddenly have their arms around my shoulders.

When we’re practicing… I really feel like I’m going to die.
When I make a little mistake, I’d get criticized hearing things like, ‘You can’t even do this?’ and would get cursed at.

Even right now, I’m alone since they all went grocery shopping without me..
They’ll be back in a few hours, but I want to just forget about my singing career and leave.

However, this is the path I decided to take and I’m the one who decided to join, so it’s hard to do so.

I feel a bit better now that I’ve written this.

Thank you.

Here you can see Boram messing with Hwayoung’s umbrella while Infinite looks on in disapproval. Woohyun later tries to fix the umbrella, but it is broken beyond repair. Hwayoung continues to remains by Sistar and Infinite’s side for the rest of the time while her group moves on without her.

In this video, you can see Jiyeon obviously ignoring Hwayoung’s out stretched hands, and continues to hi-five all the other members. My heart almost broke at Hwayoung’s expression, as she continues to smile.

CCM’s response.

First, CCM claims that their Twitter accounts were hacked. This later goes contradicted when they hold a press conference saying that no bullying had occured via the tweets they provided.

On July 30th, CCM announced that they would be terminating Hwayoung’s contract and that “it had nothing to do with bullying” instead complaints from the staff members. During an interview with Ilgan Sports, CCM’s CEO Kim Kwangjin stated that “in order not to inflate the controversy, I hope Hwayoung stays quiet.”

Realizing that this caused the controversy to explode, CCM then released a story in an attempt to tarnish Hwayoung’s image. Allkpop covered the account, which was, “On July 27th, T-ara was preparing to go on stage for a live broadcast of KBS‘s ‘Music Bank‘. With only two groups before them left to go, Hwayoung suddenly decided that she did not want to perform on stage that day…On the way home, Hwayoung, in front of fans and reporters, threw down her crutches and sat on the floor, threatening to yell at the managers in public.”

A staff member of Music Bank immediately refuted this by stating, “This situation seems to be a bit different from what CEO Kim Kwang Soo stated in his announcement. It is true that Hwayoung was mad and threw her crutches, but she was seen crying before that incident. There were other singers that witnessed her not being allowed to enter the waiting room and crying out in the hallway of the broadcast station.”

Hwayoung also responded to CCM’s announcement with a tweet that reads “facts without any truth.”

There was then an account made by a supposed T-ara back up dancer that reads

I am a member of Hot Chicks, an exclusive dance team for T-ara, and am also working withDavichi, KARA, Brown Eyed Girls, Rainbow Pixie, and more.

It was around the time the Japanese concert took place. We were getting big with our “Lovey Dovey” shuffle dance after Hwayoung was admitted, and getting ready to perform “Roly Poly” for our year-end performance.

During one of the rehearsals, it was a situation where Kwang Soo had jam-packed our schedules, so both the dancers and the members of T-ara who had just completed their day’s work were extremely sensitive and on edge.

Still, everyone was mustering up their last bit of strength and practicing, when Hwayoung messed up a little bit of the choreography.

Seeing this, Jiyeon and Soyeon then sarcastically scoffed at her, saying, ‘If you’re getting 1/6th of the profit from a group ALREADY made, you should do things right.’

Hwayoung then became a little depressed, but the dance leader mediated the situation and the rehearsal resumed.

But Hwayoung maintained an uncomfortable expression on her face, and Jiyeon who saw this slapped Hwayoung across the cheek and told her that because she had come in late to the already-established group T-ara, she needed to act sensibly and to rehearse without that expression on her face.

The atmosphere became extremely tense, and Hyomin took Jiyeon outside, telling her that she should just be the bigger person.

Even after Hwayoung’s ‘exposure’ incident, everyone was indifferent towards her, rather than comforting.

After the incident, T-ara went on hiatus to prepare for “Day By Day” and because of events with Davichi and Brown Eyed Girls, I could only see T-ara on TV.

Seeing them on the small-screen, I thought that the girls’ relationship with Hwayoung had improved, but these girls who are all grown don’t want to sit by her in the car so they blatantly play rock paper scissors right in front of her face.

CCM then announced that the whole account was fake, and that they tracked down the IP address and submitted a request to the Police. This was then proven false when the Seoul Seocho Police Department released a statement of, “There is not a single report on file relating to Core Contents Media or T-ara,” said the police department. “The various reports saying that [CCM] has reported this to the cyber investigative squad is false.”

On August 1st, Hwayoung tweeted, “I’m sorry for bringing disappointment to the fans that’s shown me love until now. Please stop now, and please expect a better and more mature me. Sorry for all the worries and concerns until now. I want to apologize to Core Contents Media family as well. I will be coming back as a better me.”

There was then a picture posted on the internet from a netizen of Hyoyoung supporting the injured Hwayoung as she limped to CCM’s office past midnight. Netizens assume that she was forced to write the apology in the office, and even included a hidden message in her tweet.

“팬만안다”….“Only the fans know.”

The results.

Although the problem has been technically resolved, fans are still not satisfied with the result. They have posted on forums, “If the ‘bully rumors’ are false, why are you releasing her from the group?” “The assaulter gets to remain and the victim has to go?” and “Your basing it off the opinions of 19 staff members?”

More than 6,300 fans dropped out of the official fan club. Over 231,1000 members are apart of the T-Jinyo (We Demand the Truth from T-ARA) club. Not only that, but T-ara’s largest online fan community, t-arafan.com announced that they will be shutting down the cafe on August 15th.

The cafe operator posted: “I have decided to shut down the fan site. Since it was my first time running a fan cafe, I’m sure [it wasn’t perfect], and I want to thank all the members who have participated. I hope we can meet again if fate allows.”

Many of the brands have reported that they are currently receiving hundreds of calls and requests on their official homepages from fans claiming that they will be boycotting their products should they continue to use T-ara as their endorsement models. Companies such as Wild Roses, Tony Moly, and Daewoo Securities and National Police Agency have already discussed ending their contracts with T-ara.

Other fans have actually visited the stores to express their boycott, causing stores to take down all of their T-ara posters from the walls.

What do you guys think about this whole controversy? Are you picking a side?