Recently, an online news outlet that is a subsidiary of the MBC broadcasting company, iMBC, deleted an article and issued an official apology after receiving criticism for posting a mocking headline regarding kalguksu ‘controversy’ involving Minji.
On the 22nd of January, iMBC announced through their community site that they had taken immediate action by deleting the photo article related to NewJeans that had caused controversy and promised to make every effort to manage their content to prevent such incidents from happening again.
This is in relation to the tweet iMBC recently put out about Minji which included a headline that mocked the idol for her kalguksu controversy, the tweet seemed to combine the words “kalguksu” hinting at the highly exaggerated controversy. The headline prompted massive backlash from fans who demanded iMBC issues an apology to address the situation.
Minji had previously addressed the kalguksu controversy and issued an official apology through a fan communication application on the 16th. The decision to address the issue was made after Minji’s comment during a recent live broadcast where she said she had no idea what kalguksu is.
Many fans believe its ironic that a news outlet that should be pointing out cyberbullying ended up creating secondary harassment by posting such headlines.
Once the article was shared on online portals, thousands of posts with the English phrase “MBC should apologize to Minji” were uploaded on platforms like X (Twitter). Interestingly, it was the international fans of NewJeans who actively spoke out more than domestic fans.
Source: (A)
