Frank Kogan

Why say that something bad "likely" happened? And why assume that there was any bullying (if that's what you're assuming)?

Not that something bad might not have happened, or that there might not have been bullying. And I wasn't following this story from the start (on Saturday night, which would've already been Sunday afternoon in Korea, I decided to catch up with Music Core and Music Bank, noticed on the YouTube sidebar a video of Hyomin falling onstage last week, did a search of allkpop to find out more about that, found this instead). But the way the "bullying" story developed seems to be:

(1) The tweets happened, which essentially were four people saying that another didn't show enough determination — which in itself hardly seems like bullying, though maybe it's bullying in the context of this group's particular dynamics that of course I wouldn't know about: but I think I can tell bullying from a hole in the ground, and it's generally when you tease or ridicule or threaten or deride someone in order to hurt or humiliate her and make her feel weak, not when you admonish or express your frustration at someone for not trying hard enough, or you urge her to do better.

(2) Netizens interpreted the tweets as bullying in and of themselves. So this isn't yet a rumor so much as an interpretation, a decision about what happened.

(3) The word "bullying" is such a gravitational force that thousands upon thousands are drawn to it: the story of four people picking on another, ostracizing her, victimizing her. For all I know this has to do with people's feelings about Jiyeon too, the roles she's played and so forth, people willing to think of her as a bitch. I don't know, haven't spent much time following that aspect of the group. But I'd say that the engine here is the bullying story itself, something in the culture (which culture? Korea's? the industrialized world's?) — that is, the bullying story doesn't arise from rumors about T-ara; rather, the appeal of the story is what inspires people to create the rumors, to let their imaginations go, the story affixing itself to T-ara in this instance. Ambiguous incidents in the past are "discovered" and given only one possible interpretation. None of which necessarily means that Hwayoung wasn't ostracized or bullied, just that the story of her being ostracized and bullied precedes anyone's discovery of evidence for it, the story rather than the evidence being the driver here.

By the way, two things that I haven't found, my being late to the dance: (i) What date the Music Bank performances were recorded (as opposed to the date they aired). If it's the same day as the broadcast, then it's two days after the original tweets. Whereas if it's before the tweets, the tweets make more sense. (The Music Core performance that aired the next evening, on the 28th, has all eight members, obviously recorded back before Hwayoung was hurt.) [UPDATE: Wikip says Music Bank is live. Not that I automatically believe Wikip, but it's usually right. Also, something can be recorded live but air later, and sometimes people use the word "live" for that. Ambiguous. But I suppose that, since Music Bank awards the week's top group at the end of the show, they have to genuinely do at least that live or the winner's name would leak.] (ii) An actual news report (as opposed to a Netizen saying something on a blog or in a forum), quoting the actual words Kim Kwang-soo used, detailing his claim that the twitter accounts were hacked (but the translations that get run are often so bad that I'm not sure I should trust them anyway). I'm painting a picture in my mind of Kim Kwang-soo being a total jackass, at least in his interface with the public (I mean, obviously he — or someone — was doing something right with T-ara over the last three years.) I don't want to make the same mistake as so many others, to believe that something said about this affair is true merely because lots of other people say so. But if Kim Kwang-soo did make that claim about the hacking, you have to wonder why someone doesn't remove him. Whom does he answer to at Mnet?

Also, where's Soyeon? Seems to me, if you're "leader" of the group, you need to (or get to) lead. (Naive question?)