MONSTA X's Staff Wrongfully Accused for Mistreating the Members

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Screenshot from Monsta X Official Fan Cafe

Starship Entertainment gave the quickest feedback after being wrongfully accused of mistreating their artists.

Starship's swift feedback is being praised by many K-pop fans!

Yesterday, the behind scenes of MONSTA X's shooting their VCR clips for their fan concert were released on their V Live Channel Plus, exclusive content only provided for users who paid for the content.

While I.M is holding the camera and speaking, you can clearly hear a female voice calling MINHYUK in a slightly annoyed tone. MINHYUK immediately reacts to the staff as his smile disappears with a worried look on his face instead. As he holds his hand behind his back, the voice says "MINHYUK, do I look like a pushover to you?". I.M notices the cold atmosphere and quickly makes himself scarce.

Screenshot from Twitter

Fans were enraged by this harsh treatment from the staff and started to trend the hashtag #스타쉽_해명해(Starship_GiveAnExplanation) on Twitter last night.

The reason why fans were so furious has to do with something called 'military culture'. Military culture, or 군기(Goon-gi), is a Korean social mores where a person with higher status or someone who is older tends to bully people that they consider has lower status. It derives from the hierarchical structure of the military where everyone is divided by status and has to obey those in a higher rank.

Military culture in Korean is considered a serious problem that must be eliminated. However, because of its long history and how prevalent it still is in modern society, it is hard to get rid of.

Having to watch your favorite artist being mistreated is already a very upsetting thing no doubt, but the fact that the footage was shown in an exclusive content makes matters worse.

However, within a few hours, Starship Entertainment gave feedback on the footage and explained that it was a misunderstanding due to 2 different voices being mistaken as one.

They uploaded the original footage on MONSTA X's official fan cafe to show that the accusations toward them were untrue. Here is what they had to say.

"Hello. This is Starship Entertainment.

We have checked on the clip in question after receiving complaints on the matter and we would like to address them.

After looking into the video released on July 7th, we made sure that none of the accusations that were given by fans were true. The staff did not talk in an authoritative tone towards the artist in any way. During the shooting for the VCR, there were approximately 40 people including the artists and staff. Staff 1 was talking with the artist (MINHYUK) to discuss the next shooting, and staff 2 was having a conversation with another person. The two voices clashed and the rest of the footage was not included in the video which brought the confusion. Therefore we would like to show you the original footage in two different versions."

Photo from online community

As seen in the video, the female voice which sounded as if she was being angry toward MINHYUK actually said "MINHYUK~ Can you write 'Queen' here?" and the reason he held his hand behind his back was to reach toward the heater to make his hands warm. The other voice which said "Do I look like a pushover to you?" was spoken by a different staff, who was talking to another staff, not the artists.

Netizens who had been watching the whole incident reacted "Starship did a good job giving feedback so quickly" and "I feel so bad for the staff since they were criticized so much for something they didn't do".

By Flora Lee and Bongbong voomvoomk@gmail.com