Hyomin was the first to speak up, and she said, “There were rumors that I was a thug when I went to school. I just hung out with kids who weren’t the nicest kids, but that was it. There are also rumors that I was forced to move schools because I had hit another student. I never hit anyone. I’d rather someone come out and say that I hit them.” Hyomin revealed that she had moved schools, but it wasn’t because she had hit someone. She explained, “My mom decided that I should switch schools because she wanted to pursue a better education for me. It’s not related to violence at all. The reason why I didn’t say anything back then was because I didn’t want people to look down on my friends because of me.”
The girls also admitted that they had an argument with Hwayoung during the SNS controversy. However, Eunjung asserted that there was no bullying, saying, “People might think so if you just read everything that’s online. But even I was rumored to being bullied. To be honest, we had an argument with Hwayoung for about 2 days during the incident. But it was wrong of us to publicly make statements through Twitter. It was wrong to write about the topic, period. The more we stayed silent, the rumors and misunderstandings kept growing. It was so bad that even we were getting confused. I thought I’d lived without any regrets, but I was pained because I felt I’d become a bad person.”
On all the hate comments they received, Eunjung said, “Whenever articles about us come out, we get a ton of hate comments. At first, I just read it out of curiosity… but I can’t read it anymore because the more I read, the more energy I lose.”
Hyomin added, “The worst one was when Soyeon unni got into a car accident, and someone wrote, ‘she should have just died’. There were others who said the entire accident was made up. It was such a bad accident that she got tossed out of the car.”
On their ‘Music Bank‘ controversy, Hyomin spoke up to say, “After we argued in Japan, we had a ‘Music Bank’ schedule right away. It was so awkward. After we came back to Korea, we had a conversation with Hwayoung for about 40 minutes. I didn’t want to have fights when it was a stage we were dreaming of. After Hwayoung left, we had an official schedule, but we couldn’t say anything because of the circumstances. We wanted to say something so badly that it even came out in our dreams. I just wanted to say two things: ‘I’m sorry, and I’ll work harder’. But if we tried to explain ourselves back then, the situation would have just gotten worse. But we really wanted to. We wanted to admit the parts that were true, that they weren’t false, and then take time off to self reflect. But in the end, we just became the kids who didn’t care.”
Jiyeon also expressed her apologetic heart to Hwayoung and said, “We had been together for over 3 years, so Hwayoung might have had difficulties being with us. She probably had a hard time adjusting.” She and the other members added, “If we truly hated her, we wouldn’t have even argued. But we disappointed her and made her feel lonely. No matter the reason, we’re sorry and also apologize to have created a disturbance as public figures.”
On the topic of bullying ‘evidence’ and the immense amount of photos and video clips that circulated the web, Eunjung discussed the video of her ‘force feeding’ Hwayoung rice cake. She was even given the nickname ‘rice-cake Eunjung’ because of the video.
She explained, “That was done all for fun. When we were on a Japanese TV show, the host told us we should make it funny, and as part of the members of the losing team on the show, I was supposed to feed rice-cake to someone on the winning team. I thought about who I could give the rice-cake to for the best reaction. Qri and Hyomin were there as well but they don’t have much of a reaction, so I thought that Hwayoung, who would probably give the best reaction, would be best. So I purposefully made my own facial expression like that and fed her the rice-cake to make it as fun as possible. I didn’t think it would become so big later.”
Jiyeon agreed as she added, “The program was designed it so it would be more entertaining.“ Eunjung continued, “I really like rice cakes, but I can’t eat it outside anymore. The nickname ‘rice-cake Eunjung’ hurt me a lot, but after the mistake during the judging for the Olympics, I was able to laugh and heal a bit thanks to funny mentions on Twitter like ‘rice-cake Eunjung go go!’, and also with students telling me ‘Eunjung unnie, I’m taking my test today, can you feed me some rice-cake’. I was able to endure it like that.”
