Pledis Entertainment Releases Further Update On Investigation Into Rumors About SEVENTEEN's Mingyu

On March 21, Pledis Entertainment released an additional statement giving an update on their investigation into rumors about SEVENTEEN’s Mingyu’s student life.

On February 22, someone posted online claiming to have been bullied by Mingyu during elementary and middle school, which Pledis denied. After other posts with similar allegations arose, Pledis again denied specific allegations but announced that Mingyu would be halting activities while the agency investigated the posts in more detail. In an update on March 12, Pledis reaffirmed that Mingyu had not participated in bullying and said that misunderstandings with the poster had been resolved after face-to-face discussions.

The following is Pledis’s March 21 statement:

Hello, this is Pledis Entertainment.

We would like to provide additional information on what we have been able to confirm regarding SEVENTEEN member Mingyu.

The agency contacted the person who claimed that our artist had stood by and laughed as one of their middle school classmates was being assaulted. Although the poster wrote as if they were a witness in order to remain anonymous, the poster had in fact been directly involved in the incident. 

After listening to the poster’s account of events, the agency worked to confirm the facts with the people who were said to be involved in the incident, along with testimonies submitted to the agency by graduates of the school.

First, the artist clearly stated that he had no memory of the incident described by the poster and that he had never encouraged assault against another student by watching, laughing, and making derogatory comments. The poster named their attackers, so we checked the statements from the perpetrators as well as those students who were presumed to be witnesses to the incident. No one recalled the incident as happening as claimed by the poster.

The poster remembered a friend having been with them at the time of the incident and contacted them, but the friend replied that they also had no memory of the event. As there was no one who could recall the incident described by the poster, the poster contacted the agency to inform us that they would no longer continue the issue.

It is deeply concerning that this kind of claim was published online based only on someone’s memories, and that the issue is coming to an end because the memories of the event were shown to be uncertain. While it is fortunate that this and all previous incidents were shown to have no relation to our artist, it is troubling to think that there are many people who have received both serious and minor scars from this kind of claim, as well as the time and effort required to respond to these claims. However, during the agency’s discussions with the poster, it appeared that the poster had been scarred by abusive incidents that occurred during their student life that had nothing to do with our artist, so we decided to wrap up the incident without taking further action after the truth had been clearly revealed.

As of now, the agency has wrapped up all discussions and contact with those people who could be identified as relating to this issue. We will provide further updates if any additional information is made available.

Source (1)