Weverse Magazine has released a statement regarding HYBE’s recently leaked “music industry report.”
Last month, it was revealed during a National Assembly audit that HYBE had a weekly “music industry report” that was circulated among high-ranking executives of the company. The approximately 18,000-page document included malicious comments about K-pop artists from various agencies, and about 20 pages of the report were fully leaked online, resulting in strong backlash from the public.
Following the leak, HYBE CEO Lee Jae Sang released a lengthy apology in which he stated that the document was created “as part of a process to retrospectively gather various reactions and public opinions on industry trends and issues.” However, he acknowledged that “the content was highly inappropriate” and stated that he would take full responsibility.
On November 10, Weverse Magazine released a statement confirming that its former editor-in-chief had been responsible for the controversial document. However, Weverse Magazine firmly stated that none of its other staff had been involved in or even aware of the document’s production.
The statement explained that the former editor-in-chief—who has since been removed from his position—had worked on the document separately, outside of his work on the magazine.
Weverse Magazine’s full statement is as follows:
This is the Weverse Magazine team.
We sincerely apologize for causing discomfort and concern to the users who care for Weverse magazine due to the situation that arose because of the monitoring document.
We would like to make clear several facts related to this matter:
• The document in question was something the former editor-in-chief worked on separately, so the Weverse Magazine staff were not even aware of the existence of the document.
• With the exception of the former editor-in-chief, neither the staff involved in the production of Weverse Magazine nor the external writers have ever participated in writing the monitoring document.
• The former editor-in-chief was removed from his position and has been prohibited from any further involvement in Weverse Magazine. As for the workers who were separately tasked with monitoring by the former editor-in-chief, their work has been suspended as well.
We are stating clearly that Weverse Magazine has nothing to do with the controversial monitoring document, and the members of the Weverse Magazine team are opposed to the document in question.
In spite of this, we apologize once again for being mentioned in regards to this unsavory matter and causing discomfort to users.
Weverse Magazine promises to repay our readers with even deeper and more abundant content in the future.
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