Chinese Billionaire Allegedly Bought T-ARA Members Expensive Cars, Here's What Really Happened

On January 8, MBC’s Section TV reported that the president of Banana Culture Entertainment, Chinese billionaire Wang Sicong, paid MBK Entertainment ₩9 billion KRW (~$8.5M USD) for T-ARA’s promotions in China and gifted each member a super luxury sports car.

According to T-ARA and Banana Culture Entertainment, however, the rumors are false.

T-ARA’s Qri, Eunjung, Hyomin, and Jiyeon released an official statement through their personal Instagram accounts and it reads as follows:

“Hello.

This is T-ARA’s Qri, Eunjung, Hyomin, and Jiyeon.

We don’t have a company to act on our behalf, so after contemplating and gathering courage, we decided to inform you here.

We personally contacted Wang Sicong (Banana Culture) through Weibo regarding the articles that reported that our members received supercars and 9 billion Won, and received a formal response that the reports are false and totally groundless.

We hope that the agency and all of the employees who have worked hard with us since our debut will not be negatively affected by this groundless rumor. The four members’ official position is that we hope we can continue to greet you with the name ‘T-ara’ and hope all of this can be peacefully resolved.

Thank you for reading.”

Banana Culture Entertainment, which managed the group’s activities in China since 2016, also released a formal statement through Weibo.

“1. What the members mentioned in Weibo (9 billion KRW contract fee, gifting each person a supercar) is not true.

2. All of the information reported by some news outlets is false. We suffered damage due to these reports and are considering exercising our legal rights.

3. T-ara’s contract with the Chinese management company and MBK Entertainment expired on December 31, 2017, and was not renewed.

4. During the duration of the contract, T-ara members actively cooperated.”

— A legal representative of Wang Sicong