Kim Sohye’s Agency Releases Additional Statement Regarding The Investigation Process Of The Alleged Bullying Victim

Previously, former I.O.I member Kim Sohye’s agency S&P Entertainment, released a statement about the rumors and current status on the situation. They revealed that the netizen who posted the false rumor online had submitted an apology letter and appealed for leniency.

Most recently, the agency has posted an additional statement to clear up any misunderstanding. Below is the full statement.

Hello this is S&P Entertainment. Although we have released a statement earlier revealing the details of the investigation, we will share some more details. As of July 2021, a decision has been made to transfer the posts that are recognized as criminal charges to the police station. As mentioned earlier, it is true that the person spreading the false rumors was also the perpetrator of the school violence case. We will continue to monitor the progress and cooperate with the investigation until a final conclusion is reached.

Additionally, we will inform you about the decision not to appeal and the related facts surrounding it. 

First of all, the assertion that we made a proposal to ‘drop the complaint if they take down the post’ is not true. On May 20, 2021, we received a notification from the investigator that the lawyer of the suspect has expressed their intention to come to an agreement. However, an agreement could not be reached because there was no consensus on the content that was different from the facts. From the beginning, the original post contained different or distorted contents from the actual truths, which is why we requested an investigation.

As mentioned in the previous statement, a school violence committee was held during the first year of middle school due to a dispute with students from another school. Since the person who posted the article was a third party and not the actual poster, we are a bit careful on elaborating on the details, but this may lead to misunderstanding so we will explain in more detail.

Before the incident, the two parties only talked and greeted one another, and they started a quarrel due to a simple misunderstanding because they did not know each other’s personalities well. Afterwards, while grabbing each other’s hair, the poster fell to their knees. There were no other assaults other than this fight. As a result of this incident, the perpetrator was investigated and received a written apology.

Aside from the written apology, they also set up a separate meeting place and made a formal apology in person and talked for a long time about their misunderstandings. We deeply apologize once again for hurting them through foolish actions during an inexperienced time. 

Since then, not only the facts related to the events above, but also fictional rumors have started to be twisted and spread online. In addition to this case, it is not true that Kim Sohye maliciously harassed others and continued to be a perpetrator of school violence. Apart from this, we would like to reiterate that the spread of false rumors by one of the perpetrators is also not false.

At this point, false rumors depicting things that did not actually happen are being created, so we will actively respond to the new spread and reproduction of groundless rumors as we have done before. Thank you.

—  S&P Entertainment