#373: Burning Sun’s K-Pop Idols Released From Prison - Now Trying To Make Comeback & Open New Club
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So let Instacart shoppers overthink your groceries so that you can overthink...

What you'll wear on that third date. Download the Instacart app to get free delivery on your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Something very strange happened in Gangnam, South Korea. Something very puzzling for the investigators involved. They received a call that a safe had been stolen from a recently deceased person's home.

The police show up to investigate. They check the house's CCTV cameras. And yeah, sure enough, a masked man with a hat on is seen breaking into the house. But it's not that simple. They end up leaving with this small safe. But the strangest part initially in all of this is the man, before he even breaks into the house through the second floor balcony, he walks up to the front door, jiggles the handle, then puts in a code to try to gain access to the house.

The code is wrong, but it could be because the deceased family members had recently changed it. But that would indicate that this person knew the homeowner. Why would someone rob a dead person? Even more puzzling is what's inside the safe. Inside the safe, there are a few pieces of jewelry, investment documents, and old cell phones. So three things.

Let's say the thief wants the jewelry. That would mean that the thief's whole motive is to get money, right? I mean, nothing else in the house was taken, though. That doesn't make sense. All these designer bags and other expensive luxury goods are sitting right next to the safe in the closet. They are left untouched, just left. That's very, very strange. So if they're not stealing the safe for the jewelry, are they going for the investment documents?

Well, that doesn't make sense either because there would be virtually no way for the thief to gain anything from those investment documents. They could not be able to transfer a single cent, a single penny to their name. They could not pretend to be the deceased to gain access to their funds because the home and the safe belongs to a high-profile K-pop idol, Kuara, who recently passed. There would be nothing that they could do with these investment documents. It was just way too high-profile of a death.

That just leaves one last thing in the safe. The old phones. Was there something on the phones that someone did not want the rest of the world to see? And does it have anything to do with the fact that months before Kuhara died, before she passed, she helped expose the Burning Sun scandal?

We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Megan Meyer Foundation. Since its inception, they have grown into a global cyberbullying and self-exit prevention foundation. They provide education, intervention, resources, support, and inspire communities to eradicate bullying once and for all. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. And we'd also like to thank you guys, our listeners, for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates.

As always, full show notes are available at rottenmanglepodcast.com. A couple disclaimers in today's case. There is heavy subjects including bullying, self-exit, essay, and abuse through blackmail of releasing explicit photos and videos without one's consent.

If that is something that might be too heavy for you, please go take care of yourself and we will see you in the next one. There is also a part one and part two to the series, which will all be linked in the description. I highly recommend watching those first before this episode. And if you have already watched them, I'm going to try to give you a somewhat brief recap before we get into today's episode, which will be the part three and hopefully final part of the Burning Sun case.

In the very first episode of Burning Sun, we talked about how it was the IT nightclub in South Korea in pretty much all of 2018. If you wanted to be seen, you go to Burning Sun. If you wanted to see a celebrity, you go to Burning Sun. It was as close as you could possibly get into running into an idol on Saturday night, a random Saturday. The VIP tables at Burning Sun would cost anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000.

But the true VIP menu was a complete secret. That's not even the real VIP menu. The only thing on the secret menu is a tall glass of water. Water refers to a hot drunk girl. The VIPs will tell employees that they want a glass of water. The employees then go searching in the club to find a girl that seems more or less unlikable.

alone somebody that's easy to slip away from her friends someone who's already drunk they lure her if not basically drag her at times into the vip rooms in the back where the vips are left to do whatever they want with these girls which typically it involved sa and the filming of sa

One text message between two employees reads, the VIP room is looking for a hot girl. Okay, looking for one right now. He's chasing me. Help me find one quick. Don't even need a hot girl anymore. Just looking for one that looks out of it. Okay, we'll look for one of those then. Help me hit a home run, please. The employees were incentivized. They said that if they were able to get a girl to be essayed by a VIP, they would get a big bonus, a massive tip.

But it takes a lot for somebody to be in that state where they don't recall most of the details of the night before. They don't even remember a face. So the employees would sometimes just slip a drug into the woman's drinks. So, you know, when you go to a bar, you get nervous that you're going to get roofied by somebody at the bar, like another club goer. So you cover your drink. At Burning Sun, it's alleged that the bartenders would just roofie your drink. Just straight up. They give you the drink with a roofie in there. And then eventually you get dragged into the VIP room.

A former employee said, "The date rape drug GHB was used a lot. Normally the customers that used it were in private rooms. There was this room incredibly deep in the club. There were lots of guards outside the room and whatever happened in there, no one else would hear a thing." I saw a woman unconscious after being given GHB at Burning Sun pretty much almost every single day.

One employee said if a VIP told the employees to bring that girl, they would just point at a random girl in the club, in the crowd. They will do whatever it takes to bring that girl in an unconscious state to the VIP room.

Burning Sun is one of the biggest scandals of the K-pop world, considering one of the four co-directors of the club is Seungri, a member of one of the most iconic K-pop boy groups of all time. He and a few of his other male idol friends, not from Big Bang, used Burning Sun almost like their playground?

Burning Sun was used to victimize women in an effort to get investors to invest more into Seungri and the guys' businesses. But there's also another element to this case, the group chats.

Many of the male idols that we're talking about today are involved in this Kakao Talk group chat where they would send each other these videos and photos of themselves having intimate relations with women that typically in the videos, they seem unconscious. Sometimes it's semi-unconscious. Most of the time it's fully unconscious. It seems like they don't know what's happening to them. Obviously, they don't even know that they're being filmed.

At first, it was debated by a lot of Seungri fans that Seungri himself was only part of the Burning Sun scandal rather than both, and that the inappropriate chat rooms, completely different story. But a new BBC documentary that came out a few months ago released irrefutable proof that he indeed was part of those video group chats. He was sent a video of one of those men assaulting a woman at a ski resort. This woman does not appear to be conscious. And he responded to it, who is it?

Additionally, a new video of Seungri has been released that shows him dragging a woman towards his table, a woman who clearly is trying to resist. She's using all of her body weight to resist going with him, but he screams at her, shut up, shut up, follow me.

In part one, we go through the inner workings of the club, how it starts unraveling near the end of 2018 when a random club goer, a very controversial club goer, is seen on CCTV camera being hit by an employee of Burning Sun. In part two, which was uploaded a week ago, we do a deep dive on how that man, the controversial club goer that was hit by the staff, was not actually the real whistleblower of Burning Sun like the mainstream media depicted him to be.

But in fact, the five real whistleblowers in this case are five women. In 2016, the first whistleblower was JJY's girlfriend. JJY is one of the main idols involved in the secretly filming video group chats. A girlfriend of JJY's walks into the police station to report that her boyfriend, this famous celebrity, JJY, had been filming her without her consent in these inappropriate situations.

The police go to investigate and JJY, his phone is conveniently broken. But since he's such a stand-up guy, he's going to take it to a third-party tech shop to try and recover all of his files so that he can prove to the police that no such file of his girlfriend exists. The second whistleblower would be the girl that works at that said tech shop. She wishes to remain anonymous, but against fear for her own life,

Okay, just some context here. Korea is not the place that you go up against someone that has more money than you. Money almost always wins. It's actually known that when you want to pick a fight with someone, you consider your status and their status first.

You've got to think about who your parents are, how much money you have, where you live, all of these things before you pick a fight. Like that's a saying because it's that difficult. Against all of that, she recovered all the files on JJY's phone, realized, wow, okay, this K-pop idol, JJY, and all of his other famous and powerful friends are doing some crazy, shady, illegal things. She copies everything.

secretly copies all the evidence into three USB drives and she keeps it for three years until she finally turns it in anonymously to an attorney. The third woman, a whistleblower, is reporter Park.

In 2016, she reported on the fact that JJY was being investigated by the police because his girlfriend alleged that he had recorded videos of her. Since at that point, she doesn't have any concrete evidence or proof. Even just reporting on the allegation makes her receive these relentless attacks and cyberbullying. Reporter Park was doxxed.

bullied harassed her number was leaked she was scared for her life for two years straight it was relentless she was actually targeted by a group called the anti-feminist group in south korea i mean i think the name says it all they're literally anti-feminist they think feminism is ruining the country yeah in korea out of all countries yeah

So she was scared for her life for two years straight. It was relentless, like I said, to the point that she miscarried twice and lost her ability to conceive. The fourth whistleblower was reporter King. She actually starts reporting on Burning Sun three years after reporter Park. She saw what happened to reporter Park. Reporter Park almost lost her career. It ruined her life. And reporter King still took her attorney's friend's request.

She gets a call from an attorney friend and he's like, something very strange happened. I opened up the mailbox at the office, the law office. We have three USB drives of very suspicious videos on there. We need to investigate.

In 2019, she starts sorting through all the evidence and writing articles on it. However, she realizes she can't take this to the police. I mean, yeah, she can write articles, but without releasing concrete proof and getting the police involved, it sounds fake. It sounds like, oh, well, this sounds like a crazy allegation against some of the biggest idols. How do we know we can trust this woman? She can't take it to the police, though, because according to the group chats, the guys have a higher up in the police involved that, quote, helps their problems magically disappear.

Who knows whose hands this case is going to end up in if she turns it in. Perhaps it'll magically disappear as well. So that means she needs to figure out who this police official is. But she's stuck. Nobody wants to help her with this case. Nobody wants to get involved. It's so high profile. It's messy. It's got elements of sex and feminism and like things people just want to stay away from. It seems like too much trouble. Until she receives a call from Kuhara, a K-pop idol who recently tried to self-exit.

And she tells reporter Kang she wants to help. She was friends with fellow K-pop idol Choi of FT Island who was part of those group chats with the inappropriate videos. And she believed that she could probably get him to tell her the name of the police official. It's actually only through Koo Hara that reporter Kang is able to get that name. And then a few months later, Koo Hara is found dead in her apartment.

In part two, we go in depth on a few people's careers. But just to give you the briefest of brief recaps, in the Burning Sun case, the most notable K-pop idols involved are Seungri of Big Bang. He's probably the most famous and more influential and powerful. Then you have JJY of Drug Island and Choi of FT Island. So JJY, he was part of a rock band. I think his image was...

Bad boy music, but still a softie. That was his image before this whole Burning Sun case. Choi of FT Island had the boy next door, innocent boy image. That was his whole shtick. Seungri was the underdog of Big Bang. He wasn't the most beloved at the time. So a lot of people were rooting for him. It was also stated that he had the best business acumen out of all of the Big Bang members. So all of these guys are fully loved throughout their entire careers.

Then we went in depth on Koo Ara's life career. She debuted with a group called KARA, but because of one single relationship that she had with this other male idol, she starts being labeled as a relationship idol, which in Korea, this is basically a way to kill your career. Nobody cared that she practiced for 10 hours a day. Nobody cared that she learned English and Japanese just for her job. She learned two additional languages. Nobody cared about any of that.

because she was photographed with guys. Once in a while, she would have lunch with a guy and that became her whole image. She was known as someone who is so boy obsessed. Then in 2018, news broke that she assaulted her boyfriend, physically assaulted him when he tried to break up with her. His name is Choi Jung-pom. We're gonna call him CJ.

He's just a random nobody. He's a hairdresser in Gangnam. They're dating. He stated, I tried to break up with Hara. She threw a fit. She started beating me up.

Slowly, news starts trickling out to indicate, okay, that's not exactly what happened. CJ was a very jealous, toxic, manipulative, terrifying boyfriend. Hara didn't want another fight with him, so she lied about having lunch with a male coworker because, I mean, it's literally a work meeting, but she knew that he was going to flip out, so she lied. He finds out, breaks into her house in the middle of the night, starts beating her. She fights back, scratching his face, screaming at him. And that night, he emails dispatch, a Korean tabloid, twice.

to tell them, I have crazy information on Kuhara that's not going to disappoint. So you reach out to me. He also sends Kuhara two videos with no words, just two videos that he recorded while they were being intimate. I mean, the implication is very clear. He's threatening to ruin her career with them.

Cuara goes public with this information in the end of 2018. By 2019, CJ apologizes on his Instagram and opens up a new salon. Cuara gets bullied for getting plastic surgery and she attempts to self-exit. She gets bullied after all of this.

And even after all of that, after all the mistrust in the industry that she has, she still reaches out to Reporter Kang to help with exposing Burning Sun, going up against her own friends, going up against powerful guys in the industry to help bring them down. She was probably, at her time, one of the most hated K-pop idols ever.

Hated. People just did not like her because she did not do what they wanted her to do. She and her friend, Soli, were probably the most hated celebrities at one point. Her best friend, Soli, is another K-pop idol we talked about in part 2. She debuted with a massive girl group called f .

but her career comes crumbling down because it's revealed that she's dating Choiza, a rapper whose nickname refers to his large private parts, but he's 33 at the time. She's 19. They have a 14-year age gap, and the public starts taking it out on Sully, calling her a sex addict, a slut, a whore. They ask her where her mom is.

And instead of backing down and apologizing, Sully just keeps trying to live her life. And people do not like that. They're really upset about that. So in this episode, we're going to go in depth on the careers of all these idols and how they start clashing and how Sully and Kuhara end up passing away within a month of each other. And how there are rumors that Seungri is trying to open up another club right now since he's been released from prison. He's trying to open up basically another Burning Sun.

I implore you to watch part one and especially part two before watching this episode so things will make a lot more sense and you get a fuller picture of the events. But with that being said, let's get into it. We're going to start going from 2015 through 2019 through the timeline of events and how everything escalates into three idols in jail and two gone.

In 2015, Sulli is being bullied for dating Choiza. Meanwhile, her best friend Kuhara is dealing with this whole new scandal. The scandal of being too financially literate.

Koo had his bandmates. They went on this show and they said that, oh yeah, we nicknamed her the queen of financial skills. She had saved up most of the money that she earned. She bought this single family house in Gangnam for, at the time it was like $838,000. She didn't even live there. She rented it out making $5,400 a month.

And then she sold it for $1.5 million. So she made both rental income on that property and capital gains on the investment property. I mean, she's been doing this with multiple investment properties throughout Seoul. A real estate agent would later say, the locations Kuada chooses are really optimal. She's able to pinpoint areas where land prices are expected to rise steadily.

This is impressive considering previously netizens commented that "Kuara has no talent whatsoever" Well now those same netizens are pissed. They comment: "These clowns earn way too much money. She acts like a psycho attention whore, but the reality is she's just super rich. What the fuck?" "It seems like she's doing this to cut back on her taxes. Athletes and celebrities get paid way too much." "Talk about luck. She's literally good at nothing for a kid not even an ounce of talent. Ugh."

Guada literally cannot win. I do want to say that both Hara and Sully had their fan base, obviously, that loved them and would go to war for them. But that group was nothing going up against the amount of hate that the hateful group was sending. I mean, they would flood their comment section.

Meanwhile, Seungri starts organizing sex services in 2015 for Japanese investors. Two brothers, Japanese investors were flying into South Korea to meet with Seungri. Seungri made sure to prepare an itinerary for them a month in advance. A luxury car would pick them up from Incheon airport with sex workers inside. They would be driven to a luxury hotel where the sex workers would further provide additional services, mainly whatever the brothers wanted.

2015. So that's way before, three years before Burning Sun. Yes. Do we know what kind of business he was doing? He was opening up other bars. He had one bar called Mil-Tang Po-Cha. He had two bars slash clubs called Monkey Museum, one in Korea and one in China before Burning Sun.

He was always trying to start these businesses. He has ramen shops. He has restaurants. Yeah. That's crazy because you would think he already probably has a lot of money. Yeah. He has all the influence, all the clout. Whatever restaurant or bar he opens, people will go. It seems like he has a... And I mean this with the most disrespect possible. I think that he has an inferiority complex.

Because all of the other Big Bang members, a lot of them are talented or a lot of them are talented and very conventionally attractive. He was known in Korea at the time, I recall, as being the one that just didn't really have either.

Yeah, yeah, I remember. He was like the last member to be added on, I believe. Yeah, so a lot of people felt that he wasn't necessarily that talented at singing or dancing or stage performance. And they added that he wasn't the most conventionally attractive in the group. So there are other group members that are considered not conventionally attractive because that's literally how K-pop works. But they're so talented at singing.

That they're so beloved. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I think either way, if he's talented or not good looking or not. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He already has all the success. Exactly. Like he's already made it. Any business he opened, he's made it. Why are you still doing all these things?

I don't even know if it's just money. Trafficking women, doing all of these things. It's just evil. It's evil. I think it's ego. He would rather be evil and try to get a little bit more over people. Because, I mean, think about it. If you join a group and you're still making so much money and you're not the most loved, I would just quietly be in the back dancing.

But no, he's like, he's got to be better than all of them. It's so weird. In December of 2015 and January of 2016, Seungri provided sexual services to Japanese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Korean investors 29 times in two months. This is also very illegal. Sex work is illegal in South Korea. It's actually considered sex trafficking at this point. So because he's facilitating it.

In 2016, Hara and Sulli have their first joint controversies. So 2016 is really when things start crumbling for the girls. This is just the start of a string of controversy surrounding the girls. And you're going to sit back in 2024 and think this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But just bear with me. In 2016, they post pictures from a personal photo shoot that they did together. So it's not done by their agencies.

One picture shows them both wearing these white crewnecks, just hoodies, posing in front of a white wall. Neither of them are smiling. It's all very aesthetic. But the photo that netizens have a problem with is they're both wearing the same shirt. So imagine an oversized t-shirt. They're facing each other and they've both put their heads in through the t-shirt hole for the head. They're sharing one shirt.

And it appears that they're naked underneath. It doesn't appear like they're wearing pants or anything, right? So they're both in the same shirt and they're both unclothed. But the main issue that netizens had is the shirt reads very clearly Johnson and Johnson's baby oil. Is this an ad? No. Oh, okay. Sully and Hara are accused of taking Lolita-esque pictures. The comments read they're basically infantilizing themselves is what the comments accuse them of.

Because baby oil, but yet they're naked. It's just the juxtaposition they said was very uncomfortable. A lot of the haters. I will say general consensus for this controversy in South Korea was a lot of people didn't like it. But you had a strong group of people that wanted them to basically be killed for it. Like a firing squad and everything. You would think that they killed a baby.

The comments read:

I hope Johnson & Johnson sues them. How dare they use a baby product for an inappropriate concept like this? Haters even went as far to email Johnson & Johnson to take legal action against the girls, which is the most insane thing. Like when haters email brands, it's just so bizarre to me. Another comment reads, I honestly thought the picture was maliciously photoshopped, but the source is actually Sully's Instagram.

Some angry netizens even went as far as boycotting all brands promoted by Sulli, even emailing Johnson & Johnson stating that they need to sue her. Sulli responds by posting a picture on Instagram and writing in her caption, Lolita, Lolita, don't go overboard, leave insult somewhere more appropriate, and just look at my pretty face instead.

So in Korean, it's kind of, it's more like a poem, I guess. Now, some netizens said the girls were promoting lolita culture and that the photo shoot itself was, quote, pedophilic and in bad taste. A few things to note here.

The photographer they worked with is pretty well known in the industry for his lolita style photo shoots. He has a whole controversy later for literal crimes but at this point nobody knew any of that. They just knew the photographer's name that did this. He loves lolita but the girls are the ones that are being burned at the stake for it. When this photographer, that's all he does. Some discourse would say yeah I mean I think most people can agree that the photo shoot

Maybe not the best thing they could have done, but some small discourse about it was, "What about the industry?"

I mean both these girls joined the industry when they were so young. They were sexualized in their youth before they were even of age and sold it to the mass markets. Nobody complained about being pedophilic then, but then the girls do something like this from their own free will. Again, not the best photo shoot, but they are seen as these wicked, evil, conniving, sexual, disgusting people who want there to be more disgusting men in the world, who want all children to suffer.

It's like the weirdest thing, like the assumptions and the lines that are drawn out of this are just abnormal. Meanwhile, JJY texts into his group chat, "Let's all meet together, go to a strip bar, and rape a girl in the car." 2016? Yeah. Other members of the group chat respond, "We already do that though." That's true, haha.

In another text message that year, JJY sends a video into the group chat. It appears to be a video taken of intimate relations he had with a woman, and she does not know that he took the video. He texts along with this video, "It's fucking hilarious that I fucking fucked her on the third floor hallway. Recorded the whole shit." Seungri and his friends open up a new establishment called "Mil-tang Po-cha" and through texts, they start talking about how they're going to evade taxes on the business,

Oh, there's this crazy gnarly quote in their text message where they go, fuck, this is why I love Korea. Basically saying they love Korea because it helps them evade the law. Instead of registering their new bar as a bar or club establishment where the taxes are higher, they said that they were going to establish it as a restaurant. And when people are dancing, because that's what you do at a club, he was just going to tell the government officials, they're just walking around. They're dancing in place. Yeah. Yeah.

Seungri sends nude photos of three fans he meets during his China fan meet. They're naked, laying in bed, and it's likely that he took it without their consent. He will actually be charged guilty of this photo later on. This is in 2016. Before. He sends a photo of three girls on the bed? Three of his Chinese fans after a Chinese fan meet. Which, think about the power imbalance. And then on top of that, it looks like it was taken without their consent.

In 2016, the guys go on that ski trip and they start sending multiple videos and photos of themselves having intimate relations with women that appear to be unconscious and unaware of what's happening to them. Seungri is not on the ski trip, but like I said, he is in that group chat. In 2016, another major incident takes place. JJY and his friends are at a fan meet.

After the fan meet, they end up calling up a woman they know. Some sources state that this woman is a fan. Some sources state that she's just a friend. Perhaps she could be both. Either way, the power imbalance is still there. They call her to come over and hang out with them at the hotel. But after that fan meet, she would later state she had a few drinks with them and she doesn't remember anything afterwards.

When she woke up, her head was aching and all her clothes were off. One of the guys was next to her and she started panicking and asked, what happened? What happened? And he's smiling at her, asking her, oh, you don't remember? And he just starts laughing in her face. She states she does not remember a single thing. She said her head was swollen. It felt like she banged it. The whole thing was just it was just humiliating and startling.

Like almost woke her up? Yeah. Wow. And then they respond,

That same year, in 2016, JJY's ex-girlfriend walks into a police station and reports that her boyfriend, K-pop idol, has taken explicit videos of her without her consent. Which, we go more in-depth on this one, but I will link those parts below. She goes to the police, he sends his phone, and journalist Reporter Park, remember? Starts writing about it, she gets death threats, it's a whole thing. This is all in 2016. That's crazy that that didn't even blow up in 2016, 17, 18 years.

Until later, until finally the burning sun thing happened. Until 2019. Right. In 2017, this is a big year for the people who hate on Sully and Guhara. Starting off in the beginning of 2017, Sully and Hara post a series of Instagram pictures. Now, I feel like these pictures would be really aesthetic now, but I guess in 2017, they're not the typical...

conventional pretty kpop selfies people were seeing back in the day. These photos look a little more avant-garde. Photography, editorial pictures rather than just modeling pictures. There are black and white photos of them, fresh face, no makeup on. This becomes a scandal. The comments are, I can't even read you most of them because they're really racist, but the gist of it is, stating that the girls look like they're part of a tribe.

Wait, what? Yeah, so I guess... What kind of photo is it? Just selfies of them not smiling, staring into the camera, and their hair is a little frizzy, and they have no makeup on. And people are hating because... Why? Stating that they look like... Just like racist comments, comparing them to... I don't know. Yeah, I can't even repeat. Wow. Haters are commenting that they look like refugees. Wow.

Someone comments, Sully has ugly eyes and Cuara looks like she's getting old. I bet all they do when they meet up is take pictures of each other. Hey, take a picture of me. They really have nothing going for them other than their skin tones because now that the photo's in black and white, it's just ugly. Basically saying they're only pretty because they're pale. Another person comments, are they on drugs? This is a scapegoat.

a scandal. Then there's Soju Gate. Sully and Hara are live streaming on Instagram. Both girls are in their early 20s, so well above the drinking age. I mean, this is legal. It's the two of them. It looks like they're home. They're eating Korean barbecue, giggling, having a good time when they look at the soju bottle and it's their friend on there, a fellow idol. So they're like, OK, then we got to do a taste test to support our friend. So the comments on this as they're drinking the soju reads, they don't seem normal in the head.

This is so sick. Dumb bitches only upload pictures of themselves drinking every day. One and the same, these two. They're both has-beens who try so hard to get attention. They're not even drunk. They're just like taking a shot of soju.

Then Kissgate. This is a whole scandal. The girls are celebrating Sully's 23rd birthday and there's these cute little gold balloons in the back. They're both wearing these matching dresses. Sully's in the pink version. Hara's in the blue version. Which, side note, the dresses are super cute. They're almost like what you would wear as a kid on your birthday, but not in like a weird infantilization way. Just, they're striped

t-shirts. It looks very casual. It's actually quite innocent attire for a 23rd birthday. They're both standing there side by side in front of the balloons live streaming and they're taking pictures and then they turn to look at each other and they jokingly pucker their lips and they lean in and they so barely touch their lips together. It reminds me of a kiss that a mom would give her toddler. Very like, like exaggerated, that type of kiss.

The comments read, Other comments are fully questioning their sexuality. They read, This was a controversy. A controversy.

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Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want.

I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way.

Those were the controversies the girls faced together in 2017. But Sulli is in a few controversies of her own that same year. The first controversy starts with an Instagram picture and an article is written about it titled, Does Sulli Dream of Becoming the Kim Kardashian of Korea?

What? The photo in question is of her laying on the floor mattress. There's like a mattress on the floor. She's wearing a slip dress. She's laying down and smiling at the camera. Again, the picture is only very sexual if you want it to be. It seems like she's hanging out with the girls and someone takes a photo of her. All of their scandals is very much girlhood.

Like, everything that they do are things that just girls typically do. She's laying on the floor chit-chatting with her girls. Someone takes a picture. She's not trying to be sexy. She's not trying to be perceived a certain way. She's literally just, like, eating popcorn with the girls. The birthday photo that they kiss, again, nothing is inherently sexual about it. It's just...

kind of how girls enjoy each other's company i guess you would say and i think these people are actually sexualizing them yes nothing is sexual about it yeah it's crazy i mean truly she i mean maybe she's not wearing pants but it's not like she's flashing anyone or posing in a suggestive manner on the floor mattress but the article written for this one picture reads on march 3rd sully posted a photo of herself lying down in a skimpy slip that went viral in the photos

Sully appears to be wearing no bottoms and her provocative pose sparked the sexual imagination. Sully's behavior is reminiscent of Kim Kardashian in the United States, constantly posting photos on social media that emphasize her sexuality, including close-ups of her body parts and revealing outfits. The article goes on to not so subtly, not so nicely, state that Sully is posting a lot of sexual photos and doing everything that she can but showcasing real talent. They say if she has any, we wouldn't know.

Comments on the article read, please don't ever compare her to Kim Kardashian. There's such a huge gap in their bodies to ever compare them to. Do you not see the major difference between her and Kim Kardashian? Like I said, their bodies are not even comparable.

Wait, so they're shitting on her because they're saying she's not even as sexy as Kim Kardashian? Yeah, because she's not even trying to be sexy. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. At least Kim Kardashian is voluminous. Sulli seems to think that she has a hot body with the way that she keeps exposing it all the time when she actually doesn't, which is what makes her even more annoying. Sulli is nothing more than an attention whore who has awakened to the life of having a big D.

I will say again, both the girls had steadfast supporters and fans. Most of the girlies are supporting them at this point. They're just like, just leave them alone is the sentiment. Let them do their thing. They're not hurting anybody. They're having fun. If that bothers you, just click off. But every little thing that they do becomes news and everyone wants to just hate on them. But by far, Sully's biggest controversy to date is Nipplegate.

That's what they call it. It's so dramatic. But she posted a picture of herself on Instagram wearing a pretty thick tank top. And through the fabric, I guess if you're staring quite hard, you can see the outline of her nipples. On another one where she's sitting in a long-sleeve shirt, you can see the outline again of her breasts. And both the outfits, not that it matters, are incredibly modest. Like they're just regular pieces of clothing. She just happens to not be wearing a bra.

But it seems like this is some netizens first time understanding human anatomy because one comment reads: "If I was her friend, I would tell her to delete Instagram. Why has she changed so much?" People are genuinely upset with her. One comment reads: "If I was her friend, I would tell her to delete Instagram. Why has she changed so much?"

This reminds me of the quote to, what was it? To ruin a woman is to call her a slut in public. That's it. That's all it takes. And that's what they're doing to Sully. And it's pretty clear the negative comments, the cyber bullying, it's getting to Sully. She posts on Instagram a picture promoting her boyfriend's new song. The picture itself, this is Choi Ja, her rapper boyfriend. And the picture itself is a funny image of her drinking soju. It's like a meme. And the caption reads,

There was a time when I thought it would be nice if I would never wake up from my sleep. Then my boyfriend showed me this song and it made me feel better and more stable. This is why I cried. I uploaded this post as a fan because the song was so good. Likely not helping Sulli's mental state at the time is later in 2017, Sulli and Choija will announce their breakup.

Meanwhile, Seungri, he's on top of the world. This is after he's facilitated the sex work of over 29 different women. This is after those text messages evading taxes for his business. He's made it onto the Forbes 30 under 30 list, obviously under his group Big Bang. But even outside of Big Bang's activities, he ends up opening up two new clubs, one in Seoul, another one in China. He also states that his ramen business is bringing in like $200,000 a month. Yeah.

Didn't you see the video that the Big Bang members were talking about him? Yes. Yeah. I get into it. It's a whole thing. But yeah, I mean, he ends up opening up two clubs, one in Seoul, one in China. Again, like I said, this is not Burning Sun, but this is one of his business ventures. It's called Monkey Museum, which will later be under investigation for suspicion of tax evasion. And he starts promoting his new business venture, a cancer diagnosis kit.

What? What?

But, but, he's going to develop a cancer diagnosis kit where you can just essentially take an at-home test to see if you have cancer using your urine.

G-Dragon tells him on stage to as nicely as he can on stage, shut up. Basically, stop talking. What? He tells him, don't talk about things unless you can confirm these things. Like, make sure you do testing before you start talking about it publicly. Oh, so he's talking about something that he's looking to do or he's planning on launching. Yes.

And G-Dragon was like, what are you talking about? And why are you doing this right now at a Big Bang event? Why are you talking like this? What are you talking about? And also, this is such a sensitive topic. Why? What are you even saying? You're not even someone in the medical field. Yeah. You're a random idol. Please stay in your lane. That's literally what G-Dragon is saying. But Seungri keeps going and stating that clinical trials were already complete. He would have a prototype March 2017, which he does not. And this was actually not a scandal at all.

This never came out, right? Okay. And it was not a scandal, even though it really should have been. 2018, the photographer that did the Lolita baby oil shirt, the photo shoot for Sully and Hara is investigated for sexually harassing a model. He is found guilty and sentenced to eight months in prison. The girls worked with him two years prior and had no clue about any of these allegations, but they would still be dragged in the mud for working with a guy like this after the fact. Oh, so he was...

Yes, two years after their photo shoot. But people bring back the girls. Yeah, and they're like, how dare you work with someone like this? Like, if you support people like this, you're obviously messed up. I can't believe you would ever reach out to him to do a photo shoot. You support the sexual harassment of other women? Yeah. Yeah.

Became a whole controversy all over again. In 2018, Kuhara has a rumored self-exit attempt. One news headline reads, self-exit attempt rumors. Kuhara reps say that she was getting treatment for a sleep disorder. The agency denies her self-exit attempt and it's unclear if it was or was not, although later she will have other attempts. But regardless, the comments read, as if she would die and leave all of her investment buildings behind. Ha ha.

Cueta seems way too greedy and self-centered to actually die. Oh yeah, she'd totally die and leave all that money behind, for sure. Do you guys know her net worth? Why would she leave any of that? Never worry for a celebrity, especially one that owns her own buildings. How to cure insomnia? Go do a hard labor job for a day and you'll sleep like a baby.

She'll sleep just fine if she works hard labor for two days and eats cup ramen in place of meals. I notice that people who are bored with nothing to do and no physical work in their lives, they have sleep disorders. She hasn't been working at all these days, so why does she have a sleep disorder? Does she just stay up all night playing games?

In 2018, Gu A-ra goes on a variety show called My Beauty Diary, and she meets a hairstylist, a celebrity stylist by the name of CJ Choi Jung-beom. He's known as the wannabe Yoo Ah-in, a South Korean actor that's very famous. CJ, the ex-boyfriend, has a pretty big reputation of being a pretty boy in Gangnam.

The two meet on a variety show and they start dating. Friends close to Hara would later say, "Things are just not going well." Even before the revenge video incident, they stated that when CJ would get drunk, his behavior would completely change. He was just this delusionally jealous boyfriend. Every time Hara would go out to work, he would accuse her of cheating on him and he would start these exhausting, never-ending arguments.

By the end of 2018, the situation with CJ will be made public, how he had threatened her with intimate videos of both of them and the search "Koo A-ra sex video" will start trending. By the end of the year, Koo A-ra does a fan meet and just compare this to JJY and Seungri's fan meets where they end up sending inappropriate videos after the fan meet. Seungri, it was illegal filming versus actual assault. But JJY, he was charged with getting R-word after the fan meet.

So just think about their fan meets. Kuara does a fan meet where she brings a letter that she wrote and at the end of the fan meet she gets up and she says, "There were so many things that this year happened from happy to sad and I also thought at one point it would be the end."

But then there were fans that encouraged me even in that situation. So I just want to express my sincere gratitude. I'm sorry for constantly making you guys worried. And thank you. There's still a lot more I want to do. And I'm going to keep going for all the fans that have been waiting. I'm going to be very active in Japan and Korea in the future. So thank you. And she starts tearing up.

Meanwhile, Burning Sun officially opens in 2018, has been open and operating with very a lot of success for most of the year. Throughout the year, women are going to the police to report suspicious activities and instances of having just one singular drink or a few sips of a drink straight from the bar, not having any recollection of the rest of the entire night. The police do nothing about it.

By the end of 2018, Burning Sun starts unraveling the situation with the guy that gets punched in the club gets released. Authorities start their investigation into the club and at first, Singley tries to play it off as a few employees who have gone rogue. They hit a club goer, he didn't know about this. But the deeper people start digging, a lot more starts coming out about just how shady this club actually is. It is at the end of 2018, the tech whistleblower will send three USB sticks to the attorney with all the evidence.

2019 is when everything starts falling apart. CJ is out using his opportunity to build a career out of the whole revenge video scandal. So this is Kuwata's ex-boyfriend. How are people not canceling him for or even calling him out for what he did to Kuwata? Yeah, they are, but it's nowhere near as how they're calling out Kuwata for the smallest things. So you're saying that even though people realize he's

like doing all of this behind the scenes, he still has supporters. Yeah. So I was actually listening to a very fascinating lawyer who was describing the situation of law in Korea. And she said, if you are ever planning on moving to Korea as a woman, just know this, that in Korea, if a woman makes a few small mistakes and a man makes one big mistake, the man never actually made a mistake. Like, let's say you go to a bar.

A woman makes a bunch of mistakes, mistake, quote, mistakes. She gets drunk. This is what she's wearing. Maybe she didn't, you know, tell her friend. Maybe she shouldn't have been out. And then a man essays her. Well, because she made all these mistakes. That man's mistake. It's not a mistake, but you get it. Doesn't count. He never made one. And then there's another comparison that she said, which is if a man has multiple mistake, mistake after mistake after mistake, and a woman has one mistake, they're the same. They're equals.

They have both made mistakes. Yeah, I can see how this is literally this case. Yeah. So CJ is out using this as an opportunity to build his career. He straight up opens up a new salon and promotes it in his apology letter on Instagram. And while he's out there doing that, Hara is involved in another scandal. I don't even like every time I say scandal or controversy, just know that this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Again, she did nothing scandalous. She posted a picture onto Instagram and her angry commenters start freaking out, accusing her of getting work done because she looks so, quote, different. Her double eyelids look deeper. That's the accusation. Clara responds to a netizen saying that she had a medical issue where because of a muscle twitch, her eyelids would start drooping and it was really bothering her. So she had them retouched. I'm imagining that she had some extra skin clipped.

which is something that a lot of people do, especially as you get older, because it gets heavier. It's not that big of a deal. Even if it was just purely cosmetic, it's not that big of a deal. And the comments keep coming. You lost your charm. Your previous face was prettier. I can't believe you would get plastic surgery. You're so vain. After everything that's happened, you still just care about your looks?

That is crazy. It's her literal career. Yeah, this is K-pop. What are you talking about? Some say she's too ugly. Some say she looks old. And then she tries to get work done. And it's not even cosmetic. They get upset. Oh, that's another thing. This is a complete side note. But it's so interesting that in the K-pop world, especially through K-netizens, they don't like it when idols get plastic surgery. But they don't like it when their idols don't look perfect. Right.

Yeah, but this is like, yeah, it's nothing new. Like, we know what this it's Korea, right? Yes. And then also, it's like, why are you? It's just the most bizarre thing. You get upset when someone stays natural and does not look like your ideal perfection of what's on trend that year. But then when someone tries to cater to that for their career, and gets work done, suddenly, they're just plastic and gross. And they were never pretty to begin with. That's what you wanted, was it not? Yeah.

When one netizen commented, why are you doing plastic surgery? I think Flora just got fed up with everyone saying all these things, harassing her for getting a medical procedure. And even if it was solely for the purpose of feeling better in her own skin, even if it was purely cosmetics, so what? So she comments back to the netizen, is getting correctional medical surgery a sin?

Which I personally don't find mean. It's a bit snappy, maybe, if you read it that way. But given the situation, the context, the other comments she's receiving, it's probably one of the nicest ways to respond. Another comment from a netizen reads, You looked prettier before you had the surgery. Hara responds, Thank you for thinking that way. Which honestly, again, not rude at all. I would argue the comment left by the netizen is actually rude. Clara, again, said the nicest thing that could be said to that.

The internet does not agree. They rip her apart for being, quote, rude to fans. Kuhara had to delete her comments and formally apologize.

which is just unhinged. Like after everything we already know that she's been through with her ex-boyfriend and her all of this, this is really what we're doing right now? And I get it. Some people might say, oh, I hate when celebrities create unrealistic beauty standards by denying that they've had surgeries. It sends the wrong message to young girls who think that they'll just be born looking like that. That cannot even be applied to this case. Hara has openly admitted to having work done in the past. In

In the beginning of her career, she stated that she gets filler injections on her nose. She had braces to fix her teeth and she had a double eyelid redefined in the beginning of her career, which side note, I would really hardly call that getting work done. But still, people are just mad at her.

She later posts another Instagram picture with a lengthy caption basically trying to get everyone to understand where she's coming from. She wasn't trying to be rude to a fan. She writes, "Ever since I debuted at a young age, I've suffered from a lot of malicious comments and psychological pain. Of course, there was a reason I got eye surgery at that young age. One of the reasons why was because I no longer wanted to be hurt by the uncomfortable feeling in my right eye from my muscle twitch.

I feel it's better for me to be confident about the things that I want to be confident in. I never once thought I should take action against these malicious commenters. I'm always someone who just lives each day the best as I can, so I hope you can look upon me nicely no matter what I look like now. I promise I'll continue to work hard to become a better person who takes responsibility for her words. A month later, Kuara attempts self-exit.

Hara posts on her Instagram, "I'm tired of pretending that I'm happy and everything is okay. I don't want to cause concern and be a burden amongst other people." Five days later, she posts another cryptic Instagram picture with just one word: "Goodbye." After seeing this, Hara's manager starts freaking out, tries to call her, but call after call just keeps going to voicemail. They panic, rush to her apartment where they find her unconscious.

She is rushed to the hospital and thankfully they are able to save her. This is her first verified public self-exit attempt, but later her brother will admit that she's tried a few times prior. She takes to Instagram to address the whole situation. Her first statement is basically a formal apology.

She writes, I'm sorry for causing concern and causing a big scene. In terms of health, I am recovering. I have been in agony for a number of overlapping issues. But from now on, I will harden my heart and try to show up healthy. I will overcome it and show you the best Hara possible.

A little while later, her second post addresses the hate comments she's still getting. She writes: "I will take action against malicious comments in the future. There's no excuse for malicious comments. For my mental health's sake, I want to become a person that you can look at with pretty eyes." So she's basically saying, "You don't like me? Like, I want to be someone you can like for the own sake of my mental health so you won't bully me anymore." Like, she's basically saying, "I want to be that person too, okay?"

and say things with pretty words and a pretty heart, but depression is not easy. People say I'm too comfortable and that's why I'm depressed. My life is all thanks to the hard work that I've put in. Don't you know that you too might be depressed and sick too if you're leaving these types of comments? Where are the pretty people that wear the pretty hearts that find broken hearts together and wrap their loving arms around them together?

I'm going to work hard and I'm going to overcome it and become positive and show you a better side of me. You should try that too. She's talking to the haters. Celebrities aren't people just making a living off publicity. They have to be more careful about their personal lives than anybody else. And more than anybody else, they have a pain that they can't talk to others about. Even if they do, most people don't understand it. You're free to speak your mind and you can think about who you are, but you should

about who you are, what kind of person you are, before you spread that kind of hatred. Personally, I think it's really beautifully worded. I think it's a nice message for the people who have been cyberbullying her for a few months, if not years. A lot of comments agree. They write, "You're right! Society needs to start getting rid of kids who leave hate comments that are too harsh to even put into words. Don't go easy on the hate commenters!" So in Korea, you can actually take legal action against malicious comments.

But others read, leaving hate comments is bad, but it's not like you're any better. What I earned through working hard? Is she implying that we commenters don't try hard enough to obtain the same kind of wealth? She's so out of touch. She can just stay off social media. It's not like she really expects to hear only praise every day. Jeez, is that what she wants?

Others commented that she's going to look back at her self-exit attempt in a few years and cringe. They accused Kulada of being an attention whore and state that true attention whores never actually die because they're already satisfied with the attention that they get from it. Almost immediately after that, during the first trial against her ex-boyfriend that took the videos and photos of her, he was given an 18-month suspended sentence.

That means he's out. Yes. So he's given 18 months. But as long as he does not commit a crime in the next three years while he's free, he doesn't need to serve the 18 months. Basically, he doesn't have to go to jail. The judge in the case stated CJ did hurt Kuhara in the process of their breakup. And he also threatened to end her life as a celebrity by sharing their sex video. However, we understand he did not plan on committing these crimes.

The sex video was not recorded against Kool-Aid as well. The video was never actually leaked or shared with the public. They're basically saying he didn't plan to do it. He threatened her, but then he didn't actually do it. So... Wow. Thus, the court concludes to give Choi Jong-beom a suspended sentence with a probation period.

So you're telling me it's okay to blackmail someone as long as you don't actually go through with it? So is it okay to in-depth fully plan to harm, I don't know, let's say a judge, but then as long as you get caught before you go through with harming them physically, it should be fine. The judge should be okay with it. Like a threat against his own life. It's just a threat. I didn't actually do anything.

The court continues. While Choi did not get Koo's full consent to the video, so like they're going back on their word, did not get her full consent to the video to record the sexual activity. Those two were in fact involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the recording and Koo did not specifically stop Choi from recording either. This is giving, oh, you can't essay your wife because you guys are married. That's what it's giving. Yeah, I think that's what they believed. Yeah. Yeah.

So 2019 is a very rough year for Kuhara. After her self-exit attempt, after the depressing verdict from the court, she takes the first step to reach out to reporter Kang to tell her, I heard you've been writing about Burning Sun. I was friends with them. I think I can help you. In 2019, Sully...

So this is Sulli not Kuara, post a picture of flowers on her Instagram. The caption reads, "Abolition of laws punishing abortion. Today is an honorable day. Freedom to choose for all women." Sulli is attacked for celebrating the legalization of abortion in South Korea. Wait, this is 2019? Yeah. So abortion was legalized? In 2019. And she was posting... Freedom to choose for all women. Right.

Some comments, and this is 2019, so it's pretty recent. Comments read, abolition of anti-abortion laws isn't a matter that should solely be celebrated, but she's so happy about it. Sully, stop acting like you're woke. Everyone can tell by your actions that you're just stupid. Sully pretends to be aware of things thanks to the backing of social media, but we all know that her brain is empty. Sully's gone crazy posting shit like this. I wonder what her parents are like.

2019 is not a good year for Seungri either. JJY and Choi of FT Island. JJY is arrested and reporters hound him at the airport. There's a female reporter that approaches him and is like, is everything you said in the message is true? Because the Kakao messages get leaked at this point. And he just responds, sorry. And all the reporters, it's

turns into a mosh pit at the airport the reporters keep asking is it true that you secretly filmed woman and he's just holding on to this one bodyguard for dear life after the airport incident he publicly announces that he will be quitting the entertainment industry which is a lie because he's coming back and he states that he has indeed committed crimes he writes i admit to all my crimes i filmed women without their consent and shared it in social media chat rooms without any guilt

More than anything, I would like to apologize to the woman who appeared in those videos and who have learned of this hideous truth as the incidents come to light. He is promptly arrested and he will be sentenced to five years in prison. Choi is quickly arrested as well. And by mid-2019, things kind of start looking better for the girls. Maybe the tides are shifting. Kuwara signs with the new Japanese agency. She releases her first single as a soloist. Kuwara's own brother says...

Obviously, things don't just magically disappear. Her depression is still there, but it appeared that she was feeling more stable. He says,

And she just was really excited to be an aunt. It seemed like she was entering this new phase in her life. Same with Sully. Sully does an interview addressing the hate comments. She literally goes on a show called Night of the Hate Comments, where the hosts bring on celebrity guests and read comments with them to talk about it and address them to a degree. It's kind of like Jimmy Kimmel, the celebrities reading mean tweets, but a bit more discourse. The celebrities will usually talk to the host about

How the comment makes them feel. If there's any validity to them. If they're true, if they're not. Why it started. In one mean comment, they talk about Sully being an attention seeker. To which she responds, I think it's a valid comment because aren't we all attention seekers at the end of the day? Like, don't we all kind of want attention and love? So it's like, again, I feel like she's very in tune with emotions and people. I feel like they are being...

more authentic on social media than probably some other K-pop stars. Like they show a little bit more what typically are allowed or commonly shown as the K-pop idol image. Mm-hmm.

And they get bullied for that. They are, they get dragged. Meanwhile, these three guys have the perfect image and they're committing some of the most heinous crimes in the K-pop world behind the scenes. It's like out of this world. I mean, all these girls want to do is post some creative photos and just be artsy. They're just very creative.

The host asks her, is that why you continue to post no bra pictures, even though you know that you're going to get some crazy reactions and cause a big controversy? So these are talking about how she posts pictures without bras on. And she said, when I first posted pictures of me without a bra, there were so many different reactions. And I do think that, yeah, I could have gotten scared and just hid and never posted those things again. But I didn't. I kept posting because I wanted people to realize that

It's not that big of a deal. I just wanted the prejudices to disappear. She said how at one fan meet, a fan came up to her and whispered, "Unnie, I'm not wearing a bra today."

And Sully gave her the thumbs up because I want to break that mold on society and show that no bra is no big deal. I think it's about freedom of the individual. Bras aren't even good for your health. They have a wire. They're not good for digestion. I have digestive issues. So it's just much more comfortable for me not to wear them. And I think it's very free and honestly beautiful. To me, bras are like accessories. Some clothing, it looks better with a bra. Some clothing, it doesn't look as good with a bra. So I don't wear one.

She's handling it with so much grace, honestly. And I think she's trying to be, again, as transparent as possible. She even says, when I would meet people in the past, even before I said hello, I felt the need to explain, wait, wait, wait, whatever you read about me, please forget it. That's not who I am. Those rumors aren't true. She said meeting people was so stressful.

At one point, the situation got so bad, she started fearing for her safety, that all that hate was going to manifest in real life, meaning if all these people hate her online, what are the odds that she's going to run into one of them in person? She was very scared. She starts getting massively paranoid. She would take alleyways when she goes out, avoiding public spaces. She always felt like cameras were following her around.

The host agrees that Sulli is like the nuclear bomb of hate comments. She gets so much hate for no reason at all. They ask her, "What makes you happy? Like what do you do to stay happy through all these comments?" To which she responds, "My life is actually pretty empty, so I feel like I'm lying to everyone by pretending to be happy on the outside. There was really never truly a time where I was really happy." Another host said their heart ached for Sulli because how much suffering does one have to go through to say that you've never truly been happy?

When she was asked about how she wanted the world to see her, she said, "I think I just wish people would look at me and think, 'I guess there's someone like that that exists,' and just accept the difference, that not everybody is identical. They don't have to like me, but just, hmm, people like that exist as well." But of course, that is not what netizens decide to focus on. Instead, they won't stop talking about her September 28th, 2019 livestream.

She goes on a live stream while doing her hair and makeup and honestly in the video she looks kind of depressed. She looks somber. Nobody cares about that. Nobody cares to check in on her or see if she's okay. She's wearing one of those thin ropes that you tie around your waist and as she's doing her hair near the end because of the way that her arms are moving and the camera angle, her breast is exposed by accident.

Comments start flooding: "Why are you never wearing a bra even when you're hanging out with your male friends? What's the reason? How are you so confident without wearing a bra?" Again, that comment could be interpreted as nice, but it's not because prior to all of this, throughout her scandals of not wearing a bra, a lot of people mocked her saying that someone with breasts like hers shouldn't even be confident enough to be outside without a bra. Silly response to those comments: "I don't get what's wrong. This is my personal freedom." October 14th, 2019:

Sully's manager has been trying to get in contact with her since the night before but she's not picking up. She missed her scheduled press events that day and the manager starts looking for her and finds her in her home. After her death, an entry from Sully's diary was made public and it reads, "I haven't written in this diary for a really long time. Today I dreamed that my teeth fell out. I didn't feel very happy about that. I went to the recording and saw a video of myself and I look.

Really dirty and ugly. I feel embarrassed thinking people are going to be pointing at me and evaluating me. Why can't I be more confident if I think about it? I feel like I'm still influenced by the hurt that remains in my heart from a long time ago, despite not being able to remember very well. I've never received infinite love. Dad left me even though I didn't do anything wrong. I felt like mom might leave me too if I misbehave, so I forgot about myself and I followed her opinions and her wishes."

Side note, Sully does have a very complicated relationship with her mom. Friends say that Sully was obsessed with her mom, so obsessed, loved her, followed her around like best friends. And Sully started in the industry as a child star. Her mom is the one that managed all of her finances. Even later when she debuts and becomes of age, she lets her mom handle it all. It's not until later she decides, hey, maybe I should try investing or something by myself. And her mom tells her there's nothing.

Nothing at all. All those years, the traumatic years of working in the industry as a child, her mom blew through all of her money. Not only that, her mom has been receiving advance payments for all of Sully's work from SM Entertainment. Not only is her mom spending all of Sully's money, but she's spending all of her future money. Allegedly, their relationship was never the same after that.

In her diary, Sulli does speak very highly of Choi Ja-do, her ex-boyfriend, the rapper that was 14 years older than her. And the relationship made a lot of people turn on her at the time, which...

I have very complicated feelings about massive age gap relationships, especially when the person that's younger is so close to the legal age limit. But a lot of people turned it on her, which is weird. I just didn't expect that. Usually it's on the older person because they bear more responsibility. They're the one with the power imbalance, right? But I think with this situation, it's kind of hard to really hate him because just the way she speaks about him.

She writes in her diary: "Today I went to the nail salon with Choi Ja oppa. I'm happy because I feel like we found something else we can do together. I just don't need anything or anyone else. No matter what happens later or what people say, I'm really happy right now. I'm so happy that I don't want to miss any of the emotions that I'm feeling. I want to remember all of them and I want to feel even the smallest things.

He really is such a precious person to me. I cherish everything about him. How can someone be so pure and kind and not calculative and smart and wise and trustworthy and warm? I mean, it's impossible not to love him. He really is precious. He'll probably be the most precious person to me for the rest of my life. I'm happy and I'm so blessed to have met him. I think this is happiness.

Sully was later interviewed about her opinions on the Korean entertainment industry as a whole and she stated that idols should be treated like employees. They should have rights like other employees and they should have a union for idols to keep them safe. She said, "From my perspective, people just don't see celebrities as humans. When I first entered the industry and something people wouldn't stop telling me is, 'You are a product and you must be the best product with the best quality for the public.'

She said, "Even the ones who don't tell you straight up that you're a product, they still treated me like one. I have to be something that they want. I have to fear losing my product quality." She said she was so overcome with exhaustion and pressure, she said she just started blaming herself.

She states, the only thing I could control was when I caused myself pain. So I blame myself and I put myself down. And I think that was the only control I had. That's why it was so difficult. I never thought that the system was wrong. There's a movie, The Matrix, where they say, would you rather take the red pill and learn the truth and live a difficult life or just live without knowing? I often think that had I lived without knowing, I would be living such a happy life.

a lot of new information starts coming to light after Sully's death. Sully once filed a criminal complaint against someone that just kept writing malicious, hateful comments about her nonstop. The police tracked the commenter down, found out that she was an attendee. She was a student at a prestigious university and was the same age as Sully. Sully, from the goodness of her heart, dropped the charges because she said if she continued, she would graduate and she would have a really hard time finding a job.

Later, the university student wrote a very long letter to Sully apologizing, stating she was very sorry that she commented and she didn't think it was such a big deal at the time because Sully probably wouldn't even see it. She was just stressed at the world and her own life and she took it out on Sully, which is just like sick and twisted. Please learn some coping mechanisms. Like that's not an excuse. That's so bizarre.

Sully's whole message was, you don't have to do what she does. You don't even have to like what she does. But she said, "I just wish we could all treat people with more kindness when talking to others. Everyone wants to be treated kindly to the point where even victims are told to be kind and nice. People always want others to speak with more kindness to themselves."

And speaking of college, university, Sully had a few bucket list items. Remember scuba diving? She had aquaphobia from a bullying incident. So she went scuba diving and another huge bucket list item was going to university. In an interview, she said, of the 24 years I've lived, the thing I regret most is not having attended college. I've always wanted to go, but I couldn't. I'll definitely go even if it's later on in life.

Sully was in college and I think that says a lot about Sully, but her classmates really liked her and they respected her a lot. They admired that she just wanted to be there to learn. So everybody kept it a secret.

News never leaked that she was in attendance at that college. Nobody knew which classes she was taking. Classmates agreed to respect her privacy and space. They never took pictures. They didn't ask for autographs. They never told their friends that Sully was in their classes. In fact, other than people in her specific class, nobody even knew that she was on campus. All the classmates tried their best to treat Sully as just another college girl because that's what she wanted.

One of her classmates wrote after her death, Dear Sully, the campus is starting to be colored with autumn foliage now. I wish you were here to see it. I hope you at least took with you the memories you made on our campus last semester. It is more than enough to us if you found any happiness at our school. Wherever you are, love and be loved to your heart's desire. We love you, Sully. Please be happy.

October 15th, 2019, the day after Sulli's death, Kuhara starts an Instagram livestream where she seems emotionally unstable and incredibly distraught. She starts crying. "Sulli, I'm so sorry. Onni is in Japan right now and I can't go back. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I can only say goodbye to you in this way. I'm really sorry." In the place that you're going, in that world, do whatever you want to do and be happy and Onni will keep working and live.

"And everyone, I'm okay. Sully and I were like really close sisters and I just wanted to say goodbye to Sully and so I opened up a live and I'm sorry, please just don't worry about me. I'm sorry Sully, goodbye." A lot of people rallied to Kuhara's side and tried to comfort her, but there were still a small group of people that left some crazy comments like "Wow, you're really trying to use your friend's death to gain popularity."

I mean, the whole livestream, her eyes are so swollen. Even when she's talking, it's so clear, it seems like she just didn't have someone to talk to. She's rubbing her hands together, trying to self-soothe. She's comforting herself. They accuse her of trying to use her friend's death to gain sympathy. Reporter Kang, the one that Kuara had reached out to earlier to help with Burning Sun, she reaches out to Kuara. "'Hara, you're such a brave woman and you're very admirable. I want you to be happy.'"

Hara texts her back. "Hello! I'm okay. Yes, I will stay strong and work hard." Kuwara will have one last livestream. She's in a hotel room and taking from context, it must be really late at night. Late enough that some people are either waking up at that hour, but Kuwara explains she just kept waking up. Beginning of the livestream, she's responding to comments and she's speaking Japanese, Korean, and English, which is honestly crazy, but there's a few alarming things from the livestream.

and it's likely hindsight but it seems that her eyes are glazed over not like she's doing drugs but just she doesn't seem fully present and of course it could be the fact that she just woke up from sleep i don't know and there's again a really heartbreaking part of the live stream and this could be hindsight again towards the end of the live she gets up and she starts dancing to the music and i'm sure it's hindsight but a lot of netizens have pointed out there is almost this like innocence to the way she's dancing

It almost feels like a little girl in her bedroom pretending she's an idol, pretending like she's on stage practicing her dance moves. Early in October, Kulada does fly to attend Sulli's memorial service, but immediately has to go back to Japan for her work. Then November 22, 2019, she comes back home to South Korea. She posts a picture of herself laying in bed with the caption "Good night."

It would later come out that on her private Instagram, she posted a black screen with just the words, I'm scared. November 24th, 2019, Kuwata's brother, who didn't see any of these posts, would get a call from Kuwata's housekeeper. She's crying, said that she came to the apartment and Kuwata had self-exited.

He starts screaming, get her down, get her down. But the housekeeper cries to him. The police have arrived, but they won't let me take her down. They say that they're investigating, indicating she is already likely long past. Cuara was found dead in her home, November 24th, 2019. The same Cuara that nobody knew had been such a pivotal part in the Burning Sun investigation. I mean, even after everything that she went through and her first verified public self-exit attempt, she still wanted to help.

She wanted to help expose Burning Sun. She wanted to help find the corrupt police official. She even helped animals. She spent a lot of her time volunteering with animals. She would spend time at shelters just scooping away at piles of poop. She's not even doing like the pretty, I volunteered at a shelter work. She's out there doing it all. The shelter owners remember her constantly asking them, how can I help? How can I help? Just tell me how I can help. She just wanted to help. And basically everybody failed her. Nobody helped her.

Even the judge that was presiding over CJ's case, remember Cuadra's ex-boyfriend's trial, right? The one with the blackmail. There was this whole trial in 2019 while she was alive and the judge presiding over the case, he starts doing some really questionable things. He tells the court that in order to come to an informed decision on the case, the videos need to be viewed in court. The videos of Cuadra in an intimate position to make sure that she did not consent to the videos being taken.

Basically stating he needs to see for himself. But that would require playing the video in the courtroom. Kuhara's attorney firmly rejected staying no matter how private the courtroom may be. It is unacceptable for the video to be replayed in public. That would be the second offense to Kuhara. That is crazy that they're suggesting that. The judge changed his mind and stated, you know what, I agree. Which is why I want to watch the video alone in my chambers.

Side note, not everyone in the legal community backed up the judge. You would think if he's demanding such a thing, maybe it is the only way, legally speaking, according to the code of the law that I'm not familiar with. Maybe he has a reason because why would he do something so unhinged? A judge should know what he's doing is right, right? And making sure all of the parameters are ethical. A lot of people in the legal community spoke out against the judge, stating that even if he doesn't see the video, he should have no trouble determining CJ's sentence.

Does it matter if she consented to the video or not? He threatened to destroy her life with it. Exactly. Despite all objections, the judge viewed the video alone in his chambers and after the judge watched it, Cuara had to privately testify to the judge alone in his chambers for two hours. Judge or not, just think about that. I mean, this is a man. This is a male judge. Just think about, again, the re-traumatization that likely Cuara faced. I don't even know if it's something that could be measured.

She did everything she could to make sure nobody would see that video. She got down on her knees. And ultimately, the justice system allowed another man, another guy to watch the video without her explicit consent. Reporter Kang would later say about the CCTV footage of Hara on her knees begging her ex-boyfriend not to release the videos. She said, "Seeing such a massive K-pop star kneeling before a man and begging him not to expose her to the press, it made my heart break. She was so desperate and as a woman, I understood how she felt."

And all for what? After watching the video, after listening to her testimony in private for two hours, the judge stated, "The content in CJ's possession cannot be said to have been taken against her will, even though she did not expressly consent to them."

If she didn't expressly consent to them, she didn't consent to them. What do you, there is no maybe. It's a yes or no. Consent is not like a, maybe it's yes, maybe it's a no. It's a yes or no. But the court argued that Hara knew about these videos and photos before the blackmailing incident. When she found out that he had taken them without her knowing, she didn't immediately delete them. So technically she consented after the fact is how they phrase it.

That's what the court is arguing, which I think is a really good argument if you just had a lobotomy. Because what are you even saying right now? That doesn't even make sense. Clara was on her knees begging so that nobody would see it and he still watched it. After this incident, people started making memes of the Burning Sun guys holding up finger hearts with words that read, judges, we love you all.

Which, side note, this is a massive side note and rumor. Heavy emphasis on the word rumor. These aren't even really allegations. I would literally call them rumors. Just whispers on the internet by unverified sources and netizens. But there is a rumor that the prosecutors in South Korea and probably in America and anywhere else have a large digital collection of unreleased celebrity intimate videos.

Which makes sense because a lot of the times they would have to be taken into evidence if someone is accused of filming someone without their consent. But the massive rumor, not truth, but rumor, is that the prosecutors will sometimes show a new prosecutor the collection as part of some sick welcome ceremony. Again, this is just a netizen rumor. There is no proof of this. But the whole situation with the judge kind of dug up this rumor all over again, if only momentarily.

But the judge is not the only one not protecting Fuada. Another notable individual was a professor named Zhu Chuanhuan.

He had brought up Kuara's passing in one of his lectures, and he claimed to his class that Kuara died because she didn't have a strong enough mentality to withstand malicious comments. He said, you end up like her if you don't have a strong mind. Why do you think people curse at others and hate comment them? It's all an inferiority complex. Why would you make such an extreme choice because of them? You don't need to do that. You need to have a strong mentality.

He also stated if Kuhara had come to him for advice, she would not have self-exited. He said if Kuhara met me, she would have never died. I would have changed her. Wait, who is this? A professor at a university. Why is he commenting on this? Nobody knows. Why is he even talking? Nobody knows. But this was shared. All the students were so pissed. They shared it online. She would have never died. I would have changed her. She was too weak and she just cared too much about what others think about her.

I'm sorry, read the room. The last thing she needs or any of these female idols need is another obnoxious, thinks-he's-better-than-anyone, smarter-than-anyone man to be involved in their lives. What's crazy is he received maybe 1%, not even 1% of the hate that Kulada received on a daily basis, but he received it for good reason after this became public for saying these batshit insane things about her and he would apologize and he seemed overwhelmed by the hate.

So you should just have a stronger mentality and stop caring about what people think about you. He also defended the ex-boyfriend, CJ, saying that he made one mistake. No. Yep.

Yeah, he continues. What if student A made a mistake in high school and filmed a slightly erotic video and we all saw it? Why should anybody die? If it were me, I would have said, so what? So what if others see it? What's wrong with my body? You need to have a strong mentality like that. Why should you choose to die just because someone saw your embarrassing side? What good is that to anybody? Is he fired or not? I don't think so. Yeah.

This is crazy. He would later try to excuse the whole lecture by saying that he was trying to teach freshmen how to self-love. I just feel like every man in this story is like a caricature of a villain. I don't even know, like, why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? It's not most cases. Like, this case is just particularly every single man that has come up in this case. I'm like, please just shut up because what are you doing?

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The judge, the professor, these are all people in power with influence and experience that could have protected Kuada and teach future generations about the law and how it's unacceptable to do what CJ did. But instead they excused him. People remember how hard Hara trained to be an idol? She was balancing idol training, school. She did this when she was 14.

She said once, I went to classes even when I was sick and I had nosebleeds. If I didn't practice, I would start getting anxious. In the beginning, it was really hard to adjust. People told me to quit, but I got anxious thinking about what if I spend the rest of my life not becoming what I want to do? So I worked hard. I fainted a few times from exhaustion, but I couldn't let that stop me.

At the time, a lot of Hara's bullies online would say that she doesn't care, she has no talent, she's boy obsessed, she doesn't care about her future, what the world thinks about her, they called her a train wreck. I feel like in their sick minds, they justified that as a reason on leaving some of the most heinous comments you could think of. Clearly, she doesn't care, so it doesn't bother her, obviously.

But that's just so not true. Some of Hara's older brother's memories are from when she first debuted. She was rewatching her KBS Music Bank performance with her group, Kara, and at the end she accidentally slipped on some of the falling confetti and she briefly gasped, "Ahh!" as she fell.

Her brother thought it was a cute moment and it showed how human and natural she is. And I mean, all the fans online were talking about how the confetti do be a little dangerous and they were cheering her on. But Hara was always her biggest critic. She was in tears watching it. She was sobbing about her mistake and how she could have done better. She should have known better. She should have done better.

This is the same woman who in 2013, Kara was touring in Japan and after performing several stages in one day, she collapsed on stage. She had to be carried off the stage. She was given aid and she forced herself back on the stage before the concert ended.

When the concert ended, she was immediately rushed to the hospital and she was back to performing the very next day, an entire set. You would think that netizens at the time would have a lot of respect and praise for her dedication for her work, but this is what was being said online. The top comment on that article that has over 6,000 likes reads, Kara faints during Radio Star after Hara throws water bottle. Because remember, she threw a water bottle on the Radio Star show.

Wait, how is that related to this? It's not. They're just saying like a better headline would be she faints after throwing a water bottle because she was known for throwing a water bottle. Another few read, should have been more careful. Maybe she tripped on the water bottles that she threw. That's what happens when you starve yourself to diet. Just eat food and stop being so vain. Hara said one of her favorite quotes was smiling through the times you're tired and giving your best at work.

The day after Kluada's death, a lot of idols were on their way to Vietnam for the Asia Artist Awards. A lot of them were seen wearing all black, likely out of respect for Kluada. Idols went on to social media to pay tribute to Hara and a lot of groups even rescheduled their comebacks and listening parties. One that stood out was an Instagram post of somebody who knew her since she was a child and it reads, our Ani was famous ever since I was in elementary school. I

I once went to a dance academy with a friend and when my friend pointed at 언니 Clara, I looked and I saw this pretty and very skinny girl in loose clothing sweating buckets as she danced with all her energy. I couldn't see anybody else in that dance studio but her. Would people know now that young and small child practiced so hard to the point of breaking her body to get where she was?

It was later revealed that Kuwada's diary was found, and I'm assuming with the approval of her family, snippets of her diary were released on JTBC. One diary entry just reads, Another one reads, Another one reads,

It's alright. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. It'll pass. It's alright. God, please forgive me. God, Jesus Father, wise God, please watch over my disappointing self one more time. By your nourishing power, thank you for comforting me. Thank you.

She also wrote about how she being sensitive was the cause of her own unhappiness. She felt like she had this gaping hole in her life from not having her mom, but she needs to focus on being more happy in the future. She writes,

Let's not steal my own energy and let's take care of myself to always think happily and positively. I miss mom. I miss and want to feel mom. I always swallowed it, didn't let it out and kept it inside. But I'm more desperate than anyone and I want to feel more than anyone. I can hurt. I guess I deserve to hurt.

One entry that stands out is Kuara writes about being allowed to be loved. She writes: There is a comment under the BBC documentary that I think sums up most of our feelings about this case.

And it reads,

Speaking of, small side note, after Kuara's death, one of CJ's friends, so her ex-boyfriend that tried to ruin her career by releasing revenge videos of her, his friend posted online, CJ is having a difficult time ever since the controversy about the assault and the revenge videos. After he heard about Kuara's passing, he hasn't been coping well. Everything related to her is a very sensitive situation for him. So the colleagues are deciding not to talk about it. It's difficult for me to tell you anything more.

What? Wow. In 2020, Seungri pleads guilty and is sentenced to 18 months in prison. Choi gets 2.6 years. JJY is sentenced to five years. And by now, they're all free.

Choi, the former friend of Hara's, the one that she was able to convince to give up the name of the police official. He was part of the band FT Island. He was one of the first released. He's also the one that was filmed at church. Do you remember that in episode one? When he gets out, reporters find him in the church parking lot to which his mom starts screaming at the reporters defending her son, essentially saying, God already forgave my baby boy. So who is the world to judge him?

That guy, he's trying to make a comeback in the industry. He joined FannyCon, a Japanese fan community platform. It appears to have kind of a subscription-based model. So if fans want, they can pay and join a celebrity's channel and get more intimate updates.

kind of like a Patreon, I imagine. And he wrote, Greetings after five years. How are you? I receive strength from each and every one of you and I was able to gather the strength to appear in front of you now. Thank you so much. I hope I can communicate with my fandom here. I want to show you everything about me, including what I want to do with my future and my personal life. I will try to create a bright future with everyone. So please support me. Thank you very much.

This man was charged with gang-r-wording someone and he has the backbone to be like "Please support me, I want to create a bright future."

After JJY is released from prison, which side note, his whole five years in prison were not bad at all. According to fellow inmates, they said he would receive packages of comic books from loyal fans and he was generally just having a good time. In 2022, JJY met up with his connections in the music industry to tell them that he still wants a music career. He still wants to be behind the scenes now. He doesn't want to be a singer, but he wants to be a music producer. It's speculated that he's preparing to immigrate abroad and return to music. Hmm.

Seungri has been spotted here and there going clubbing. It would later come out that right after he got out of prison, he was trying to call up his friends to see if they wanted to go clubbing with him. One acquaintance who is said to have been close said, "He called me after he got out of prison and asked me how I was doing. His voice was calmer, but other than that, it didn't seem like he changed much." Another alleged friend stated, "He's living his day-to-day life with a pretty bright attitude."

There were talks that Sing Lee was trying to get back into the clubbing business. And the first rumor was that he was trying to open up a club in Hong Kong. He was spotted socializing in Hong Kong. A few Hong Kong netizens stated that they heard through the grapevine he's permanently living in Hong Kong. It got to the point where the government had to come out and say, we didn't give this guy a visa through our talent acquisition program. But if he's getting a visa through other ways, we wouldn't know. So like the government would know, but they wouldn't release it to us.

I see. So there's, I guess there's multiple ways to get a visa. You could go and I guess marry someone. You could try to apply for different types of visas. But the one that netizens speculated he had was Hong Kong would invite overseas nationals to live and start businesses in Hong Kong. Then you'd get a long-term visa. Hong Kong's like, we did not do that. Yeah. They're like, please. No. Yeah. Yeah.

The next rumor was that he was going to open up a club in Cambodia where he does have fans, fans that are willing to come to fan meets. I will say from what I can tell, most Cambodians hate him, but there are a select group of people just like everywhere else that support him. He held a fan meet recently where he promised on stage to bring G-Dragon, which ended up going viral and pissing off former Big Bang fans who supported other members because

It's just weird. Why are you bringing him into it? It doesn't even seem like they're friendly. He was also promoting Big Bang merchandise, which is very interesting. He also gave this speech on stage in Cambodia, and this speech has somewhat gone viral. He's gripping the mic with all of his strength. He's in a three-piece suit. He looks like an uncle at a wedding. All eyes are on him, and he screams, You know, you know when I say I'm going to Cambodia to my friends, my friends tell me, you don't, isn't that country dangerous?

Cambodia is not good. Now I can say to all my friends, fuck you all. And he shoves his middle finger up in the air really aggressively, might I add. And again, for a second time, and he's like puffing out his chest like an angry peacock. I mean, it's just... Okay, taking out the morality of supporting a guy like this, just vibes wise, this is your man.

He's getting off on this attention and he just keeps going. And I said, shut up and come here and see what is happening in Cambodia. This is the greatest country in Asia. People say that he has a Donald Trump accent. Then with the hand holding the mic, he pumps his fist into the air in a victory position and the crowd goes wild.

Wild, honestly. But a lot of people were really upset at this fan meet that it happened in the first place, but also because, like I said, he's stating that he's gonna bring G-Dragon. It just doesn't seem like they like each other. Even when they were seen in the same group, it didn't seem like they liked Seungri. I mean, clips of the group have gone viral. This is back in the day, where on a talk show, one of the members, T.O.P., his fellow bandmate, states, "'Oh, Seungri and I are complete opposites.'" He'll say things like, "'Oh, this is how you make money.'" All he does is talk about money.

T.O.P. continues, I get very worried as an older member of the group. He has some good friends, but some of his friends, I get glimpses of them at concerts and they worry me. I get the feeling that they're by his side, not because they like him, but because they like his title. The fact that Singley plans to work with them very much worries me.

Even on stage, there's a clip of Big Bang at a concert and T.O.P. starts screaming, after all, Big Bang is for people forever, forever, forever. The other three members put their hands in like, you know, those athletic games and they start chanting forever, forever as a play on words, as in one, two, three, four. But Big Bang has five members and the member not in the pile is Seungri.

It just seemed that as if in hindsight, the band members were over him. One straight up joked in an interview that Seungri, stop being a scammer or you're going to end up in jail. The way they talk. Wait, wait, wait. One person said that? Yeah. Wow. And just the way they talk makes it seem like Seungri just lost all passion for music and just started doing shady businesses on the side. And I'm sure it's making them nervous because if something happens to him, which it did, Big Bang in its entirety is in jeopardy. So it's not just impacting his life. Yeah. Yeah.

It's unclear if Seungri ever was or is still going to open up a club in either Hong Kong or Cambodia. But another allegation starts popping up and going viral. A netizen from China posts on Weibo, so the Chinese Twitter, that she was at a hot pot restaurant. Seungri happened to be sitting next to her with a table full of girls. And the viral post reads, someone had run into Seungri while he was having dinner with a few women. They overheard him telling the woman that he would fuck them to the beat of Big Bang's song Fantastic Baby. It's really insane.

Fuck. Really, like, I wish he would just fucking crawl back to a jail cell. He really is like a fat uncle now. I'm laughing my head off at the conversations he was having with the girls the whole night while eating. Like, literally, he's gonna fuck them to the beat of Fantastic Baby? Fantastic Baby was released in 2012. This allegedly took place in 2024. The comments read under that post, "'Can they take him back to jail for a lifetime, please?'

And another depressing development in this case is, remember Gua Ra's first dating scandal? She was confirmed to have been dating a fellow idol, Yong Joon Young from the boy band Highlight? He was exposed to have received videos in a private chat room with just JJY, and it was stated that he made inappropriate comments about that explicit video.

He was forced to withdraw from Highlight and went into his mandatory military enlistment. He was not legally punished, but he was labeled publicly as a bystander that did nothing. He wasn't part of the group chats, but again, like I said, he did receive a video. And he is now dating Hyuna, which is another massive K-pop idol. A lot of her fans are upset with her because for one, she seemed somewhat close with Koo Hara, like they were all part of the same generation. People believe it's breaking girl code and it just feels kind of icky. But I think more than that,

He's just a shit guy. I mean, people just don't like them together and some fans feel really betrayed by the fact that Hyuna was more of an idol that stood for female empowerment and now she's dating someone that is very clearly not. One comment on the BBC documentary reads, "...calling them trash is honestly disrespectful to the trash."

Another reads, And like I said, all the men are free. One netizen comment reads,

Cuero was sexually violated, still helped Burning Sun get exposed, and still ended up dead. The Burning Sun guys are sex offenders and they get a slap on the wrist, a kiss on their ass, and are living it up. And they still have fans. One supporter tweeted, I still don't need anyone's permission or approval to support Singley. If I have to, I will go through this journey with him alone. Even if I'm the last one on this planet and that you keep insulting and threatening me, I'm perfectly fine with it. At least you're not hurting him.

I just want to say he's not going to pick you. I'm sorry. I mean, this is the same guy that has been sentenced to prison for organizing commercial sex services on 29 occasions in the span of two months. Remember like the first episode we did, he was like dating two women back to back. Yes. Taking them out to trips, giving them the same exact treatment. Yes. Back to back. Back to back. Like the amount of they're living the best life. Yeah. Yeah.

And they're not gonna choose you. Like, you could go to war for this man in my comments, in my emails, on Twitter, on your little self-published Medium articles, and like, he's not gonna even notice you, nor will he give a fuck. Honestly, like, just... I feel like there's a better way to spend your time. It's kind of sad. The crime that he was charged with does technically fall under sex trafficking. Imagine supporting a sex trafficker. That is... something.

The court documents also stated that he coerced three women, most likely his fans, to pose nude for photos in his hotel room that was in China. And he later shared those. But maybe it's this clip that really did it for them.

This clip has resurfaced since the BBC documentary. It's Seungri on a reality show called "I Live Alone." The clip has gone viral on Twitter with over 7 million views. Mainly people hate watching and trying to understand what's going on. It's an old, old clip of him. He's crocheting little booties like shoes for his neighbor who just had a child.

He's cross-stitching, I think is the more accurate description. And he's listening to Blackpink's Playing With Fire song. He's singing along, very exaggerated. At one point, he's asked by the producers why he's cross-stitching, to which he responds, my neighbor recently had a baby. I thought I should give her a heartfelt gift. In fact, I used to enjoy cross-stitching when I was a kid. I thought I could reminisce old memories and use my little talent while preparing a homemade gift for her.

He starts cross-stitching, dancing, and then he pokes his finger with the needle and immediately drops everything to fall on the floor and overreact, rolling around screaming, ah! It's very cringe. I feel like my three-year-old niece could act better than him. Yeah, he tries his hardest to have this cute, naive little boy. But no, he's like a full-grown-ass adult felon.

The clip is so just really secondhand embarrassment. Netizens who agree commented, honestly, he was trying so hard to be this persona on camera, but you can tell it's all BS. It's painfully obvious this was an act. But some comments, even after the fact, so these were posted after Burning Sun gets exposed. They read, he's just a normal person who lives his life happily. It's just that villains messed him up. What messed him up? Villains. Ma'am.

Maybe you need a lobotomy. I honestly think Seungri is just a normal guy who got mixed up in the wrong crowd. He is the wrong crowd. Like he... One sane comment reads, it's so cringe. It's so evident that he's acting and being all cute for no reason. Sad to see he still has fans and even those fans support him after everything he did. Shame on them. I hope he rots in hell. To which a netizen responds to them, what the fuck? You judge a person for being cute? What did he do exactly? Oh.

I mean, you could look up the court records, they tell you exactly what he did. Meanwhile, reporter Kang, the reporter that worked with Kool Hara and had all the files in the USB to sort through, she said that a ton of women were reaching out to her, nervous. They would call and tell her that they were around the guys around that time and they have gaps in their memory and they were scared that there were videos of them on there. She could hear anxiety and just panic in their voices.

It's crazy that he still has fans, but I think this will tell you why. In 2015, J.J.Y. released a song called OMG. This is when Sully is accused of being a sex addict. The music video that J.J.Y. is in starts with him waking up in a bed full of women in lingerie. He tries to wake up one of them, but she's passed out to the point where it's like, I don't know if she's just hung over on alcohol.

Then we get a flashback. It's a sequence of the night before and how he ends up here. Mixed in with JJY the next morning, walking around the house, seeing this disaster from the house party. There's unconscious people laying around everywhere and he starts messing with their bodies, trying to see if they'll wake up.

which considering he date our word drugged women as saved them while recording it it's kind of wild that he felt confident enough to base a music video basically on what he does in real life we get flashbacks to the night before where he's walking through a club filled with women and lingerie at the end he's fighting a guy in a wolf mask with a lightsaber but at one point it looks like he hallucinates into seeing a real wolf almost insinuating that he's like on drugs

The whole thing is weird, but it ends with him having a foursome in the bed and then waking up with the girls passed out. Some netizen comments read, I feel like he invented the word foreshadowing. This is vlog. When you decided to take based on a true story very seriously. But again, this is all hindsight. When the video first came out, everybody loved it. JJY was getting praise. And if anyone critiqued how sexual and weird it was, everyone said it's

It's his art. That's how he expresses himself. It's his career. It's a literal music video. But now netizens are comparing it to a movie Sully did around the same time. Sully worked on a movie called Real. It's an action noir film. She had this scene where she's topless. First of all, who cares? Second of all, it's for a film. Just like it could be argued that all the scandalous racy scenes in J.J.Y.'s music video are for his art, for his work. Same with Sully. Where is the difference?

But the comments under articles about her new film, they read, she's already running around exposing her nipples, not like this is a big deal to her anyway. I can already tell by the stuff she shares on her social media that she wouldn't use a body double. I really don't understand at all why SM Entertainment still has her under them. She's pretty, I'll admit that, but her body's whatever and her personality is just hopeless. She exposes her top half on her own without much prompting anyway. Feels like we've already seen it all.

But more than that, she had a scene in the movie where her character does drugs. In South Korea, drug usage is considered one of the worst things you could ever do. It's probably worse than SAing people. Honestly, that's how they see it in the law. They take it very seriously. Sully had zero experience with drugs. So in this attempt to figure out what it would look like, how she was supposed to act, she starts watching five movies a day where the main character does drugs.

Her friends asked her, why are you doing that? And she said, I don't know what that looks like. So I just really want to do a good job on this because it makes sense considering she left FX to pursue acting. She has a lot of pressure. It's clear like she needs to do well. But netizens thought she acted too well. They argued that only a real drug user would behave like that.

From then on, the title of being a drug user starts following Sully and everything she does is just further confirmation that she's a drug user. She talks a little bit slower compared to others. I don't even think that she talks slow. They say she's on drugs. They would take pictures of her pupils, compare them to other drug users. And it seems like she does naturally have bigger pupils because a lot of people were showing pictures of her where she's clearly not on drugs, like during interviews and her pupils seem enlarged, like bigger than most people.

But they're taking that as evidence that she's doing drugs and putting them side by side with drug users' pupils. It was a lot. So when JJY does it, it's his craft, it's his art, it's his expression of creativity. But when Sully does it, she's a drug addict and a slut for showing her breasts.

One netizen comment focuses on the double standard in the industry, and this is present not just in the K-pop world, but Hollywood, Bollywood, everywhere. The comment reads, Men could tie the industry's grandma to the town square pole, and the industry itself would hand the men tomatoes to throw. Women? They breathe wrong, and the industry will shit them out in the shower and stomp on them down the drain.

Even after the Burning Sun case, there were protests of women in South Korea holding up signs. For women, everywhere we go feels like the club Burning Sun. But a lot of men stepped in to say that this was truly unfair, that the men felt like they were being unfairly targeted by criminals. What? They're like calling women criminals.

Yeah, I mean, it's everywhere. It's in the US too. You bring it up and then it's, what about the women that lie and ruin men's lives about SA? So that was what was happening here afterwards. Another friend of Seungri said, if Seungri's Kakao messages are a crime, then aren't all Korean men criminals? What? Yeah.

A former employee of Burning Sun said, "There is no difference between Burning Sun and the current clubs that are open. What happened back then is still happening now. There are lots of coverage about GHP. They are still using it in my club that I'm currently working at." So he moved to a different club.

And after Hara's death, unfortunately a lot of things start taking place. The situation with her ex-boyfriend CJ continues. Even after her passing, her house gets burglarized after her death and the strangest thing takes place at her funeral. So let's start with CJ, the ex-boyfriend.

The first trial for CJ was obviously a mess. Some would even go as far to call it a disgrace. He was given no jail time and it was not even acknowledged that he committed heinous crimes with the videos of Kool Hara. Hara's brother stated at that point, "Even now, we can't understand how he was acquitted during the first trial for filming her secretly and how he was able to return to society."

After the first sentencing, both sides appealed the sentence. The prosecutors appealed and Kulhara's family appealed. They did not believe this was an appropriate sentence. It was way too light. The defense, CJ and his attorneys appealed, which I always think is wild when criminals get away with the lowest sentence manageable and they still try to appeal. Like read the room. Everyone is pissed at your sentence. You got incredibly lucky because the justice system favors you. Shut up and go away. But he files for an appeal because he does not agree with the ruling.

The appeal is reviewed in 2020, and this is after her passing. The second court stated, The court basically told CJ, You know what? I think you were right. The first trial wasn't good. So we fixed it for you. Give him more? We're going to give you a year in prison to be served immediately.

Soon after that, Cuadra's brother and father sue CJ and the courts ruled that CJ will pay the family $60,000. And maybe CJ feels like he's got to make some money now since he has to pay restitution. CJ starts suing people while he's in prison. He starts suing netizens for defaming his character. He ends up suing six netizens and like not even news networks, not even influencers, just straight up random netizens. They didn't even write a blog post about him. They were just in the comment section.

He claimed in the courts that these netizens made insulting comments about his trial in an article. The comments hurt his feelings, basically. He sued six different netizens and only one was charged and had to pay him $265. Then there was the situation with the safe. The safe is currently making its rounds on the internet again. But this happened January 2020. So a little over a month after Hara's death, someone broke into her home and stole her safe.

There's a few reasons that everyone's still talking about this, but especially now with her connection to Burning Sun. First of all, the burglar was caught on CCTV camera, masked up with a hat and gloves, but they're still caught trying to get into Cuadra's place. Now get this, the thief tries the front door, puts in a passcode, does not get access because Hara's brother had changed her code.

But it was the correct coat. Yes, before. So it's a friend or someone that knows it. The thief then starts looking for another way in, scales the wall and enters through the second floor balcony. Side note, another suspicious detail is this happened 49 days after her passing. So her family were paying their respects as with Buddhist tradition. The 49th day of someone's death is a time to say goodbye again. So on that exact day, the families are busy and someone broke in.

Wow. Nothing else in the house was touched, rummaged through, or taken. She had designer bags in her closet. She had jewelry. None of that was touched. Her safe was taken. How big? Was it a big safe? 60 pounds. They hauled a 60-pound safe out? Yes. Barehand? Yeah. How? I don't know. 60 pounds? Yeah. Okay, maybe more like 50, but it was 50 to 60 pounds. What? Yeah. Okay.

And she was known to put some jewelry, investment documents, and some old phones of hers in there. So let's work through this. If the thief wanted her jewelry that's in there, it's clear that they would want money, right? Why didn't they take any other valuables in the house? She had other jewelry laying around. She had designer bags laying around. None of that was even touched.

Okay, do they want her investment documents? That would be very difficult to do anything with those without being caught. It's not like anyone can easily transfer her investments into their name, especially add the fact that she's a very public figure and her death was very, very public. Then the third thing that we know is in her safe are her old phones. What would anyone want to gain from getting her old phones? Maybe there was something she had on there that someone didn't want everyone to see. So there are speculations now with her connection to Burning Sun that she might have more evidence on there.

And someone associated with burning sun is the allegation had someone go in and steal that safe. Again, this is all speculation because the thief has still yet to be identified. All we know is that the thief is a man, slim build, about 5'11", wears glasses and appears to be in his 20s or 30s.

I will say there are a lot of allegations of who this thief could be including another celebrity but I think it is kind of crazy to be pointing fingers without a little more evidence because I just feel like what if it's not like the damage it would do if it's not is crazy. So it's someone that's fit enough to carry a safe that big though. To make the situation even messier after her death, reports start coming out about a strange woman at her funeral.

They stated that at Cuar's funeral, there was an oddly smiley woman there that kept asking other celebrities for photos at her funeral. Like, oh, can I take a selfie with you? She would go up to celebrities, shake their hands and say, I saw you on TV. Can we take a photo?

People were confused. A lot of Kuara's friends, who also happened to be famous, were very uncomfortable. And not only that, the lady requesting photos of the idols, she had a lot of makeup on, almost like she got her makeup done for this event. And she was just smiling in a way that was not fitting for a funeral. It was bright smiling. It wasn't even smiling because you're trying to remember that person in this loving, happy way. All of this was made even more uncomfortable by the fact that that strange lady is Kuara's mom.

Hara barely knew this woman. The only memory that she has of her mom is that that's her biological mom and the fact that she used to use Hara, her own daughter, that's only in kindergarten at this point, to make excuses to go cheat on her husband.

Yeah. Kuweta's real family only consists of her dad and her older brother. Her brother would say about their mom, when I was 11 and Hara was 9, she left us. She just disappeared. She just left without even saying goodbye. The same day, Hara's older brother found their dad unconscious and foaming at the mouth after swallowing handfuls of sleeping pills. He said, I remember that day my mother left home. I was so young, so I wasn't sure why she left. My father asked my sister and me in an odd kind of way, is there anything else you want to have?

That night, he attempted to self-exit. He said, "My sister and I watched together as my father was put in an ambulance. To my sister Hara, who was only in second grade at the time, our mother's sudden absence and my father's pain must have caused her sadness. It was a huge thing for them. Thankfully, their father survived, but it was always a wound that they would have.

Side note, they were pretty much completely estranged from their mother. But in 2017, Kuwata does reach out one time. Kuwata regrets this meeting. I mean, she said it was very foreign and strange. The energy was just off, which turned out to be true. There were allegations that Kuwata's mom was mainly interested in being able to brag that she was Kuwata's mom. Their very first meeting after so long, Kuwata just wanted to meet her.

Talk to her. Get a hug. Get some closure. But her mom shows up with her relatives, her relatives' kids that were all fans of Cuara, her friends, her friends' children that are all friends of Cuara. She made some sad excuse on why she never reached out. And the worst part of all of this is for the 20 years of not seeing her mom, Cuara found out that she only lived 10 minutes away. And she was going around telling all of her friends that she was Cuara's mom. She kept tabs on everything Cuara was doing so that she could brag to her friends about it.

wow that is so sick and twisted yeah it it's bad so why now why is she suddenly at cuara's funeral dressed in black acting like this heartbroken mom who was always in her life and just is so devastated also she's very happy yeah like she would go through um emotions where she acts sad and she's like no i need to be the person that stands next to her casket and gets all the bows from people because you have to bow to the family

And then she would go back to like, "Can we take a selfie?" And then she would like cry. And then, "Can we take a selfie?" Also, why did she come? With lawyers! She showed up to the funeral with lawyers. Cuara's brother and father would soon find out that she was there to go after Cuara's inheritance. It's unclear exactly how much Cuara was worth, but she had a building that was worth 2.3 million. She had another apartment that was worth 900,000. That's just her real estate profile. There could be a lot of other assets we don't know about. That's what she's after.

After her death, there would be this whole legal battle between brother and father and then mom. Which, by the way, she had a chance. Under Korean law, if someone does not have a will or children or is unmarried, their inheritance goes to their parents. There's no stipulation that the parents have to have been a part of the child's life to get the inheritance. Just by being the parent on the birth certificate is enough.

Kuhara's brother would reiterate, just because someone gave birth to you doesn't mean they're a parent. A person who abandoned us and even gave up her parental rights is trying to take away assets earned through Hara's hard work. And that just means our laws are unjust. This prompted the brother to start a petition for an act to be introduced into law to protect the assets of children that are abandoned or abused by their parents. After almost five years, the act would be passed, the Kuhara Act.

Kulada's brother is using the inheritance to set up a foundation to help single parents. The last messages that he's ever sent his sister were: "I'm begging you, please don't have any negative thoughts. Don't get sick, take care of your health and sometime in the future I hope you get married, have children and live for a very long time. When you're sad, just cry it out. I know it's hard to let it out, but I love you little sister." She responds: "I love you oppa, don't worry." "You must be so sad. My heart aches like crazy too. Eat something delicious in Japan."

I'll bring some delicious food tomorrow. Okay. He was gonna go over the weekend that she died. She told him no, she wanted to go to a party. She didn't ever go to a party. Hara, before her death, kept encouraging her brother and sister-in-law to have kids, so much so that she even paid for their doctor's visit so that they could try to conceive. After Hara's funeral, her brother came home, he was a mess at this point, and his wife was in tears and she told him that she was pregnant.

He said, "I cried so much then. I was so sad. If she had just waited a few days, if she hadn't made that choice, she would have been an aunt." August 10th, 2020. Kuara's niece, Ku Harin, was born. Hara's brother would say, "She reminds me so much of my little sister, and it makes me cry. Our Hara always talked about wanting a niece and even bought us nutritional supplements, so we decided to name her after the name that she thought was the prettiest."

As for Kuwara's dad, he said, "She used to go to Japan for promotions a lot, so now I often try to think, 'My daughter is in Japan. She's in Japan right now, alive and working. It helps me find comfort in some ways." And that is the case of The Burning Sun, the hopefully final episode and... What are your thoughts?

I just think it's crazy the juxtaposition of the timelines of what the girls are getting cyber bullied for and all their quote scandals and controversies and how everybody turns on them and then these guys are doing some of the most heinous crimes imaginable and they still to this day have fans. They have supporters. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments and please stay safe. I will see you guys in the next one.