omonatheydid | The aftermath of Jaebeom’s contract termination

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Following JYP Entertainment’s official statement on the 25th that 2PM’s Jaebeom would, in fact, not be returning his rightful position as the leader of the 7-member group, an ominous cloud was cast over the nation.

In September 2009, Jaebeom stepped down from his position as 2PM’s leader after his “offensive” MySpace comments about Korea were publicized. Due to the sensitive issue of Jaebeom’s departure, all 2PM activities were suspended temporarily. After the brief hiatus, 2PM returned to the music scene with their first full-length album, without their leader. Since then, the beastly idols reaped various year-end music awards–including “Song of the Year” for Again and Again–and enjoyed skyrocketing growth in new endorsement deals.

The small hope, which Hottests have been desperately clinging onto, that Jaebeom would one day unite with 2PM once again, vanished as quickly as his departure to Seattle. Needless to say, Korean and international fans from all over the world have not taken the recent news lightly. In fact, the overall reaction to Jaebeom’s contract termination are already taking its crumpling effect on JYP Entertainment.

After the company’s announcement on their official website, 2PM’s fancafes and fansites have been in complete disarray. In just five hours, 2PM’s official fan cafe on Daum lost 46,000 members (and counting) from the original 329,000, a good 14% chunk of the community.

Taecyeon shut down his Cyworld while Junsu closed his photo and comment section off from the public.

It has been reported that there are even body guards stationed at the JYP building in Cheongdam at the moment. Perhaps it is to ensure the safety of 2PM and the staff members, but to my recollection, the managers themselves are the ones to be watching out for.

Despite JYP Entertainment’s lengthy letter posted online, Hottests speculate that they are lying and are currently in the process of collecting evidence to thwart their false statements.

UPDATE

As previously reported, Park Jaebeom is now confirmed to have permanently left 2PM. We released a small excerpt from the full message earlier, and now have an uncut translation of the entire letter for our readers. In the past few hours, the kpop world has simply exploded with not only grief but confusion due to many theories and news reports that point in all directions. allkpop works around the clock to provide you with the fastest news, but we also value quality and accuracy as well, and hope this full statement will help our readers understand the convoluted matter at hand. The whole message, which was posted on JYP Entertainment’s official website, is translated here:

Hello, this is JYP Entertainment. Last September, 2PM’s member Park Jaebeom announced his withdrawal from the group and returned to Seattle after a message he wrote on the internet during his trainee days caused backlash. We will now reveal what course of action will be taken. Although the message that became an issue last September upset many people, it was written during Jaebeom’s tough trainee days on his personal page. At the time, the company agreed with Jaebeom when he asked to take some time for self-reflection. We did not think that this meant that he would stop all activities in the entertainment industry or that he would leave 2PM. The company had the option of forcing Park Jaebeom to stay and continue promoting with a 7 member 2PM. However, although netizens exaggerated Jaebeom’s words through mistranslations, his words still had the potential to hurt many people. Because of this, we did not want to endorse Jaebeom and force him to continue promotions because it might have damaged his image permanently in the public eye, and so we agreed with his decision to return to the States. When a celebrity makes a mistake and does not apologize for his / her mistake or if the company endorses that celebrity, the public view of that celebrity becomes more negative and it was in the company’s thoughts that letting Jaebeom withdraw from the group for self-discipline would be good. Thankfully, after Park Jaebeom left the country, an outpour of support gave him another chance. After Jaebeom’s leave, we did not release any additional information because we did not want the public to be influenced by malicious sources. Since Park Jaebeom’s return to Seattle, the company has searched for vocal, dance, and acrobatics teachers, and the company producer JYP went personally to Seattle to talk to these teachers and formulate a program. All recent CF’s, performances, promotions and contracts that have involved 2PM have been made with the mindset that the group would eventually have all 7 members present after Park Jaebeom’s return and so we waited for his comeback. In November, 2009, the company proposed that Park Jaebeom make his comeback through an album that would have been released this year in April, and Park Jaebeom had agreed to these plans. The plans called for Jaebeom’s return to Korea on the third week of February and a press conference would have been held before promotions as a 7 member 2PM began. Because of the support he received from the public after his withdrawal from 2PM, Park Jaebeom’s return would have improved 2PM’s efforts and most importantly we would have been able to receive the complete support of the fans once again. The company and the group had high hopes. However, if the news of Jaebeom’s comeback were revealed too quickly, we felt that the public would once again be negative. Although the fans criticized the lack of information from us, we did not reveal any plans for the comeback. On December 22nd, 2009, Jaebeom confessed to Jung Wook, a representative, that he had done something wrong during the Again and Again promotions. Apparently, it was far more serious than his MySpace controversy. The six other members were not notified then as they were busy with year-end activities. On January 3rd, 2010, we all sat down for a discussion and came to an agreement 3 days later that it was no longer possible for Park Jaebeom to continue activities along with 2PM. We thus decided to terminate our exclusive contract with Jaebeom. Although we wanted to release this information as soon as possible, Park Jaebeom’s personal situation prevented us from revealing this information until now and we hope you understand. We would like to emphasize that all the information above is true in its entirety. We are revealing these details through this message now because if we had lied and gave false information, we would have lost any trust that we held with the fans. To 2PM and all the people who waited for Park Jaebeom’s return, we apologize deeply and are sorry to have to reveal this sad news to everyone. The company and the remaining 6 members will prepare even harder and greet you with a better image. Thank you.

source: allkpop1 allkpop2