On April 6, HYBE issued an official statement regarding rumors surrounding the new girl group member.
HYBE's full statement is as follows.
After a thorough search, we have discovered that:
The accusations revolved around instances during the beginning of Kim Garam's middle school days, when she was just getting to know her classmates.
And such instances were edited with malicious intent to problematize past events.
A third party has confirmed that Kim Garam was not a school bully, but in fact a victim of various malicious rumors and cyberbullying during her middle school days.
Furthermore, the rumors that ▲Kim Garam was a trainee at a different agency, or rumors that ▲confidential documents from HYBE have been leaked, are entirely false.
Our agency believe that most of the alleged accusations have been raised to slander the artist, who will be making her debut soon.
SOURCE MUSIC has begun necessary procedures to move forward with strict legal actions against those who spread one-sided, exaggerated rumors or false content regarding our artist.
Along with the photos and screenshots of Kim Garam and her past social media posts, they claimed that Kim was famous at her neighborhood for smoking, drinking underage, and threatening/bullying other classmates.
The group is said to include six girls as members―including SAKURA and Kim Chaewon, two former members of disbanded project group IZ*ONE.
(Credit= HYBE/SOURCE MUSIC, Online Community)
(SBS Star)