'Chungju Man' Kim Seon-tae Abandons Solo Broadcast Hosting Debut: RESCENE Controversy Fallout

Broadcaster Kim Seon-tae has announced his voluntary departure from his program, taking responsibility for the controversy surrounding girl group RESCENE. This comes just a day after he apologized for the controversy that erupted on the 29th.

On the 31st, Kim uploaded a video to his YouTube channel, saying, "I suppose I had too much ambition. I wanted to try hosting a terrestrial broadcast solo host gig, so I gave it a shot, but it really wasn't easy."

He explained the background of his decision to step down voluntarily, stating, "It's not that I lacked capability or that my agency did something. Operating on my own, I felt an overall lack of smoothness, and to be honest, I also experienced difficulties in communication with the production team. I felt a lot of shortcomings in leading a broadcast as a solo host."

He added, "Making the decision to step down voluntarily is actually not easy. There are contracts involved, and a broadcast station is a heavy entity. They trusted me and scheduled a regular broadcast, but I simply didn't have that capability."

Kim shared that he had called his agency's CEO early the previous morning to apologize directly, and that he had also apologized to the RESCENE members. "I was told that the members actually worried about me before I even reached out to them," he said, adding, "This incident gave me a chance to look back at myself. I found myself thinking a lot about whether I had truly lost my original intentions."

Previously, on the 29th, a pre-release video for the KBS show "Faith Success Era" was uploaded to the YouTube channel "KBS Original."

In the video, Kim drew criticism for directly bringing up past controversy involving RESCENE member WONI, asking, "Wasn't there anyone who said this was viral marketing?" Pointing out that he had brought up a controversy that had already been put to rest, criticism mounted alongside revelations that the video's hashtags included the names of numerous political and business figures unrelated to RESCENE. The video was made private about four hours after its release.

On the 30th, Kim uploaded a video titled "I Am Sorry," stating, "I first saw the pre-release video around 8:40 PM yesterday," and adding, "As soon as I recognized that a problem had occurred, I asked the production team to delete the video."

(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Kyung-youn)