Phew! This past week has been a total emotional rollercoaster, both for K-Pop and K-Drama fans and for the Korean celebrities too. Since 16th February, a whopping total of 14 bullying scandals surfaced the internet. Some of the artists who were involved were (G)I-DLE's Soojin, actor Kim Dong Hee, Seventeen's Mingyu and actor Jo Byung Gyu.
Recently, another bullying scandal happened and it's probably the most popular one yet; constantly in talks and debate amongst fans and casual watchers of K-Dramas and K-Movies. Yup, this time a K-Pop idol is not involved, but an actor. You might've already guessed it, but it's Kim Ji Soo.
Kim Ji Soo is pretty popular, you might know him from his previous works like Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, My First First Love, When I Was The Most Beautiful and his new drama that is currently ongoing : River Where The Moon Rises. However, it has been announced that KBS has decided to drop the actor from this project.
Kim Ji Soo, who was playing the main role of On Dal, has now been replaced by actor Na In Woo. KBS stated that from episode 9 onwards, actor Na In Woo will fully be replacing Kim Ji Soo while KBS plans to remove as many scenes of Ji Soo as possible from the previous episodes.
On March 2nd, the accuser uploaded a post to an online forum about Kim Ji Soo's horrid past in school. That person claimed to be his schoolmate and expressed how badly Ji Soo bullied them and other students too. The actor was called a “delinquent” and was also said to have roamed the school and performed bad deeds. Some of the bad deeds consists of violence and blackmailing.
Everyone wished for this to be just another groundless rumour, however we were all proved wrong much to our disappointment. The actor uploaded a handwritten apology on his instagram, apologising for the things he did in school. Though he apologised, this left a lot of fans with disbelief because he didn't deny the rumours which only meant one thing : everything is true.
With everything that is happening with this popular actor that was once loved by many, it is only normal for people to have mixed feelings about this issue. The main problem with this is that there are fans who blinded by this actor that they have the audacity to forgive him when they are not the victims.
You would be surprised with the amount of people who are giving excuses to Kim Ji Soo's past behaviour, claiming that he has probably changed and that “people make mistakes”. They are also saying all of these even though it has been leaked that Kim Ji Soo has crossed paths with his victims before but have not bothered to apologise sincerely, only apologising now because he got exposed.
However, there are a number of people with common sense who are expressing their disappointment and signing petitions for the actor to get charged; Korean fans especially are constantly signing petitions here and there for Kim Ji Soo to be removed from his upcoming projects which I personally think, is what he deserves after the trauma he put his victims through. Karma has its own timing.
Here some of the comments from angered Korean fans :
Wow, these Korean fans really do not hold back haha! But in all seriousness, we really shouldn't give a free pass to our favourite celebrities just because they're, well, celebrities lol!
What do you think of this whole situation? Does Kim Ji Soo deserve the backlash? Would you still watch River Where The Moon Rises?
This is why the reality of not actually knowing our idols can be scary because we do not know what goes on off camera. The person we like can be a total opposite of what we thought they were!
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