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A recent aespa performance at an all-boys school in Seoul took a dark turn as harassment and lax security claims began to surface.
The four-member girl group performed at Seoul's Kyungbok High School for their 101st-anniversary ceremony. While they are not the first K-pop band to perform there, this performance led to some students making s**ually explicit comments about the members.
The administration issued an apology to the group, only to delete it later.
aespa performed at Kyungbok High School's 101st-anniversary ceremony
The incident came to light after a post surfaced on an online forum. It said that members of the K-pop group suffered harassment from the audience, which was presumably mostly made up of teenage boys.
The post claimed that four students went up on stage during the anniversary ceremony and asked the idols for a selfie. Despite having no prior knowledge of plans to take pictures, aespa members consented.
While clicking a selfie seems like an innocuous request from some fans, things took a disturbing turn. One of the four students posted the image on his Instagram account while making s**ually explicit comments about the idols and their bodies.
One of them includes:
"I did everything but touch them."
In the same post that revealed the selfie incident, it was said the K-pop group allegedly did not have proper security at the event, leading to commotion while leaving the campus.
Naturally, the post left aespa fans in an uproar, with many asking for an explanation and apology from the school.
School formally apologized, only to delete it later
In response to the original post, Kyungbok High School's administration took to its official website to share a letter of apology to both the group and their agency, SM Entertainment.
The full letter can be seen below:
The apology letter claimed that the several incidents mentioned were not really true. They also claimed that many outsiders had attempted to enter the campus but were not allowed.
However, the letter was taken down shortly after.
Incidentally, the K-pop group is only one among several SM Entertainment groups that have performed at Kyungbok High School. The reason is that the company’s CEO, Lee Soo-man, graduated from Kyungbok High School.
Before the Savage singers, the high school enjoyed performances by Girls’ Generation in 2008, Red Velvet in 2015, NCT 127 in 2016, and NCT DREAM in 2017 and 2019.
