American singer Oliver Tree apologized for insulting late Jonghyun, “My foolish mistake; there was no intention of hurting anyone”
American singer-songwriter Oliver Tree apologized for using late artist Jonghyun’s funeral picture to promote his concert tour without permission.
Recently, Oliver Tree posted on his Instagram a photo in which his face was edited into late Jonghyun’s photo to make a ‘meme’. Not only did his picture caused controversies, but the anger outburst was also triggered as netizens who objected to his action were called “KPOP crazy fans”.
After Oliver Tree’s insulting action started to become a hot topic on SNS sites, such as Twitter, KPOP fans demanded an official apology from the singer by trending the hashtags “apology Olivertree” in both English and Korean.
Accordingly, Oliver Tree posted an Instagram story to apology to Jonghyun:
“In regards to the Jonghyun photo, I want to apologize to him and everyone who was hurt by the image that was posted on my account years ago. I had no intention of hurting anyone.
To clarify, I didn’t make that image and me and my team didn’t know what the image was taken from. Had we known, we never would have posted it. The second someone told us what it was from, we removed it immediately. There was no intention of anything malicious, just no research which caused a very foolish mistake.
At the time I didn’t understand the gravity of posting images I didn’t research. Since then me and my team have been extremely careful looking into everything we post. The reason we posted it was because I was making an album & tour about death.
My cousin died when I was in middle school and I went to say goodbye to him while he was braindead in the hospital. Ever since then, death has been a huge topic I’ve explored in my art. Each music video I made for “Ugly is Beautiful” shows my death in different ways. Death is the most serious topic and through my art l’ve been attempting to process it.
Once again l’m so sorry to anyone who has been hurt by that mistake but please understand it was not intentional. I’m sending my deepest condolences to Jonghyun’s family and everyone who loved him.”
Source: Nate
