Ji Seok-jin Refutes “Running Man” Discord Rumors, “Gary, Kwang-soo & So-min Left To Pursue Their Dreams”

On July 30th, the YouTube channel “Jeeseokjin World” uploaded a new video featuring the guest appearance of former AOA member Choa.

In the video, Choa said, “I took a break as a step to leave the group just like quitting a job. Other people viewed the team itself as a family”, and then mentioned negative reactions with she announced her withdrawal from AOA.

Ji Seok-jin said, “I didn’t talk bad about you. From the perspective of ordinary people, ‘Choa is so into variety shows and does so well, so why is she leaving?’… People honestly think like, ‘Does she have a problem?’”. Hearing that, Choa commented, “My mind was the problem…”.

Choa then confessed, “When I left, I thought, ‘I should try my own thing’, but I got more hate than expected. I was already mentally exhausted so I was in bed for about three years”. Ji Seok-jin reacted, “You’ve been hit by malicious comments, but there are more people cheering on you. I’m serious. The haters and hate comments are a minority, but those haters are combative, that’s why it looks like there are a lot of them ”.

He continued, “‘Running Man’ has been going on for 14 years now. There were some friends who left in the middle. Gary, Kwang-soo and So-min not because of problems with the members. They left to pursue their dreams.”

Choa, who is currently working as a YouTuber, shared, “I was a main vocalist. I want to do well as a soloist which I wasn’t able to do before. My goal is to definitely release it within this year”, adding, “That process helped me to get tons of subscribers when I started YouTube. I have 420,000 subscribers now. A month after I started, about 300,000 people subscribed to it. It really helped me gain courage.”