Kyungbok High School addresses students’ immaturity in 2nd apology to aespa in light of sexual harassment backlash
Kyungbok High School once again apologized to aespa for the sexual harassment incident.
Kyungbok High School issued a second apology to aespa and their agency SM Entertainment on its official website earlier today (May 3rd) after the first apology faced criticism and was deleted. An official from the school wrote, “We sincerely apologize for the unintentional defamation of SM Entertainment and aespa after what happened at the event. We tried to maintain the order of the event, but some students were not mature enough while watching the performance, and caused a stir by posting pictures and writing comments on SNS after the event.”
They continued, “Our school will immediately provide lessons on etiquettes for watching performances, cyber etiquettes as well as gender sensitivity education for all students to prevent recurrences”, then apologized to aespa and their agency once again. aespa recently participated in a celebration event at Kyungbok High School, Lee Soo-man’s alma mater. After aespa appeared at the school, some students tried to get close to the members and even broke into the stage. Controversies arose when students posted pictures of aespa members on their SNS after the performance along with captions, such as “I did everything except for touching them”. Some even used excessive sexually harassing expressions to refer to the girl group.
In response, Kyungbok High School issued a position, saying, “After conducting an in-school survey of our students, it was determined that some outsiders who are not affiliated with our school visited the venue but we did not allow them to enter for security reasons. Therefore, we can infer that the malicious comments on SNS sites are not true”. After the controversy cooled down, Kyungbok High School apologized once again.
The full apology of Kyungbok High School is as follows:
Today, our school’s 101st anniversary ceremony was held in the auditorium and hosted by the Kyungbok Alumni Association.
At the ceremony, there was a guest performance by the girl group aespa.
However, we would like to express our deepest apologies for the unintentional defamation of SM Entertainment and aespa after the incident that took place at the event.
We tried to keep the students in order during the event, but some students were not mature enough while watching performances and caused a stir by posting such pictures and comments on SNS after the event.
Our school will immediately provide lessons on etiquettes for watching performances, cyber etiquettes as well as gender sensitivity education for all students to prevent recurrences.
As a result of today’s event, we once again apologize for damaging the reputation of SM Entertainment and its artist aespa.
