It has been confirmed that 11 out of 12 trainees affected by Mnet’s vote manipulation scandal unprecedented in the history of K-Pop’s survival program have been compensated, while the two PDs who were in charge of manipulating the number of votes have been sentenced.
Mnet reached an agreement after conciliating disagreements with 11 trainees out of 12 trainees, who suffered direct damage due to the program’s reversal of results by rigging the number of votes. These 12 people were recognized by the jury as direct victims and their identities were cleared during the appellate court’s ruling process last November.
Mnet is known to have set the compensation amount based on the actual extent of damage in consideration of the expected profits that they could have earned if they had been selected to debut. Regarding the exact amount of payment, Mnet said, “We can’t tell you the details.“
In the case of one person who has yet to reach an agreement, it is reported that there is a disagreement over the compensation amount between his agency and Mnet. Mnet said, “The amount required by the agency that we could not finish paying damages is based on unrealistic grounds, which is blocking the focus of the meaning and scope of compensation,” and added, “We will do our best to compensate.“
Immediately after the incident took place, at the end of 2019, Mnet officially apologized for a series of incidents stemming from its audition program. In addition, it said it will set up a fund of about 30 billion won from previous and future expected profits and will compensate the victims. Since then, Mnet has raised an investment fund of more than 25 billion won and a public fund of about 5 billion won for the development of the Korean music ecosystem; the following April, it launched a viewers’ committee involving experts in the fields of academia, law, and media content to protect viewers’ rights and improve the quality of broadcasting content. After that, thanks to a timely move to compensate the victim, the scandal of ‘Produce 101‘ could be closed.
