Content warning: The following article contains mentions and discussions of sexual assault. Some readers may find this content disturbing. Should the contents of this article effect you, please seek to contact your local crisis support service.
After one viral tweet in September of 2020, the lives of nine celebrity idols and their millions of fans were forever changed, never to be the same again.
Two years later, and the animosity still remains. A fractured fandom that fell apart has formed into two rival groups, where being a member to one party almost automatically disqualifies you from joining the other.
When the nine member JYP Entertainment boy group Stray Kids saw their main vocalist Kim Woojin leave the group and terminate his contract with the company in late 2019, although headline breaking news, it was a relatively placid affair.
However, within the space of twelve months, rumours had started to cover almost every facet of the K-pop community. People who had never even followed the group had heard the rumours, formed opinions, and placed judgement without all of the evidence.
In the lead up to his eventual solo debut in 2021, Kim Woojin's new agency, 10x Entertainment, sought to clear up the hyperbole with the release of "Finger Killer", a documentary in five chapters tackling the allegations of sexual assault made against their artist.
"Finger Killer" was unlike any other documentary I have ever seen. If you're picturing some sort of current affairs of "60 Minutes" special, then you're in the wrong ball park. If you're imagining anything narrated by an older British gentleman - the likes of David Attenborough and Michael Parkinson come to mind - then you're getting even further away.
Jam-packed full of information spouted at speed by the excitable narrator "Blue Bear" (the newest employee at 10x Entertainment), "Finger Killer" feels like a mockumentary come to life. Filled with GIFs, memes, some slight cursing and adult language, along with the "outside the box" anecdotes from the narrator, this documentary very clearly and incitefully showed that even coverage of serious topics should be able to engage a wide and varied audience, and the way that things have been done in the past isn't necessarily how it needs to be done in the future.
The amount of work that the team at 10x Entertainment put into "Finger Killer" to investigate allegations made against their artist, find evidence to counteract those allegations, and produce a documentary to showcase those findings, showed the seriousness of the agency and their unwavering support for Kim Woojin, despite the light-heartedness of the documentary itself.
The first chapter of the documentary - "Beginning of Woojin Over Party" - acts as an introduction to our narrator Blue Bear, an introduction to soloist Kim Woojin, and an overview of the sexual assault allegations laid against him.
From the beginning, it shows just how much of a Cub (Woojin's fandom name) Blue Bear is. It shows how much faith 10x Entertainment had in their soloist, and the amount of work they were willing to put in to help prove his name, entertain his fandom, and hopefully inform some of those who were unaware about what they had been misinformed about.
It tells the beginnings of the story, from Twitter profile @Qp1qsOkw2xQY0lK uploading an image of alcohol in a bar, and claiming that the image showed Kim Woojin in the background, along with the following text:
"I don't have proofs to show you other than this. I'm not asking you to believe me because you can believe on what you want to. But I was sexually assaulted by Woojin and this have been haunting me for months so when I saw that someone spoke about it I had to do it."
The second chapter of the documentary - "Thanks God My Boss Loves Whiskey" - showcases how staff were able to find the original image of the infamous Twitter profile "TV" by following the picture associated with the sexual assault allegation tweet.
Due to the CEO of 10x Entertainment being something of a whiskey aficianado, staff were able to follow a train based on the bottles of whiskey in the associated picture, which led them to the original picture on Instagram. Staff were then able to find where the original photo had been taken, and even gain access to CCTV footage from the bar which proved the picture being taken and that Woojin wasn't there at the time.
The original photo was first uploaded to Instagram on 31 August, 2020, eight days before the aforementioned Tweet was posted, and had originally been taken in April. The original poster of the photo was unaware that it had been taken without his permission.
The third chapter of the documentary - "The Fake Company Got Check Mark" - focuses on 10x Entertainment as a company and the scandal surrounding them rather than Woojin.
Uninformed K-pop stans online began spreading false rumours stating that 10x Entertainment was a shell or fake company, with some even claiming that it was just made by Woojin himself. These claims were quickly shut down when evidence was provided by 10x Entertainment showing that it was indeed a real company.
10x Entertainment revealed their corporate registration and business registration in the "Finger Killer" documentary, along with its listing on Naver Maps (a South Korean version of Google Maps), and included vlog footage of Kim Woojin in the company's offices.
The fourth chapter of the documentary - "Masterclass of Translation" - covers the topic of Kim Woojin's alleged apology statement released on Instagram, and how the mistranslation led K-pop stans to falsely accuse the soloist of complete disregard for the situation up to that point.
10x Entertainment decided within the documentary to provide their own proper translation of the uploaded statement by Kim Woojin, along with the descriptions of the meanings behind some of the words which may have been mistranslated by accident, along with questioning how the word apology ended up in the mistranslation to begin with.
"Hello, this is Kim Woojin.
Something absurd happened to me today. I wanted to catch up with the fans while I was at it. Someone spread a strange rumor on Twitter and deactivated the account . . . I have never met the person and have never been to the mentioned place.
My fans must have been shocked. Don't worry too much because it's not true.
I recently signed with a company of the same mind and am now preparing for my solo activities. The company will be taking legal actions against the false accuser, and further response will be taken care by them.
Please don't worry. I'll be in touch. Thank you."
The fifth chapter of the documentary - "Don't Look Down On My Team" - discussed the efforts that were made by 10x Entertainment to find those Twitter users who started the scandal, and the future plans of the company in regards to it.
With the help of Cubs, 10x Entertainment was able to locate the two Twitter users who first started up the false sexual assault allegations and rumours. They were able to locate "Person TV" (Twitter user @a1b3c4s9, who accused Woojin of inappropriately touching her and a friend in a bar), and "Person R" (a Twitter user who first retweeted the allegations against Woojin to their large following).
"Person TV" was found when 10x Entertainment investigated further on details Cubs had found - a censored version of an email address. The email address was then found to belong to a Brazilian student from an international school in South Korea. "Person TV" went on to say that while their email was used to create the Twitter account originally under the username of @confessmyday, it was then handed over to "Person R".
10x Entertainment's documentary "Finger Killer" ends by wrapping the story up, and refers to the documentary itself as "the story about ruining someone's life just for fun". At the time of the documentary's release, a lawsuit against the Twitter users was ongoing.
The full documentary of "Finger Killers" is available on Kim Woojin's official YouTube channel, and is available below:
Have you seen 10x Entertainment and Kim Woojin's documentary "Finger Killers"? What do you think of the way in which the entertainment company has been handling these sexual assault allegations? Let us know by commenting on our socials @KpopWise.
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