LE SSERAFIM Cancels Entire Schedule For Today Amidst Growing Controversy Over Kim Garam's Allegations

As the controversy over the school violence allegations against Kim Garam continues to grow, LE SSERAFIM has cancelled their entire schedule for the day.

Warning: mention of attempted suicide.

On the morning of May 20, Source Music officially announced that all of LE SSERAFIM’s scheduled activities for that day—including their appearance on KBS 2TV’s “Music Bank“—had been cancelled.

The agency’s full statement is as follows:

Hello, this is Source Music.

We are making an announcement regarding LE SSERAFIM’s schedule for May 20.

LE SSERAFIM will not be appearing on KBS2’s “Music Bank” (at 3 p.m.) or participating in their video call fan signing event (at 8 p.m.) as originally scheduled for today.

We apologize to the fans who were waiting [to see LE SSERAFIM].

We ask for the understanding of those who had been selected to attend the pre-recording for “Music Bank.”

Also, we plan to hold the video call fan signing event at a separate time, and we will provide the fans who were selected for the event with additional information soon.

Finally, we will quickly release our statement regarding the allegations against the LE SSERAFIM member as soon as we have finished our review.

Thank you.

Earlier this week, a photo of a document that appeared to be an official record from a school violence committee began circulating online. The title of the document suggested that it was a notice of the punitive measures to be taken against the perpetrator in the incident, who was named Kim Garam.

On May 19, the legal representative of the alleged victim in the incident (hereafter referred to as “Y”) released a detailed statement claiming that the circulating document was real and that Kim Garam had been found guilty of school violence by the committee in 2018.

The law firm also stated that while “Y” was not one of the individuals who originally posted the photos of Kim Garam online back in April, she has been bullied by Kim Garam’s friends and people she doesn’t know online ever since HYBE made their statement denying the allegations and claiming that Kim Garam had actually been the victim of bullying. According to the law firm, the ensuing online attacks led “Y” to become suicidal and drop out of school, with her mother now remaining by her side 24 hours a day in order to make sure she doesn’t attempt to harm herself again. The law firm accused HYBE of putting the alleged victim through a second round of harm and claimed that while they had tried to contact the agency about the matter and had sent them the evidence in question last month, they had not received a response.

The law firm went on to ask HYBE to apologize and amend their previous statement about Kim Garam being the victim, stating that “Y” was not interested in money, but wanted the truth to be properly revealed and her name to be cleared. They also stated that if HYBE did not comply, they would reveal the full records from the school violence committee and the profanity-filled messages that Kim Garam sent the alleged victim.

Yesterday evening, HYBE responded with a statement claiming that the law firm’s description of events had been one-sided and that they would release another statement after they were finished examining the claims that had been made.