Kim Hieora's Agency Announces Legal Action Against News Reports On Recent Controversy

Kim Hieora’s agency has announced that they will take strong legal measures against the media outlet that initially reported allegations against Kim Hieora.

Following Dispatch’s new report and the agency’s formal response to that report on September 10, GRAM Entertainment released a new statement announcing their plan to take legal action as follows:

Hello, this is GRAM Entertainment.

We apologize for causing concern to many people due to the controversy related to our actress Kim Hieora. We would like to apologize to the many people who have been disappointed and harmed by this incident.

Today, we express our regret regarding a media outlet that covered the informant’s one-sided claims about Kim Hieora as if they were proven facts, and we decided to take legal action as we cannot condone the current situation which is damaging the reputation of the agency’s actress and causing suffering to unrelated individuals.

We disclose the acts committed by the media outlet in the course of reporting as follows, and we intend to take strong legal action against groundless claims and those who unilaterally claim such in the future.

Once again, we express our intent to take strong legal action for malicious acts against our actress, and we will do our best to protect our artist.

Below are our position and series of processes regarding the media outlet that first covered and reported the suspicions about Kim Hieora.

1. The media outlet that made the first report not only maliciously edited the informant’s words contrary to the facts but also tried to rationalize the legitimacy of their report by conveying that they were considerate of the agency and the artist [by holding the report until the actress’s on-air drama ended], adding the nuance of shame.

For example, the writing in the exclusive article on September 9 where it mentions, “September 8, 2023, Kim Hieora called H,” and “Kim Hieora released a statement. H is the evidence of school violence. Thus on September 8, she called H urgently,” is clearly reporting that distorts the facts.

After the release of our agency’s statement, H sent a text message to Kim Hieora first, expressing their wish for a phone call, but they were unable to get a hold of each other with the initial phone call, so it was Kim Hieora who sent the call afterwards. H even put pressure on Kim Hieora by listing groundless claims for the purpose of reporting it to the media outlet, and Kim Hieora, who made the call with a feeling of guilt for not having stood up for her friend during the situation that H was talking about, realized only later that the call was maliciously intended.

2. On May 17, the media outlet cajoled and coerced Kim Hieora, who visited the media outlet alone without being accompanied by someone from the agency to explain the accusations, by saying, “If you admit it, we will adjust the level of the article’s severity. Then it will be like Kim OO’s case so you will be able to return [to the screen].”

For example, they repeatedly asked the same question to Kim Hieora who claimed that she never smoked, urging her  to respond with a different answer by saying, “There are so many informants who said they saw you smoking.” Kim Hieora was claiming her innocence, and they pressured her by saying, “We can skip that since it is not important,” and contrary to their claim that they published verifiable content only, they included the informants’ claims in their exclusive report and craftily mentioned the accusations of [making others run errands for] cigarettes for her, inducing the public to misunderstand.

3. The media outlet claimed that their coverage had already been completed in May and that they had delayed publishing the article out of consideration for Kim Hieora, whose drama was about to premiere. However, although the initial informants and Kim Hieora cleared up their misunderstandings and relayed this information to the media outlet, they reported the suspicions anyway.

In this process, what we belatedly found out is that after the media outlet informed our agency of the situation that the report [about Kim Hieora] was received, the outlet secretly met with the informants and collected evidence for reporting prior to arranging a meeting [with our agency]. When the informants recognized that there was a misunderstanding and tried to change their minds, the media outlet clearly mentioned to them, “In that case, the report cannot be published.” Even afterwards, the outlet deceived us with lies and deceitful acts such as implying that there were no calls from the informants or that they had not met them.

The rights of many individuals are being violated due to the recent allegations against Kim Hieora. Due to the fallacy of hasty generalization that even a small fight means bullying and school violence and the [strict] standards held for celebrities, even irrelevant people are becoming victims of being suspected of bullying just because they were members of a [school] community. We sincerely hope that there will be no more victims due to indiscriminate reports.

We will discern the truth of this incident legally until the end, and we will reveal everything including what is right and wrong in what the media calls evidence and misunderstandings with the informants at court.

We apologize once again for causing concern to many people due to this unpleasant incident.

Previously on September 6, Dispatch released a lengthy report regarding accusations of Kim Hieora being a member of what was allegedly an iljin (school bullying) group called Big Sangji at Sangji Girls’ Middle School. In response to the report, GRAM Entertainment firmly denied Kim Hieora’s participation in iljin related activities and school violence.

On September 9, Dispatch published a lengthy new three-part report about Kim Hieora, including a transcript of a phone call between the actress and an alleged victim. Later that day, Kim Hieora’s agency responded to their allegations with a new statement of its own.

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