Seven out of Eight Rookie Girl Group ANS Members Terminate Contract After Bullying Case, Dark Facts Revealed

Kapanlagi.com - Recently, rookie girl group ANS has been the talk of netizens as one of their members, Haena, claimed that she experienced bullying from other members. Shortly after, seven out of eight ANS members took legal action to terminate their contract with the agency.

On Thursday (20/8/2020), all posts on ANS official fan site have been deleted except for the long statement made by the seven members who decided to leave the group. These seven members revealed the ANS group's story from their perspective.

"Hello, this is Lina, Royeon, Dalyn, Raon, Bian, and Dam I from ANS. These are the seven members excluding Haena. First, we would like to apologize to the fans who love and care about us but are concerned about the recent media reports. We want to share the current situation with all the fans because there may be fans who are worried and misunderstand our situation," wrote the seven ANS members as quoted from Allkpop.

1. Agency Contract Violation

© ANS Entertainment

The legal action taken by the seven ANS members was not without reason. Apparently, they have not been treated properly by the agency that oversees ANS.

"First, except for Haena, the seven members have requested contract termination with the agency through legal representation. We believe that the issue between us and the agency is related to Haena. Additionally, we believe that we are responsible for sharing our current situation and conditions with everyone. Although it is embarrassing, we want to tell you all about the current situation and conditions.

Our agency, ANS Entertainment, has fired almost all of their staff in March and April. They fired the staff members who were in charge of us, including our manager. Therefore, we do not have a manager.

On June 14, the agency closed its office, so we do not have a company building. Furthermore, we moved our dorm from Shinsadong to Gimpo. Since then, we haven't had a practice studio.

Because we don't have a manager, we have to contact and arrange our own schedules. We also manage our fansite ourselves and act as the staff to handle it. We were only given one vehicle for transportation, so some members have to take taxis everywhere.

In the midst of this situation, we held a fan meeting on June 20th. As all fans know, there were minor and major mistakes as well as accidents. The fan meeting could have been chaotic if it weren't for the help of the fired staff.

This is embarrassing, but none of our members receive vocal training, and each member only receives 10,000 KRW (about Rp 124,000) per day for meals. This meal allowance is not even given to us during weekends.

Actually, we don't receive any support or management. We have asked the agency to at least provide vocal training, but the agency refused our request by stating that they do not have the money for it.

We understand the difficult situation due to the corona outbreak, but the agency often ignores us. Furthermore, we cannot just sit idly by when we think about the fans who have high hopes for us.

Therefore, we have hired legal representation and sent a statement to the agency asking them to follow up on the contract that we have made, which includes hiring a manager for the group, having a corporate office, and providing dance and vocal training. We ask the agency to take action within 14 days or we will pursue legal action for contract violation. However, the agency ignored our request. Instead, they called the mother of one of the personnel and threatened us by saying, 'The agency did not make any mistakes. We will accommodate personnel with good temperaments and let the rest rot like trash. We will blacklist them so they cannot do anything in this field.' We will make them so stressed that they can't do anything except stay at home.'

In response to this, we can't take it anymore. That's why we have informed the agency about our contract termination," said the seven ANS members.

2. Conflict with Haena

The problem with the agency is further exacerbated by Haena's confession on social media claiming that she has become a victim of bullying by other ANS members. From the perspective of the seven ANS members, they have no problem with Haena and what she exposed on social media is not true.

"That's when the problem with Haena emerged.

When we sent that statement to the agency, the agency started discussing the issue with Haena. After that, the agency informed us that Haena was being treated in the hospital and told us to visit her. Just before we sent the contract termination letter to the agency, the content that appeared in various articles was posted on Haena's Instagram account.

Actually, our relationship with Haena is not bad. In our opinion, we don't have any specific problems with Haena.

Haena joined ANS in December 2019. She is the youngest member of the group and at that time she was still in high school. This year, our group didn't do many promotions because of issues with the company. Therefore, we didn't spend much time with her.

The only conflict we had with Haena was when we convinced her to go back to school after she decided not to go anymore after being tested positive for the coronavirus.

There was someone who tested positive for the coronavirus at the internet cafe Haena visited. So Haena got tested on May 29. Fortunately, Haena's test result was negative and the quarantine authorities told her to self-quarantine for three days.

During that period, we were dealing with Haena's school notification when we received a phone call from Haena's homeroom teacher. On June 8, Haena's teacher informed us that Haena hadn't returned to school even after three additional days of quarantine and hadn't contacted the school to inform them of her absence.

The teacher revealed to us that Haena often skipped school with the excuse of group and agency promotions. She even told the school on her graduation photo day that she had a work schedule with the agency and didn't show up at school. When we checked, we didn't have any schedule on the graduation photo day.

That's when we called Haena to the cafe and told her about our conversation with her homeroom teacher. We asked her what was going on, and she couldn't give a clear answer. He said it was his personal problem. Our member then reprimanded him that lying is not good and asked him to tell us if he has any problems. We encouraged him to do better in the future and we did not curse or even raise our voices at him.

Honestly, this kind of problem should be handled by the agency but we also have to manage Haena's presence at school because the agency does not do it.

The next day, Haena contacted one of the staff members and told him that Haena was experiencing mental problems. Haena stated that he wanted to talk to his parents before making a decision. We told him that we all respect Haena's decision and asked him to let us know after talking to the agency. However, Haena stopped responding to all of us afterwards.

Then on June 12, he contacted two staff members saying 'I am in a difficult mental condition so I cannot answer. Forgive me.' I will contact you after I recover. It's Haena's last message with us.

Haena didn't even attend the fan meeting that took place on June 20 and we had difficulty changing the choreography to fill Haena's absence.

Then, the company informed us that Haena was admitted to the hospital right after we sent the statement. They told us to go to the hospital to visit Haena, but we were worried that the agency might plan something against us. So we were afraid and couldn't even contact Haena. Fortunately, Haena's condition is not too serious and we were told that she has been discharged. We are relieved to hear that.

In fact, Haena has been going through difficult times due to the uncertain future caused by the agency's situation. She also revealed that she is facing financial difficulties because we didn't receive monetary support from the company.

All of our members don't have any ill feelings towards Haena, as before. We want to resolve the misunderstanding between us and Haena by speaking openly with her.

However, the issue with Haena happened at the same time as the contract problem occurred. When we recall the time when the agency spoke ill of us and threatened us, we suspect that the agency has used Haena to obscure contract issues," they continued.

3. Officially Leaving the Agency

At the end of the statement, all seven ANS members expressed that they have officially left the agency and bid farewell to their fans.

"Fans! We have received an abundance of love from all of you. We feel deeply sorry for making you worry about this situation. We have decided to terminate our contract with the current agency. No one knows what will happen to us in the future and we are in uncertainty.

Even if we continue our careers in the entertainment industry, we are not sure if we can continue as a team. We know that this will happen, but we have no choice but to terminate the contract with the company. We hope our fans can understand and we promise to try to come back to you all with a better side," concluded the seven ANS members.

(all/rsp)