Following the leaks of the chat logs between Hwa-young's twin sister Hyo-young and Lee Areum, the former has confessed to her threatening the T-ara singer. Areum has thanked the reporter who published the story about the chat logs leaked by an anonymous T-ara staff. The leak came after the sisters appeared on the Tv show 'Taxi' and talked about the bullying scandal. Areum has vowed to protect her former girl group band-mates as well as herself.
Website Koreaboo reports that Ryu Hyo-young, who was part of the girl group F-ve Dolls, has released a statement through her agency B.A.M Entertainment confessing she threatened "scratch" Areum's face. "Hyoyoung was very young back then, and seeing Hwayoung suffer from the 'bullying incident' made her step in because they're family. Hyoyoung could not have known everything that was happening within T-ARA internally. She became emotional because she was seeing her little sister suffer so much. There was no other reason for sending the messages" the statement read.
In 2012, mentioned Koreaboo in an earlier report, a rumour gained prominence on social media that Hwa-young was bullied by members of T-ara girl group. Apparently, not being able to see her sister suffer anymore, Hyo-young took it upon herself to confront the culprits and threatened Lee Areum via mobile messenger service KakaoTalk. In the conversation that occurred, Hyo-young tells Areum "I'm going to scratch your face so you can't go on TV**" adding "Just you wait" and calling Areum "bitch." Read the logs here.
Lee Areum in her private Instagram account, uploaded a photo with the caption "I have endured so much. Everything aside I want to thank the reporter who uploaded my past picture. I hope we do meet. I don't know but if you're reading this reporter-nim. Fighting ^^ Let's all pretend nothing happened today and cheer up!" The name of the reporter who broke the story through TV Report is Kim Kayoung, notes Koreaboo.
The T-ara staff member who did not reveal his identity, had said about this controversy "Hyoyoung threatened to slice Ahreum's face with a knife. [She] cussed out T-ARA members saying they needed a beating to come to their senses." Areum released a statement, as noted by Allkpop, saying she's happy about the truth coming out at last and vowed to protect her former band-mates. "My pretty unnies, who I miss. I promise to protect my unnies today as well," and "I'll protect myself, so don't worry."
The fact that a former T-ara staff member and T-ara manager both confirmed that Hwa-young had been lying about being bullied does great damage to her career. It seems she chose the wrong path; that of quick game without thinking of the consequences. The leaks point out that the messages from Hy-young to Areum were pointless as she had joined T-ara after the alleged bullying had taken place.
Now, with the truth finally out, hopefully T-ara will get back into the flow which got disrupted due to fan backlash against the alleged bullying.
