Will 2PM Fans Leave Without Jae-beom?

Fan clubs of top boy band 2PM have formed a joint front against the band’s agency JYP Entertainment, which supported Jae-beom’s withdrawal from the group.

Issuing a joint statement on Thursday, the 63 fan clubs said they would wage a campaign against the sale of tickets for the group’s concert slated for Oct. 9 in Seoul.

The fan clubs will also not buy albums the group will release in the future with the absence of Jae-beom.

In their statement, the fan clubs said, “From now on, we will boycott 2PM’s agency because it showed an irresponsible attitude.”

“Underground,” a leading fan club for 2PM, said the associations took these measures because the agency failed to prevent Jae-beom from leaving the seven-member boy band due to controversy surrounding his critical remarks against Korea.

Jae-beom’s criticism — which was posted in English four years ago on his MySpace account — was recently revealed and spread on the internet, arousing controversy.

The clubs tried to defend Jae-beom, saying “When Jae-beom wrote about Korea on his MySpace page, he was a trainee and couldn’t adapt himself to Korean culture. Being mistranslated and literally translated, what he had written to his friend was reported to the public without considering cultural difference.”

The head of JYP Entertainment, Park Jin-young’s Sept. 10 comments on Jae-beom fueled anger among the fan clubs.

On the company’s website, Park asked fans to “respect Jae-beom’s decision.”

Amid the controversy raging in the nation, Jae-beom, leader of the boy band, announced that he would quit 2PM, and left Korea on Sept. 8 for Seattle, where his family is residing.

Credit: Korea Herald

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