Is Stray Kids’ Hyunjin retiring? JYP Entertainment announces halt in activities after bullying claims surface
Stray Kids member Hyunjn was reportedly accused of bullying his middle school classmates, which the idol and his agency had initially refused to acknowledge, according to reports. However, on Friday, February 26, JYPE confirmed that Hyunjin had met with the victims in person and apologized to them as well.
Now, the agency has announced that Hyunjin will be halting all his activities. In the statement, JYP Entertainment said, "We are writing to inform you about Stray Kids’ Hyunjin’s future activities. The agency has been contacting the people in charge of all the activities that Hyunjin had previously scheduled to participate in, investigating the best way to cancel the activities that would minimize the harm done to them."
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The agency also blamed this as the reason why the announcement related to Hyunjin's activity was delayed and added, "This process took some time, so this statement on Hyunjin’s future activities was also inevitably delayed. Hyunjin will take the time to self-reflect after halting all of his activities as a celebrity."
The agency also explained that Hyunjin is regretting his actions and said, "He sincerely regrets and is self-reflecting on the fact that he hurt various people in middle school with his rough and unsuitable words. He has sincerely apologized to those who were hurt and is doing his best so that those people can heal from those wounds. We sincerely apologize for causing such serious concern with this issue."
Speaking about their experience, one victim claimed, "I didn’t expect Hwang Hyunjin to debut as an idol and be loved and supported by many people. It might have been a joke when they were younger, but I am a person that suffered from school violence at the hands of Hyunjin, and as I said before, I didn’t think that he would ever be an idol, so I didn’t collect any evidence, just a certification of the school we went to together, my memories, and friends’ testimonies."
The allegations had further stated, "The hell that I went through would have been buried if he wasn’t a celebrity, but when Hyunjin debuted as an idol, the memories came back to haunt me every time I saw him on TV. There were two reasons why Hyunjin tried to bully me in the class group chat at the time. One is that he didn’t like the fact that I asked him to close the back door to the classroom when he always sat in the back."
"Second, my friend who had to do lunch duty to get lunch, since he wasn’t on the school meal plan. Hyunjin didn’t like that, and criticized my friend, saying ‘I don’t like that you get a lot for lunch. You’re the reason why other students can’t eat lunch’,” the allegations added.
So when Hyunjin had apologized to the victims the agency stated, "It is true that there are individuals who were hurt by Hyunjin's past immature and inappropriate actions, and Hyunjin is also currently deeply regretting his past behavior, and so he personally met up with his former classmates to offer his sincerest apologies."