Following complaints by BTS fans, Xports News has officially apologized for a controversial article about the boy group.

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ARMYs have been complaining about an article by reporter Jeon Won who claimed BTS' agency Big Hit Entertainment had been blackmailed for illegal marketing practices and stated the group's 'Top Social Artist' win the '2017 Billboard Music Awards' was suspicious. 

Xports News explained the article had been meant as an opinion piece by the reporter, and the media outlet further apologized for causing misunderstanding and degrading the effort of BTS as artists and their fans.

The full statement is as follows:

"On September 6 at 7:30 PM KST, Xsportsnews made a report related to BTS. 
The related article was an opinion piece by the reporter in a column format. The reporter found there was a problem with the news article's content immediately after reporting on it and deleted the article at 8:15PM KST from our website, and the article was then deleted from other portal sites consecutively.
We deeply apologize that the article's content contained a logical jump as well as for causing misunderstanding of the article as degrading to the related artist and fans' efforts, hurting them as a result.
The newspaper had no intention to degrade the artist or fans effort with the news article. However, we sincerely apologize for hurting the artist and fans as a consequence.
The newspaper will try to report more exact and balanced information from now forward by keeping this incident in mind."