Earlier on February 20 KST, in response to the ongoing controversy surrounding ALPHA DRIVE ONE member Kim Geon Woo and rumors of his "rude behavior" toward broadcasting station staff, his agency Wake One Entertainment issued a statement to warn legal action against any actions "infringe on artists' rights".
Several Korean media outlets relayed Wake One Entertainment's position via news reports on the same day, including iMBC News. Summarizing the agency's statement in a short video report, iMBC News stated, "Wake One Entertainment has hinted at legal action against malicious attacks and false rumors targeting its artists such as ZEROBASEONE and ALPHA DRIVE ONE." The report also used a banner photo of both ZEROBASEONE and ALPHA DRIVE ONE as its visual thumbnail.
However, some fans of ZEROBASEONE heavily criticized Wake One Entertainment for its "vague" statement which seemed to indirectly "drag" the group into unrelated recent events. In fact, many of these fans began asking various media outlets to replace images of ZEROBASEONE in their article headlines and thumbnails with single photos of Kim Geon Woo.
Then, some time on February 21 KST, these fans noticed iMBC News retweeting such a complaint comment underneath its own article.
The retweeted post consisted of one fan writing,
"This is all happening because ALPHA DRIVE ONE's Kim Geon Woo cursed at the main scriptwriter of KBS2's 'Idol 1N2D' saying, 'What the f*** are they saying?', so I don't understand why ZEROBASEONE is getting ragged into this? Here's a photo of Kim Geon Woo, so fix your video please."
Although many suspected that the retweet was simply a mistake made by the social media manager (the retweet was almost instantly retracted), some netizens could not help but speculate, commenting,
"Oh I get it MBC, you want us to know something.."
"I gotchu MBC (nod nod)."
"It's easy to like tweets by accident, but you need to click at least twice to retweet, right..?"
"And yet another inside staff does something to drop some 'hints'.."
"At this point you have to at least believe that there are a handful of insiders who know some things."
"I mean yeah it could be a mistake but it's just so funny how they chose the comment that summarized this whole situation so accurately lol."
"Maybe they wanted to retweet it on their private account and made a mistake lol. But even if that were true, it still means an MBC employee wanted to retweet it so.."
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