What I hate the most about the vote rigging scandal is how many devoted young fans feel lied to and angry about this coming to light. I almost wish it didn’t, or that the results of Season 3 and Season 4 weren’t that egregious that even diehard fans revolted and insisted on an investigation. The arrested PD for Produce 101 has admitted to vote rigging for the most recent 2 seasons but upon further investigation has also revealed that there was vote rigging in the originals season of girls who formed I.O.I and more crazy the second season of boys that created the insanely popular group Wanna One. Like, even a non K-pop follower like me knows about I.O.I and Wanna One. This is basically the death knell for Produce 101 but if you said the kids should have known this stuff was always insider decided that’s probably true but youngsters still wanted to believe the selection control was with them and shilled out tons of money voting and supporting so there was clear fraud and actionable criminal swindling. Now we’ll never know who was the real number 1 center pick for any season and everything related to Produce 101 feels tainted.
what I can see is that the vote rigging has become so obvious in season 4 that even a teenager can tell something is wrong. I am glad that he finally got caught. We should now realize that corruption is probably everywhere in SK and likely also everywhere in the world (e.g trump news), it only depends on time when the truth can be revealed….
2019 had made me realize just how corrupt SK is as a whole. No country is perfect and no matter how ‘perfect’ SK tries to depict itself to be, there’s always room for improvement. Hopefully these dark days will lead to improvements in the future. Just sad to all the trainees who worked so hard for these shows thinking they had a chance.
I watched only the first season and it was for reasons, different fo K-pop, as I am Jang Keun Suk’s fan. So I am truly unbiased towards IOI. It irritates me that this PD actually is tarnishing the first season, that was created step-by-step in front of our eyes.
There is many info that now, 4 years later, people are now aware and even worse, will not believe. But how many of them even know that the first season was created by the executive producer Han Dong Chul, who had the control over the show and actually Ahn PD was only a staff-member?
How many remember there was a free international voting and fans knew at every moment except the finale which girls entered the top 20?
And don’t we forget what massive fanbase recieved Kim Sohye to talk now she wasn’t supposed to be in IOI?
I am not saying there weren’t attempts to influence the show from outside parties. Maybe some people started recieving little bribes and favors in the moment when Produce 101 hit this massive success.
But how exactly Ahn PD rigged the show being not the person in charge??
Doing little tricks? Giving more screentime to one contestant than the others? Sabotaging the real voting?
I really want to know.