JYP Denies Rumors of Accepting Ex-JYP Trainee on “K-Pop Star”

Park Jin Young, founder and head of JYP Entertainment, denied rumors of accepting a past JYP trainee on SBS’s latest idol survival audition program, “K-Pop Star.” Park Jin Young is currently one of the three judging panels alongside YG Entertainment’s founder Yang Hyun Suk and BoA, who’s representing SM Entertainment.

On December 13, JYP wrote on his twitter, “You’re saying we let our company’s trainee on ‘K-Pop Star’? If I ever do that, I’ll get beat up by Yang Hyun Suk, before the fans even get to me. It didn’t happen so just relax and enjoy the show with me.”

During the December 11 episode of “K-Pop Star,” a contestant named Yoon Hyun Sang appeared and sang Yoo Jae Ha’s “With You in My Heart.” On the show, Park Jin Young praised his vocals and song writing skills, making him one of the leading candidates to win the show.

But afterwards, viewers questioned the neutrality of the show as they discovered Yoon Hyun Sang was in fact an ex-trainee of JYP Entertainment. JYPE later addressed the issue saying, “Yoon Hyun Sang did participate in our online audition last January and won the top award. The top award winner is eligible to win a chance to try out for an individual audition, but Yoon Hyun Sang got disqualified right before winning that chance.”

JYPE added the auditions are usually run by a separate team called, “Rookie Trainee Development Team.” Only the ones that advance to the final round gets to meet Park Jin Young as the final judge. “Since Yoon Hyun Sang was dropped prior to the individual audition stage, Park Jin Young had no idea who the guy was. You can say Yoon Hyun Sang has no relation with JYPE,” it added.

SBS also released a statement saying, “Yoon Hyun Sang admitted he won the top award at JYP’s online audition. So he earned a chance to get to the individual audition stage, but he was disqualified just prior to the audition. Of course, he’s not one of our trainee either. Trainees are hard to appear on TV because a lot of the fans know about them. Once you become a trainee, fans start following you and they make online fan clubs as well. It’s impossible to pretend like we don’t know our trainees.”

 Thunderstix is the Editor-in-Chief for soompi.com. You can email him at eugene@soompi.com, or follow his twitter.com feed at @eugenekim222.