Kim Hieora first became famous through her breakout performance on the Netflix hit Korean drama series “The Glory”. However, since the series, she has been embroiled in a bullying scandal similar to what happened in the series. The series deals with a group of high school students bullying a fellow student with one leading to murder. Rumors started to spread that Kim Hieora herself bullied her fellow students in school. This has led to many fans being outraged. We will run down what she is being accused of, her response, and what could happen moving forward.
Kim Hieora Bullying Scandal
Since her performance on ‘The Glory”, she has been getting many offers for future Korean drama projects. Her social media presence also grew. However, as her fame grew, many started to dig into her past. What did they find? Well, it turns out that when she was a middle school student (around 12 years old), she was part of a middle school gang called “Big Sangji”. It was an all-girls school and Big Sangji tormented girls they could take advantage of. They would extort them for money and if they could not pay they would verbally and physically abuse them. 10 former students came out and told their story about the bullying done by Big Sanji and Kim Hieora who was a part of the group.
The extortion worked like this. The younger members of Big Sanji were responsible for collecting money from students to give to the older members of the group. That money was then used to buy alcohol and cigarettes. Sometimes the money was used to go to Karaoke. It was the younger members of Big Sanji that was responsible for getting the money and they used physical and verbal abuse to collect. Another accuser stated that Kim Hieora made her get cigarettes and another said she took money from her to go to karaoke.
How do we know Kim Hieora was a part of the group?
There were group text messages from the gang that proved Kim Hieora was a part of the group. In addition, it was reported that a student stole from another student to help out Kim Hieora whose family was going through financial problems.
Kim Hieora’s Response
Kim Hieora confessed she was not a model student during middle school. She confessed to some misbehavior but has denied bullying anyone. She claimed 9th graders would try and extort money from 8th and 7th graders of up to 50,000 won. Kim Hieora has stated that she was just an observer and never participated in the extortion. As for the student who is responsible for her, she states she never asked her to steal anything and believes the student did so because of her family’s situation.
“She was a friend who followed me a lot. I think she heard of my family’s situation and tried to help me out. I did not tell her to do it, but no one believed me”.
She would not comment on whether she was a part of the Big Sangji gang. However, she did state that she has never smoked and never took money from anyone to go to karaoke.
There has been a lot of pressure put on Gram Entertainment, Kim Hieora’s agency. They came out with a statement regarding the bullying scandal.
“Hello, this is Gram Entertainment, Kim Hieora’s agency.
More than anything, we are sorry to have caused concern to many people with the sudden news related to Kim Hieora that was released today. Regarding the media’s report on Kim Hieora, we would like to convey our agency’s position as follows. However, we would like to clarify that all other allegations reported and raised by the media are not true.
In addition, both the media outlet and Kim Hieora learned that the comments provided by the informant resulted from misunderstandings and mistakes in their recollection of events. The informant resolved the misunderstandings, apologized to Kim Hieora, and informed the media outlet of this. Because of this, we thought things wrapped up due to the misunderstandings.”
The agency pleaded for the rumors of Kim Hieora to stop. Kim Hieora herself posted on Instagram that she would like to apologize to those who supported her and trusted her. Especially to those who were hurt because of her at this moment. The post was liked by her co-stars from “The Glory” Lim Jiyeon and Jung Sungil.
Kim Hieora took the time to meet with her middle school class. One of the phone calls was leaked to the press and it shows her apologizing for hitting the student to the point she got a nosebleed. She pleaded for her to not come forward and to meet privately instead.
It will be almost impossible to know who is telling the truth but it will be interesting to see if Kim Hieora can recover from this and move forward with her acting career.
