By One of Korea’s most famous K-pop groups the Wondergirls recently toured in the US and some controversy was stoked when one of the band members Sun-mi quit and went back to Korea. Well now we may know why she quit and went back to Korea if these allegations of abuse from their former English tutor is true:
“I was being paid $20 an hour to teach the group.”
Gauss said he saved most of the e-mail correspondence between himself and JYPE to prove his claims.
“The day before I was supposed to go back to JYPE on May 3, I had a conversation with one of my other private students who told me JYPE probably wasn’t paying me enough money,” he said.
“At that point I just decided to quit because I didn’t want to go back and negotiate. At that point, I was already set on leaving the job. But I was hesitant because the girls were so nice and I was convinced the girls were not being treated well.”
After Gauss quit his position as the band’s tutor, he decided to look into a “hunch” he had about the “strange” look of the Manhattan JYPE office.
“I thought the building looked strange because they had an office in the basement and they had people living on the second and third floors,” he said
“Of course I was surprised when I found out that they had been busted by the city. So I made inquiries and I spoke to somebody from the NYC Department of Buildings and that person confirmed JYPE’s violation.”
Gauss’ allegations against JYPE included charges of illegal housing, lack of health insurance coverage, and the coercion of one of its members to perform a private concert for corporate executives in China. [Korea Herald]
Read the rest, but it seems like JYP Entertainment was treating these girls just a bit better than a juicy bar ajumma treats her juicy girls if this story is true.
Both Extra Korea! and the Marmot’s Hole have more on this.
11:51 am on May 14th, 2010 1
How do you come up with the compairson of how this "international" singing group is treated, with the women working the bars?
I'm sure they get out of their "room" more than once every thirty days.
I'm sure there are MANY other ways the "wonder girls" have it MUCH better than the girls in the bars of Korea.
Are you pandering to emotions again GI KOREA?
12:11 pm on May 14th, 2010 2
So some English teacher say so, so that must mean that it's all true.
Not that English teachers aren't known to exaggerate a thing or two when making claims at Dave's ESL Korea hate fest.
Not that they're famous for smoking pot so therefore highly likely they're hullucinating again.
Maybe GI Korea is becoming the National Enquirer.
So what are you white knights waiting for? Go rescue those poor but d*ck raising Korean girls from evil Korean men!
12:38 pm on May 14th, 2010 3
the real story here is only getting paid 20 bucks an hour to teach stars. 200 /hour would make more sense.
1:03 pm on May 14th, 2010 4
“Of course I was surprised when I found out that they had been busted by the city. So I made inquiries and I spoke to somebody from the NYC Department of Buildings and that person confirmed JYPE’s violation.”
Gauss’ allegations against JYPE included charges of illegal housing, lack of health insurance coverage, and the coercion of one of its members to perform a private concert for corporate executives in China. [Korea Herald]
WTF? Sounds like business as usual in Korea. As far as the pot smoking (Tom never answers when I directly challenge him) – I don't do it, but have (years ago), I'd rather have pot smokers work for me than drunks… Tom apparently has reafer madness.
1:18 pm on May 14th, 2010 5
Well, some of it is definitely true.
http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/ECBQueryByNumbe…
1:19 pm on May 14th, 2010 6
They aren't stars in the US.
1:20 pm on May 14th, 2010 7
"Reafer madness"? Are you stoned?
1:22 pm on May 14th, 2010 8
I should be, according to the holy scriptures.
1:22 pm on May 14th, 2010 9
whoops
1:50 pm on May 14th, 2010 10
sounds like JYP Entertainment was asking for trouble paying some guy 20 bucks to interact with 5 hotties. I mean they were on student visas to attend some language school and it looks like they weren't doing that. If JYP really waned to take care of them he could hire a professional voice coach or let them attend a real program.
20 bucks an hour sounds like some fly by night operation. To teach 5 people? is that what teachers are getting paid in the States? You can get 30 bucks to teach an elementary school kid here in Korea.
heh, they should have found this yo-yo master and asked him for advice.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100511/ts_ynews/y…
3:44 pm on May 14th, 2010 11
I would have taught them English for free
!
4:10 pm on May 14th, 2010 12
I wouldn't have caught the misspelled word. If you have not you have got to watch the movie "Reefer Madness" which if somebody doesn't know was an anti-marijuana movie that was made I guess in the 1950's. It made it look like if you smoked marijuana that you would become a crazed psychopath. It was so over the top that it was hilarious. It's even funnier to watch when stoned or so I'm told if there are any law enforcement officers watching.
4:22 pm on May 14th, 2010 13
Somebody's not getting enough from his wife.
6:12 pm on May 14th, 2010 14
I don't know what pot can give you hallucination!
7:08 am on May 15th, 2010 15
Don't worry Tom, when the two Korea's reunite their will be more than enough poor Meth addicted Koreans from the north that will have the peninsula begging for those Canadian stoners to come back.
7:23 am on May 15th, 2010 16
While I share you worries about meth addiction in the North, careful about the gloating. Karma is listening [see here], and in the US (not sure where you're from, a listener), meth is poised to become for predominantly White rural America what crack was to predominantly Black parts of urban America [see here].
7:37 am on May 15th, 2010 17
"If JYP really waned to take care of them he could hire a professional voice coach or let them attend a real program."
I'm guessing it's cheaper to use Auto-Tune (both live and in the studio).
7:46 am on May 15th, 2010 18
The article doesn't mention that they got on the Billboard charts by selling their CD at clothing stores for 99 cents.
1:27 pm on May 15th, 2010 19
Does in the other Herald article:
Gauss also said that JYPE had sold the band’s CD at a bargain basement price of $1 at retail clothing chains around the United States, which significantly boosted both its sales and its performance in the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
http://www.koreaherald.com/entertainment/Detail.j…
1:29 pm on May 15th, 2010 20
And some groups at iTunes that are hyped by Apple give away their music for free. Did people buy it at $1 or not?
2:41 pm on May 15th, 2010 21
Pretty slick move from my perspective.
3:30 pm on May 15th, 2010 22
"or so I'm told" Well "I" believe you.
Plane nine from outer space was more believable than R-M.