Mnet | Rigged Voting Scandals And Evil Editing Of Chinese Trainees

Mnet is a South Korean pay television music channel owned by CJ E&M, a division of CJ ENM, part of CJ Group. The CJ E&M Center Studio located in Sangam-Dong, Mapo-Gu, Seoul is the broadcast and recording center of many Mnet programs with a studio audience, namely the live weekly music show M Countdown. It is also the venue for live performances in survival shows such as the Produce 101 series, Idol School Queendom, Kingdom, and Girls Planet 999.

To those familiar with Mnet and the survival shows they produce, the elements of rigged voting and evil editing are not a shock. Let us being with the former, shall we?

The Produce 101 series were a series of K-Pop survival shows that had the goal to form K-Pop idol groups. I.O.I was the debut group of Produce 101, Wanna One from Produce 101 Season 2, IZ*ONE from Produce 48, and X1 from Produce X 101. These groups are what are called “project groups”. Project groups are groups created for specific reasons. Usually temporary and from a project like a survival show or a reality show. Often, these groups will promote for a certain amount of time, anywhere from a year to 2 years and 6 months.

X1’s contract deemed them to promote for 5 years, with the first half having the members focus on X1 and the second half for the members to work in their own individual companies, to either go on to have a solo debut or to be a part of another idol group. They were set to disband sometime around 2024. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Due to votes being manipulated during Produce X 101, the group had to disband only 5 months after their debut with their song Flash, and their debut album Emergency: Quantum Leap.

Following the conclusion of Produce X 101, vote-rigging allegations surfaced after viewers suspected that the total votes were manipulated after noticing numerical patterns. On August 1st, 2019, 272 viewers filled a lawsuit against Mnet, as their on-site text voting service charged ₩100 (around 0.11¢ CAD) per vote, prompting an investigation led by the Seoul Metropolitan Police. Ahn Joon-Young and Kim Yong-Bum, who were producers for the Produce 101 series, were later arrested on November 5th, 2019, which also prompted X1 to stop all activities at the time. Ahn Joon-Young later confessed to manipulating the votes on all 4 seasons of the Produce 101 series. On December 3rd, 2019, Ahn Joon-Young, Kim Yong-Bum, and six other entertainment agency representatives were indicted for charges including obstruction of business, fraud, and bribery. A court trial began later that month on December 20th.

Because of the rigged voting scandal, this affected promotions for IZ*ONE and X1, as well as public perception of Mnet’s ongoing competition reality series. To this day, there hasn’t been another season of Produce 101. Except there was. Just under a different name.

On August 6th, 2021, a new survival show called Girls Planet 999 premiered. Another survival show where 33 Korean, Chinese, and Japanese trainees come together and through a series of missions and stages, aim for their dreams of debuting. Each trainee in either groups or solo, had to go through an “audition stage” where they showed off their singing, dancing, and rapping capabilities. In each episode, the trainees aim to be in the top 9, which ultimately decided who would be in the debut group. To viewers who previously watched the Produce 101 series, this seems awfully reminiscent to those. Long story short, Girls Planet 999 was basically Produce 101 Season 5, just under a different name.

One of the production companies for the show was CJ ENM, which also helped produce the aforementioned rigged Produce 101 series. Which means another Mnet survival show. Will the votes be rigged this time around? I don’t think they were. An article from KpopStarz says that “the PD team confessed that they were also surprised by the result but attested it was not rigged”. This refers to the finale of Girls Planet 999, where the 9 members of the rookie group Kep1er were announced.

The voting system for Girls Planet 999 wasn’t in fact done through on-site texting since this was filmed in the midst of the pandemic so no in-person audience was allowed. Instead, they opted for voting through the UNIVERSE app (which ran like absolute garbage). Throughout the series, viewers we able to vote for a certain number of trainees from each group, i.e. 3 Korean, 3 Chinese, and 3 Japanese, through the UNIVERSE app. How the voting system functioned is as followed: The voting weighed 50% Korean and 50% International votes. Which meant that Koreans still had the majority stake in the final debut group. The voting method switched from round to round, so with each vote that took place, viewers got less and a smaller number of votes.

But there was something that influenced how and who the viewers voted for. A little thing called “Evil Editing”. Evil Editing is a term used when programs piece together various footage to make something seem different or more dramatic than it actually was. In this case, it was used to make some of the trainees seem like awful people. Specifically, the Chinese trainees.

In the show, it was noted that the Chinese contestants are often being pointed out as the cause of trouble during the missions. During the Combination Mission, C-Group contestant Liang Jiao chose to rap despite not being able to rap. When the team gathered, Liang Jiao continued to ask her teammates to listen to the song “VVS” one more time. As they practiced, Liang Jiao was seen constantly going to the bathroom and telling her teammates she would practice independently rather than with the group. Because of this, Lee Chaehyun, one of her teammates, is seen crying over how their practice is going.

Another C-Group contestant, Cai Bing, was alleged to be edited unfavorably. The contestant tackled the dance position and took the role of leader and killing part for the group. However, their team continued to get negative comments from the Masters, which led her teammates to try and speak up. Mnet’s translation of Cai Bing’s words, which are spoken in Chinese, reads the following: “I am the leader, so I can do what I want. Do not give any further opinions from now on.”. This could have been partly why Cai Bing, who did exceptionally well with each performance, got eliminated right before the finale.

Wang Yale, another Chinese contestant, was also said to be edited in a bad light. She took on the leadership role in her vocal team, saying she studied music. However, during the group’s interim check, Wang Yale was criticized for being unable to harmonize with her members and was told that she would be going home if she could not improve.

The behavior shown on broadcast earned the Chinese trainees massive backlash, with people saying they did not know the essence of teamwork and leadership.

Previously, people were already against Chinese trainees joining the show after it was discovered that some of the Chinese trainees spoke out regarding the Anti-American aid and Xinjiang Cotton, voicing their support for the two matters. However, international fans claim that Mnet has been painting the Chinese contestants in a bad light, clipping, and piecing together clips to make them seem like the bad guys. They also claim that the Chinese members were not given translators and were mistranslated on purpose.

I also want to point out an incident that happened during the Audition Stages and beginning episodes of Girls Planet 999. For some context, CLC member Choi Yujin had participated in the survival show, saying the CLC was allegedly being disbanded, even though Cube Entertainment has not released any official news of the group’s disbandment. During the first episode of the show, Chinese contestant Fu Yaning shocked the viewers and was criticized for her straightforward diss towards Choi Yujin. 5 contestants of C-Group chose to perform CLC’s Helicopter for their audition stage. Fu Yaning confidently said that they could do better than the original when notably, the song’s original singer was present among the contestants. When the host asked the group if they wanted to say any words to Yujin, Fu Yaning quoted the lyrics of Helicopter and changed the line “I go up, helicopter” to “We go up, helicopter, but you don’t.”.

In an interview in China, Fu Yaning revealed that the show’s staff made her blurt out the diss toward Yujin. Specifically, they made her mention something harsh while performing Helicopter, and “but you don’t” was the least hurtful phrase that Fu Yaning thought of.

During the recording, Yujin’s reaction was quite cheerful, but Mnet evil edited it to make the atmosphere look quite intense. Fu Yaning was then shocked, and she even cried while calling her parents: “I don’t want this to affect me, I joined the show because of my passion for the stage. I wish that I could showcase myself as who I really am. Now there are actually more people who support me than dislike me, that gives me the courage to read the comments,” said Fu Yaning.

In fact, the relationship between Fu Yaning and Choi Yujin throughout the show was good. The two even hugged each other while performing Helicopter again.

When it comes to survival shows from Mnet, we can never assume that it will all be fair play. Maybe Mnet will pull off more evil editing or another vote-rigging scandal with their new survival show Boys Planet 2022 which is set to premiere later this year. If they do try to pull anything off again, viewers will be sure to point it out and expose Mnet in a heartbeat.

26.01.2022