CJ ENM faces backlash for rehiring convicted producer Ahn Joon-young

Mnet producer Ahn Joon-young (Yonhap)

CJ ENM, a Korean entertainment giant and the parent company of the music channel Mnet, is being heavily criticized for rehiring its former Mnet producer, Ahn Joon-young.

CJ ENM rehired the producer on Monday despite the fact that Ahn Joon-young, the producer of the channel’s flagship audition show “Produce,” is a convicted criminal.

In March 2021, Ahn was sentenced to two years in prison and a penalty of 37 million won ($30,000) for manipulating the voting results to put certain contenders in favorable positions to debut as members of an idol group.

He was found guilty of taking bribes from entertainment agencies that represented idol trainees participating in the show.

Since the first season aired in 2016, the “Produce” series continued for three more successful seasons. It has given birth to popular groups like I.O.I, Wanna One and Iz*One.

Ahn reapplied to Mnet a year and five months after being discharged from the prison in November 2011.

“He is repenting his past mistakes. We decided to give him another chance,” a statement from CJ ENM said Monday before the news went viral.

After being heavily criticized by the public for the decision, the entertainment giant took a different stance on Wednesday, releasing a letter of apology.

“The decision to employ producer Ahn Joon-young was undeniably the wrong one. Our decision was made to provide Ahn with a chance to redeem past mistakes but did not meet the standards of society in terms of fairness. The matter of Ahn leaving the company is currently being internally discussed,” announced CJ ENM.

Yet, the fact that the “Produce” program’s chief producer, Kim Young-beom, also a convicted criminal that been incarcerated for a year and eight months for the vote-rigging scandal, had also been rehired by the company’s global music task force team last year just added fuel to the fire.

“We ask for your continued encouragement and feedback for our efforts to restore fairness and trust. We deeply reflect on the fact that we have disappointed a lot of people through this incident and once again bow our heads in apology,” said CJ ENM.

Mnet continues to run K-pop idol audition programs even after the scandal but under a different name, the “Planet” series, which gave birth to project girl group “Kep1er."

"Boys Planet," the second season of the "Planet" series, is currently being aired.

Mnet has been trying to avert vote-rigging concerns and ensure fairness by introducing a verification process by an independent, external agency, Samil PwC, as well as by completely separating the voting process from overall content production.

By Hong Yoo(yoohong@heraldcorp.com)