Hello everyone! Today's question is "I read about this rumour on instagram about how SM treats scandals and stuff. i read that this trainee had some sort of scandal and she was slapped, and told not to come back to SM. and it wrote that the same thing happened to Baekhyun, like he was hit alot but they couldn't kick him out because he had already debuted. i know it's just a rumour, but do you think that this is possibly true?"

Okay so for those who have not read the actual rumor that's been going around, I copy and pasted it for you below. (I'm so nice, hehe):

"Hi, I was a SM trainee until last week, and was in the pre-debut class. In the pre-debut teams, I was put in the 6 member-ed one. Amongst us was a pretty girl, who lacked talent but seemed to have passed auditions through her physical appearances. One day, we were training, until late at night, when we were asked to go to the SM rumor management office (there’s a separate office in SM that deals with rumors that are viral on webs), and we heard that a visit there are extremely harsh, thus we were all very scared. When we got there, one of the office lady just slapped the pretty/youngest member across the face. She was holding a piece of paper, and asked the pretty girl if these rumors were true. The girl admitted to the rumors and she was hit again. She was then told not return to SM again……apparently the rumors were about her previous reckless acts that were posted online.

It goes the same for EXO baekhyun, there were previous posts that were going viral in south Korea because he had filmed a footage in his early days and it had involved a packet of smoke. He was hit a lot, and all he did was just apologize, and they couldn’t kick him out because he had already debuted. Then there’s one about sehun and wa$$up, he was told off not to share any sign of interest to other girl group idols. Lastly, chanyeol was in trouble for his scandal with f(x) member Sulli, it’s widely known that SM workers don’t often tell Sulli off, cause she has an extreme temper.

Anyways, my point is, what you put up online can greatly impact these trainees/idols. Thus if you aren’t sure of anything, please don’t post them. They’ll just create rumors and there are people who get it a lot of trouble for that.”

Okay, with that out of the way, here's my thoughts on the issue.

First off, I would like to tell everyone to take this with a grain of salt. This was posted on Nate Pann, a site notorious for people to put up false information and stuff like that. It does have important lessons to learn from it though.

Second off, I think what this person wrote is actually, quite likely, to be the truth or close to it anyways. The main idea/gist of the post is there: rumors and past reckless acts could get you kicked out of the company. Like I said before, by now, you guys should be already developing some sort of image and try to isolate yourself from these "reckless acts" (usually means smoking, drinking, partying, excessive "time" with the opposite gender, etc etc). If you really wanted this -- you shouldn't be doing those kinds of things in the first place. You should be training hard or preparing to audition.

But yes, I do think that you will get hit if you do something wrong. Now, that's not exclusive to just SM (though it seems like recently SM has a pretty bad rep going around) but rather in Korea in general. In Korea, you get hit if you do something wrong -- it's not abuse, its discipline.

I said before, image is extremely important in Korean Entertainment, and any one sort of "reckless act" could destroy your popularity within seconds (It's harsh yes -- but what isn't in life that actually matters?) Image relates to popularity and respect (which is most likely why Super Junior is seen as a joke among the Korean citizens as they constantly throw away their image to make the audience laugh). Image shows up in variety shows in the term of "Don't do that! You'll ruin your image!" or "He already ruined his image a long time ago."

The post bring about another important issue: the interchangeability of K-pop idols and trainees. There are tons of hopefuls out there -- hopefuls which might be more talented or better looking than you, hopefuls who can easily replace you.

tl;dr Start taking care of your image now, so you don't suffer reprecussions later on (when they actually matter) and continue to work harder as there are tons of people out there who could easily replace you. Everything you worked hard for for possibly more than 10 years could be destroyed in one rumor. Be careful.