Back on July 19, A Pink's Hayoung announced creation of her very own female celebrity soccer team, 'FC RUMORw'. 

The soccer team quickly garnered attention from fans due to the star-studded member lineup, including A Pink's Hayoung, EXID's Junghwa, TWICE's Jihyo and Mina, Gugudan's Kim Se Jung and Nayoung, actress Kim Sae Ron, former BESTie member U.JI, as well as other well-known models and former 'Miss Korea' contestants. 

Also back on July 18, an Instagram account dedicated to 'FC RUMORw' shared photos of the soccer team members attending their first official practice session, continuing to garner attention from fans. 

But over the past weekend, the female celebrity soccer team became wrapped up in various negative rumors as well as protests from certain fans. The issue arose due to the fact that there is another, "original" male celebrity soccer team called 'FC RUMOR'.

Some malicious online rumors accused the 'FC RUMORw' team of being internally affiliated to the male team 'FC RUMOR', and claimed that the 'FC RUMORw' members were seen on inappropriate outings with 'FC RUMOR' members. Other rumors accused the two teams of abusing team relations for promotion purposes, claiming that TWICE participated in a private cheer message dedicated to promoting 'FC RUMOR'. 

As a result of the above rumors going out of hand, members of the 'FC RUMORw' team including A Pink's Hayoung and Gugudan's Kim Se Jung spoke up via SNS to clarify. 

Hayoung, a leading member of 'FC RUMORw', stated,

"I was shocked when I suddenly began receiving a flood of malicious DMs and messages containing harassment... There are a lot of things that I'm hearing for the first time, and I don't want my fans to worry so I wanted to speak out about the things that you guys might be curious about.! There was absolutely no contact between the team members and any outside individuals, and we only got together because we like sports and playing games..! 

It is a female team made up solely of members who love soccer, and we ended up playing together for the joy of sweating and getting a work out! I think things got out of hand due to various misunderstandings and false speculations. I wanted to share with fans that we got to actually learn and practice with professional guidance and we got to experience these things later on, but it seems a lot of people are taking this the wrong way.

I apologize for causing misunderstandings. And I plan on conferring with my agency and taking action against any inappropriate posts and comments. I am working hard toward a good cause. Please refrain from any more misunderstandings and speculations!

Once again, we are completely unrelated to the male soccer team and we have never met up or played soccer with them!"

Kim Se Jung also took to her SNS and explained,

"Ah... this is not right. 1. The male team and the female team have no affiliation whatsoever, and will never have any affiliation whatsoever, not to mention any person-to-person contact; we have no idea who the people in the male team are and neither side is curious. I'm being real, sincere, true, fact, I'm so happy right now with just us, being excited about this. 2. It is a club where all of us got together sincerely because we love soccer, we want to learn soccer, and we want to share a hobby."

Since this past weekend, all mentions of 'FC RUMORw' have been deleted from Hayoung and Kim Se Jung's SNS accounts, and the official 'FC RUMORw' Instagram account has been set to private.