Mnet's 'Idol School' staff insisted on their innocence.

During the first hearing on their voting and ranking manipulation, the staff said, "It's true that it was wrong to rank them differently from what the viewers expected. But we have no legal fault." CP Kim, speaking for the staff, said, "The ratings were dismally low, and the text votes were incredibly small, so there was distortion. We believed that the program could totally fail if this went on, so we increased the ratio of online votes. We tried to increase ratings for the benefit of the company, so you can't say that we disrupted the company's business."

A higher-ranking officer said, "As the manager, we take the responsibility for the ranking manipulation. However, we do not remember conversations with CP Kim about disqualifying certain trainees."