Brave Entertainment offered an apology to fans about the recent controversy over Brave Girls' promotional activities and merchandise.

Brave Entertainment posted an apology on its official website on July 23, saying, "First and foremost, we would like to bow our heads and apologize about the shameful and disgraceful events that had occurred recently. We want to explain about the follow-up measures and company-level compensation, in addition to our commitment to preventing the recurrence in the future."

The company continued to explain, "our Brave Entertainment, which has grown through everyone's love, is aware of the seriousness of the current problems. We are self-reflecting on them and we offer up an official apology."

Thereafter, the agency mentioned the incidents that took place over the Brave Girls' promotions, such as the fan manager's abuse of power, the fan page administrator's arbitrarily deleting photos, poor quality of the girl group's merchandise, along with a statement pertaining to the recent their official YouTube channel.

Brave Entertainment stated, "We will take time to check and do our best to improve on other issues that we have not already identified. Thanks to the huge interest and love from the fans, Brave Entertainment is taking many first steps towards various works. However, we are preparing for a clear and transparent follow-up because doing things for the first time cannot be a reason or excuse for many wrongdoings caused by a lack of experience and ignorance."

Below is the complete apology statement from Brave Entertainment:

"We would like to bow our heads to apologize to the fans.

I am Lee Jong Hwa, the vice president of Brave Entertainment. 

First of all, I would like to bow my head to all the fans for the recent shameful events. I want to explain the current situation and follow-up actions we will be taking in response to the recent issues, the compensation the company will be providing, and promise that we will work to prevent any recurrence in the future.

We, the Brave Entertainment that has grown through everyone's love and support, have come to release an official apology after recognizing the severity of the current issues. We are posting the statement of apology as we self-reflect on these issues.

We deeply apologize for we were not able to prevent these shameful events in advance and we acknowledge that our actions in response were inadequate.

In particular, we would like to apologize to the Brave Girls' fans who felt discomfort due to the issues listed below:

1. Fan manager's abuse of power
2. Fan page administrator's arbitrarily deletion of posts
3. The merchandise cancelation and return due to poor quality
4. Brave Entertainment's position on the advertising agency
5. Brave Entertainment's statement in regards to YouTuber H
6. The issue of the participation of an acquaintance (model agency) in the commercial filming project
7. The issue on the communication in the fan website
8. The statement in regards to Brave Girls' official YouTube channel

1. Fan manager's abuse of power

The fan manager in question has already submitted a resignation letter and the company has accepted it.

We will humbly accept and reflect on the criticisms of fans as it was a result of our lackings of management ability and failure to properly educate the employees.

We promise that we will newly appoint a fan manager who will go through a strict test of their character and communicate from the perspective of the fans.


2. Fan webpage administrator's arbitrarily deletion of posts

We will do our best to avoid such incidents from happening again through a 1:1 meeting with all employees in the respective departments. We will also thoroughly educate the fan webpage post administrator and the employee responsible for ordering the deletion of the posts and guide them to listen closely to the opinions of the fans.


3. The merchandise cancelation and return due to poor quality

We promise to retrieve all merchandise and refund everyone according to the number of goods fans have previously bought, and we will contact everyone who purchased them individually.

4. Brave Entertainment's position on the advertising agency

Based on the violation of the contract at the advertising filming site on July 5, we will officially notify the advertising agency that made the production of the advertisement video to terminate the contract.

*Breach of contract: Filming of contents without prior consultation on contract violations / Casting YouTubers without prior consultation


5. Brave Entertainment's statement in regards to YouTuber H

The company has not discussed anything in regards to YouTuber H who caused trouble. The advertising agency has decided to sue the YouTuber. So if the agency confirms that the legal complaint was filed, no other legal action will be taken from our company.

6. The issue of the participation of an acquaintance (model agency) in the commercial filming project

Regarding the suspicions of working with acquaintances as mentioned by the fans, the suspicions are not true as the company did not request the model agency to work on the advertisement production but we were sent the advertisement model contract through the model agency.

7. The issue on the communication in the fan website

We will increase the number of managers and administrators to communicate with the fans through the fan webpage and collect the opinions of the fans to listen to the opinions of the fans through periodic internal meetings with the managers.

8. The statement in regards to Brave Girls' official YouTube channel

We are awaiting YouTube's response after we submitted the application for the Brave Girls channel to be an Official Artist Channel (OAC) immediately. 

We apologize for failing to quickly announce updates on the process, and we will improve ourselves by communicating more swiftly. 

There were many fans' opinions regarding subtitles and have stated that subtitles are not available at the moment of a video’s release. 

We are creating the subtitles through a partner company so it takes two to three days to create the subtitles. We will ask the partner company to speed up the process as much as possible.

We will make sure to check any other issues that have not been identified here. We will take more time to assess and put forth the best efforts to improve.

We thank all the fans who have been giving us much love. Thanks to the great love and interest from our fans, Brave Entertainment was able to walk down this path and doing many works for the first time.

However, lack of experience and knowledge cannot be a reason or excuse for the mistakes we have made, so we are working on taking firm and transparent follow-up measures.

From this moment on, Brave Entertainment will keep this apology posted on the announcement section of the official website and social media accounts for ten days.

We promise to establish specific plans for improvement to create change so that we can repay the love shown by the fans, and using this experience as a stepping stone, we will take more thorough and careful steps with a greater sense of responsibility.

We would also like to thank the fans, and we genuinely apologize once again.

Sincerely, 

Lee Jong Hwa, the vice president of Brave Entertainment."