'Produce 101' Season 1 Vote Manipulation: MBK Entertainment's Kim Kwang-soo Found Guilty

Subsidiary CEO Also Fined

Produce 101 [Photo by Kim Hyunmin]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] Entertainment agency officials who were prosecuted for manipulating votes to prevent their trainees from being eliminated on Mnet's audition show "Produce 101" (hereinafter referred to as "Produce") were sentenced to fines.

On the 22nd, according to the legal community, Judge Hwang Yeo-jin of the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Division 23 sentenced Kim Kwang-soo, MBK Entertainment's production director, and Park, CEO of PocketDol Studio, a subsidiary of MBK, to fines of 10 million won each on charges of obstruction of business. The court pointed out, "The defendants did not make efforts to establish a transparent and fair culture within the industry but instead contributed to distrust in the related industry by using covert means such as fraudulent voting."

Director Kim and others were prosecuted on charges of purchasing 10,000 IDs in March 2016 and instructing MBK Entertainment employees to cast online votes for three trainees belonging to the company on the Mnet site. It was investigated that MBK Entertainment employees made a total of 89,228 fraudulent online votes during the third ranking and final ranking decision process of Produce Season 1 during this period. However, it is known that the rankings of the trainees changed slightly but did not affect the final selection of the idol group members.