According to Yonhap News, public opinion was stirred up when Ta Quang Quan - Vice President of Baidu, the company that holds the largest search portal in China, publicly apologized after the media reported that his daughter had spread the personal information of a netizen criticizing female idol Jang Won Young (member of IVE group).
Mr. Ta Quang Quan confessed: "As a father, I did not properly educate my daughter about respecting others and protecting her personal privacy. I feel extremely guilty and sincerely apologize to those affected.
He added that his child was a minor, his mind was not mature, and in one moment he made a wrong decision, hurting others. Therefore, he hopes that everyone will give his daughter the opportunity to change and mature.
The incident began when a female pregnant netizen posted comments criticizing Jang Won Young. In response, a fan of the female singer, later revealed to be the daughter of Ta Quang Quan, initiated a cyber attack against the critic.
She said she is not afraid of police intervention because she lives in Canada and her father is a senior executive director at Baidu.
After the controversy, Chinese netizens raised concerns about Baidu's data security, suspecting that personal information may have been accessed through the company's database.
To reassure public opinion, Baidu denied the user data leak and coordinated with the police to further expand the investigation.
Miu Miu, the brand Jang Won Young is the ambassador, is also affected. Many audiences asked the brand to cancel their contracts with the female idol.
According to QQ, in addition to personal information leakage, public opinion expressed concern about the problem of idols and Kpop groups having too many young and teenage fans. This is an age group that is not cognitively mature, so it is easy to lead to wrongdoings when being too crazy about idols.
The actions of fans are the responsibility of their idols. In particular, in China, many artists have been criticized and boycotted for wrongdoings by fans.
Typically, Tieu Chien was boycotted and hid for nearly a year because his fans argued with authors on the AO3 website. After that, the actor had to apologize for not being able to control fans, promising to fulfill the responsibility of an idol to set an example and lead fans to behave properly.
Jang Won Young's biggest fan account in China also posted an apology on behalf of the fan community, but could not reduce public outrage.
This is not the first time the 13-year-old fan has spread information about others. This behavior was even responded to by many members of Jang Won Young fanclub.
However, the head of the fanclub and Jang Won Young himself did not take any action to rectify or prevent it, leading to the incident going beyond the limit.
This noise is a warning bell for artists to control the fan community in general and young fans in particular.
