56: Chapter 56 SC is a team? SM, you're dead!

Seoul.

SM Entertainment Headquarters Building.

Kim Young-min looked at the press releases across the entire network on the screen and let out a long sigh of foul air.

The highest realm of crisis public relations is not to wash black into white, but to completely muddy the waters.

"Has it been posted?" Kim Young-min picked up the black coffee on the table.

Lee Sang-hyeok nodded repeatedly beside him: "Chinese and Korean bilingual, simultaneously pushed across major global platforms. We also hired Chinese paid posters to control the comments section."

...

Chinese internet.

Exactly ten in the morning.

SM Entertainment's official Weibo, which had been silent for half the night, suddenly threw out a secondary statement stamped with a red seal.

Weibo's trending search list was instantly replaced by an air-dropped trending term.

# S. C. Is Not an Individual #

# SM Entertainment Clarifies Typist Misunderstanding #

Click to open the statement.

Beneath the bright red official seal were several paragraphs of official jargon.

[ To all netizens paying attention to this matter: ]

[ Regarding the recent online controversy over copyright attribution, after rigorous internal review, our company hereby makes this final statement. ]

[ First, regarding the matter of the "typing assistant secretly altering copyright", it was a serious misunderstanding arising from cross-departmental communication within Director Yoo Young-jin's team. The relevant intern has been dismissed, and Mr. Yoo Young-jin's remarks only represent himself and do not represent the company's stance. ]

[ Second, the "S. C." registered with the Korea Music Copyright Association is not the initials of any specific individual's name! Rather, it is the code name of our company's established internal core creative planning group — 'SM Creative' (SM Creative Workshop). ]

[ Songs such as 《baba》 and 《Miracles in December》 were all completed through the collaborative efforts of the 'SM Creative' team led by Director Yoo Young-jin. In order to protect the privacy of the behind-the-scenes team, a unified 'S. C.' abbreviation was used for copyright registration. ]

[ Forcingly linking 'S. C.' on the internet to a certain retired Trainee is sheer nonsense. We hope the general public will stop spreading false information, and our company reserves the right to pursue legal responsibility. ]

Shanghai. Wang Wenjian's live broadcast room.

Three hundred thousand online fans looked at this brand-new statement on the public screen.

Wang Wenjian slapped his forehead and laughed so hard he pounded the table.

"Brothers, my eyes have truly been opened today!" Old Wang pointed at the screen, his voice shaking, "Yesterday they said a typist secretly changed it, and today, seeing they couldn't cover it up anymore, they sold out this old dog Yoo Young-jin directly!"

"What the hell is SM Creative! If you can't beat them, join them—they actually forced a personal initial into a team abbreviation!"

[ I'm going to laugh to death, this is just too clownish! ]

[ Yoo Young-jin got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and found out he had been expelled from the company's nationality. ]

[ Yesterday they said he was a thief, today they say there is no such person. Was this PR draft written by a PE teacher while drunk? ]

[ In order to deprive God Su of his name, they have completely thrown away their face. They even managed to hold back such a lousy excuse as a team code name. ]

[ They don't really think we're all fools, do they? ]

[ The internet has no memory, but it doesn't disappear in just a few days either! ]

[ ... ]

In the split-screen live connection, Keyboard Grey felt it was absurd.

"Brother Wang." Keyboard Grey's fingers rested on the mechanical keyboard, "This company exudes arrogance down to its bones. They think the internet has no memory."

"Grey, screw them over!" Old Wang shouted.

"I don't need to screw them." Keyboard Grey dragged a compressed package into the live broadcast screen, "Even their own people can't stand the faces of this bunch anymore."

The screen display switched.

An all-English financial audit report appeared before everyone's eyes.

"This is SM Entertainment's public annual financial report for the past eight years." Keyboard Grey clicked on one of the pages, "The organizational structure of a listed company must be publicly disclosed down to the department level in the financial report."

The mouse cursor swept across the organizational chart.

A&R Department, Artist Management Department, Legal Department, Publicity Department...

"Open your eyes wide and look." Keyboard Grey's tone was cold and stern, "From beginning to end, there is simply no department called 'SM Creative'. There isn't even a project establishment record!"

"An idol-making empire with a market value of hundreds of billions. A god-level team that wrote half of the entire Hallyu wave. In eight long years of financial reports, not only is this department nonexistent, but there isn't even a single cent of funding allocation?"

"Did they write 《baba》 by drinking the northwest wind?!"

Wang Wenjian slammed the table and stood up.

"Hammer them to death! Post screenshots of the financial report on Weibo! Make them show the pay slips of this invisible team!"

[ That's right! ]

[ Since it's a team, who are the members, and where are their pay slips? ]

[ Oh my, could it be that this team happened to disband right when Su Chen left, the pay slips weren't saved, or the warehouse caught fire and burned down? ]

[ That's really such bad timing! ~ Right, Fire Dragon Burning the Warehouse ]

[ ... ]

...

In less than five minutes.

Below SM Entertainment's official statement, the comment section went out of control.

Millions of angry netizens took screenshots of the financial report and directly smashed the backend of the official Weibo account.

[ Hand over the social security payment records of SM Creative! ]

[ Does your family's team write songs by eating air? ]

[ How dare you issue a statement with an official seal, we'll sue you for transnational fraud! ]

[ Where is your face? Where is your South Korean face?! ]

[ Still a f*cking team, bah! ]

[ ... ]

The paid poster team frantically tried to control the comments.

But in front of the tsunami-like genuine public opinion, they couldn't even stir up a single splash.

Posting a whitewashing comment would be drowned out by thousands of counterattacks in less than half a second.

In the end, there was truly no other way.

The backend closed the comment section.

But this could not prevent netizens from venting their anger.

They successively transferred to scold people under other official media outlets in South Korea.

The trending term # SM Fraud rapidly topped the trending search.

The heat soared directly to 100 million!

...

Dali.

A Buick commercial vehicle was driving on a bumpy mountain road.

Yan Yu's mobile phone vibrated continuously.

She lowered her head and clicked on a direct message from a veteran Korean entertainment fansite manager.

"Yan Yu, look at Blind quickly! South Korea has exploded!"

Yan Yu immediately switched to South Korea's largest domestic workplace anonymous forum—Blind.

This is a hardcore platform that requires verifying employees' corporate email addresses to post.

At this moment, a post was trending in red on the homepage.

Next to the poster's ID, the corporate verification badge clearly wrote: [ Former SM Entertainment Human Resources Department Employee ].

The title was simple and brutal: 《Don't treat South Korean netizens as fools. S. C. is Su Chen.

Yan Yu quickly browsed the machine-translated content of the post, her breathing rapid.

[ I've had enough of the disgusting operations of the higher-ups. ]

[ In 201X, I was the HR assistant in charge of rookie registration. ]

[ There has never been any crappy team called 'SM Creative' in the company. In Director Yoo Young-jin's recording studio, aside from a bunch of people serving tea, pouring water, and cleaning, there wasn't even an external staff member who could read a musical score. ]

[ S. C. is not some team. He is that Chinese child who was driven out by the security office in the middle of the night. ]

Beneath the post, two photos were attached.

One was a photocopy of a cafeteria meal card with the employee ID number.

Printed on it was a slightly green ID photo of Su Chen, and the Pinyin name clearly read: Su Chen.

The other was the last page of a Trainee labor contract.

At the signature place of Party B, the handwriting was vigorous and powerful, signing two letters in a flying, cursive manner.

[ S. C. ]

If yesterday's surveillance footage from the old piano shop was proof of talent,

then today's two solid employment files were the last few iron nails nailing SM Entertainment to the cross.

The poster also added a sentence at the end:

[ When that child left, Yoo Young-jin locked several scrap proposals prepared for release into the safe overnight. We bottom-tier employees all knew that wasn't written by Director Yoo, but no one dared to speak up. ]

[ I saw that surveillance footage in Dali. ]

[ He finally touched a guitar again. ]

These two pictures were transported back to Weibo at the speed of light by domestic big Vs.

The entire Chinese internet boiled over.

# S. C. Is Su Chen! #

# Former SM Employee Backstabbing Solidly Proven #

# Capital's Fig Leaf Shattered All Over the Floor #

Seoul. SM Entertainment.

Lee Sang-hyeok held his phone, his face pale as he rushed into the president's office.

"President Kim! Someone on the Blind forum leaked Su Chen's employment files!"

"Crash!"

The coffee cup in Kim Young-min's hand smashed onto the floor, brown liquid splashing all over a pant leg.

"Who did it?! Have the HR department check it out! Seal that post!" Kim Young-min's facial features were distorted as he roared hysterically.

"It can't be sealed..." Lee Sang-hyeok was close to crying, "That's an external independent server, not under our control. And... and..."

"And what?!"

"This matter can no longer be suppressed." Lee Sang-hyeok handed the tablet over, "South Korean domestic netizens... have started joining the battle."