The Attention a Celebrity Doesn’t Want: Bullying Accusations

Other critics say that the takedowns may be too punitive. Case in level: the pitcher, An Woo-jin.

Mr. An’s troubles started in 2017, when a TV community reported that he had assaulted youthful gamers on his highschool crew.

The police decided that Mr. An, then 17, had hit three youthful college students within the head with a baseball, a cellphone and a belt buckle, and a fourth pupil on the shin with a bat, in keeping with police data offered by his lawyer. After the scholars determined to not file costs, saying that Mr. An’s habits had not been extreme, prosecutors dropped the case.

The allegations in opposition to Mr. An, a 6-foot-3 right-hander who throws 99 mile-per-hour fastballs, didn’t cease him from going skilled the identical 12 months. The Kiwoom Heroes signed him for 600 million gained, or about $470,000. No new accusations of bullying have emerged.

But the claims proceed to shadow his profession.

In 2017, the Korea Baseball Softball Association, which governs its nationwide groups, barred him from the Olympics and the Asian Games. In January, the Korea Baseball Organization, which selects the crew for the World Baseball Classic, mentioned he wouldn’t participate within the event, which begins Tuesday.

The crew was chosen with an eye fixed towards “the symbolic meaning, responsibility and price that comes with representing the country,” the group’s spokesman, Lee Kyong-ho, mentioned in an interview. “Is it right to select players based only on their skills?”

Fueling public anger is a notion that the penalties Mr. An’s highschool imposed — 5 hours of volunteer work and a written apology — have been too gentle. But Mr. An’s lawyer, Baek Sung-moon, mentioned in an interview that the choice to ban him from worldwide tournaments had apparently been primarily based on an impression that his bullying was harsher than reported.