An archive about Woojin

 This will be the one and only time I mention Woojin in this blog. This is for myself, so the next time I need to explain/correct it for anyone else (again), I will just need to send them the link without writing everything from scratch.

Many people only know the situation on the very surface level, not everyone follows all the events so there are many misunderstandings out there about why I would say 90% of Stays now are either neutral or negative about Woojin. It's not always like that. It's the process of nearly A YEAR leading to us ending up this way. So here, is my record of the events. The order of close timelines might not be accurate 100%, but I dont think I miss any events or I dont think my memories of the event is incorrect as I watched and re-watched all of these events falling out multiple times. 

(I was thinking of putting the links of every events too, but vlive search sucks, and youtube has been crop here and there many times and is not really helping, Im kind of lazy to search for them now also, so it will be w/o links for now)

First, the news of his departure dropped out of nowhere. JYPE released 1 sentence twit (the nightmare of Stays). Then Chan wrote a letter, saying sorry that he could not protect the 9. As everyone can expect, Stays went on crisis. Rumors around K-pop community go all over the places. This ranges from he made a Chinese fan pregnant, to dating, to whatever is there. SKZ went on a short hiatus, we could not celebrate Lee Know's birthday. Woojin is edited out of all of SKZ content (talkers). Stays at that time were just sad, really sad. A lot of people still want to believe he went out on his own will, despite all the rumors, and even when this kind of thing rarely happens with an idol in the middle of a contract not to mention a rookie. There was a Chan's vlive before the event, it was full of sad songs, Idk if his makes up, but his eyes were sparkling and people even said he was crying. Maybe it's just Stays who were sad and everything just look sad during the time. People tried to find his crums everywhere. Every video is full of comments about OT9, I miss woojin etc. 

Then Woojin's first letter came out, he went on holiday in China. I dont remember correctly anymore whether it is after this letter or right after he left, but Stays were trending "thank you woojin" on twitter for a long time. While Woojin was on holiday, SKZ finally got back and was put through 3 months of misery. Now thinking back, this is really the moment where the mood of the fandom started to change.  Knet reaction was not good, K-stays were worried if it will affect the group. At the time, SKZ already had plan for astronaut, levanter and their first-ever Korea concert was just around the corner, so they were busy as hell,  re-recording every song for the concert, re-arranged the stages, the dances, re-edit the MV (apparently, there was a clue that woojin was still in astronaut) etc. in a very short period of time. When the levanter intro came out, they said the vocal line is pressured. Han went on a short break due to anxiety. Hyunjin, IN and eventually all of them broke down crying at the concert, they thought stays would leave them. All of these give a bad taste for many Stays. A bit after this concert, Felix hashtagged #8 which already signals their determination to move on. 

5-6 months in, now Stays were divided into 2 camps. One camp still missed Woojin and would talk about it everywhere and 1 camp was not happy with this behavior. This group of Stays thinks it's disrespectful towards skz's effort. skz tried their best to move on, but when you got into the vid, it's just abt miss woojin, cant watch anymore cause woojin. New fans don't know IN or Lee Know, but know woojin cause he left. There was quite of bit of heated discussion about this. 

Maybe around this time or later ( I dont rmb correctly anymore), Woojin went live on instagram. I did not participate in this instagram, so cant say about what he said, but before that many Stays started to tell others not to mention SKZ during the live. This created arguments again about why people kept bringing woojin up with skz and told others to quiet during woojin's live.

Then Chan's room about betraying. Many people only saw a snippet of the clip or some low-effort press cover but were not even in the vlive. There was a context to this, it was around the time of skz2020 which include re-recorded ot8 songs. He played it and the comments, as you can expect, had many comments about woojin and ot9. At this point which is way over 6 months, Chan eventually talked about there is a lot happening last year, about the person who made a lot of mistakes, about if you make a promise with the team then you'd better keep it and if the action is without people around you in mind, then it's selfish and like betrayal, and "stays know what Im talking about". There is a lot of discussion over this vlive, but 99% of the people believe it's about woojin, especially those who participated in the vlive themselves. More Stays are now not happy with Woojin. 

Then a while after that Chan released "do not want to admit". Some Stays speculated that it's about Woojin. So during one Chan's room, after playing the song, Chan said it's not about that person, dont go and hate on him, Stays are better than that. Many Stays who dont watch Chan vlive later on, piece this sentence with the previous event and said Chan said the betraying vid is not about Woojin, but it's actually about the skz-record. 

Then God's Menu comeback. Hyunjin said it's like the new starting point for Stray Kids

Then, Woojin's scandal broke out. It starts off with some twits on twitter. And with the nature of twitter, at some points, there are too many events and it's hard to trace down the root of every single one of them. It's a crazy whole day of trending, constantly "news" (fake or not) left and right. People talked about it constantly on that day and a couple of days after. Speculation, rumors everywhere. Then some twits (which is supposedly from some K-stays) say that it's already known among K-stays that he visited drinking places (where there is prostitution) frequently. This follows by the youtube with his allegation of bullying the members. There are people believing in these allegations, many dont. With all of these, true or not, many Stays are not happy about the way he handled the scandal. He basically did not address everything seriously at the time and just straight up, oh I'm going solo and will comeback soon.

The day after the scandal, Felix #8 again and after Back door come back, JYPE deleted Woojin out of every single SKZ's thumbnails. Stays were worried about how this event could affect SKZ's back door comeback which is around the corner. This scandal also leads to days and days of tiring discussing and talking in the fandom and also because of this, finally, I think things settled, and people let go and accept them as 2 separate parties, ending the whole long rollercoaster of around 9-10 months. And after this tiring process of nearly a year, I would say most of Stays, especially those who went through the whole events, are just fed up with the topic and not welcome the talk about the 2 parties together. 

While many Stays now just want to move on, what woojin does atm does not seem to stand right with multiple stays. I dont follow him anymore but I saw many people saying he tried to be "piggy backed" on SKZ and many Stays found it weird. Several things I have seen people talking about: posting right after SKZ constantly, fandom name is pretty much what Stays gave him back then, he said he is not friends with anyone back then, but later that day is found to follow SKZ topic, and announce fandom names (essentially the birthday of his fandom) on skz's anniversary. 

All of all, there are multiple reasons that Stays may not be happy with him, the scandals, the things he put skz through, the way the members and jype wanted to move on and reacted to him, the way he handled the scandals, his behavior right now etc. But overall, I think the majority of us just move on and want to go separate ways. 

and as I completed writing this post, Woojin apparently just used his SA twit accusing him of touching them wo consent for aesthetic for his teaser pic.