Recently, a company by the name of Eden Entertainment, held auditions in Atlanta in the name of Jungle Entertainment (JK’s label), YG, and SM. The company charged $10/audition and is sponsored by major players in the industry: Korea Times, MBC, and the mother of kpop blogs, allkpop.com.

However, JK recently commented that no Jungle Entertainment representatives were sent to Atlanta to scout talent.

Eden Entertainment was authorized to submit videos and information on local talent, which any person is allowed to do and can actually do via SM’s, YG’s, and Jungle Entertainment’s websites.

Many have raised flags over the audition fee (which is a rarity) and the fact that the company is scouting for 3 different companies (another rarity since they technically compete for talent).

The company responded with this statement:

AUDITION NOTICE
Ladies and Gentlemen, There seems to be some confusion or misunderstanding regarding the open auditions we held on 3.13 and 3.14 in Atlanta. Eden Entertainment was created to help promote and showcase local Korean and Korean-American talent in the Atlanta area. We wanted to host an open audition to expose hopeful talents to the audition experience. As you know, Atlanta hardly offers talented people any opportunities to pursue their dreams especially for Korean-Americans. Our main goal was to offer a real and honest experience to those who truly want to pursue a career in music. We simply offered our services to help them achieve their goals. We prepared professionally edited videos, a sound studio to hold the audition, hired experts in the industry to critic and give advice to those who auditioned, and finally, provided professional stylists to make those who made the finals look their best. By preparing a professional audition video, we hope that these young talents will be given an opportunity to work with some of the best entertainment groups in Korea. However, even if they are not chosen, Eden Entertainment believes their talents shouldn’t be dismissed and we will help develop them to meet their full potential. Eden Entertainment has never implied nor made any guarantees to anyone who auditioned or in any publications. We also never implied nor said that representatives from YG Entertainment, SM Town, Jungle Entertainment, DSP Media, and Nega Network would appear or host the auditions. This was an Eden Entertainment audition with the sole purpose to send carefully chosen and professionally edited audition videos to these entertainment groups. Now, many people also mentioned the fact that there was a ten dollar application fee and how it was wrong to do so and that a fee implied that the auditions were fraudulent. The application fee was collected in order to pay for the judges who were, Marvin McIntyre (Artist Developer and Coach) who developed New Edition, Jeremy ¡°Unique¡± Davis (Professional Choreographer and Dancer) who worked with artists like Jazze Pha and Bobby Valentino, and finally Miss Rha Rha (Professional Dancer) who has worked with TLC and many other artists. The application fee was carefully calculated from the number of registrations to also pay for the space rental (waiting area), renting a dance floor, and hiring staff members and security, there were no profits collected from this audition. We would also like to mention that this event was sponsored by highly reputable companies such as the Korean Times Atlanta and MBC America in Atlanta. Eden Entertainment has never or will ever take advantage of someone who is trying to pursue a dream, whatever that dream maybe. The audition was an exciting and amazing experience for everyone and hopefully after the final audition videos are released someone¡¯s dream may come true and that is the only reason why Eden Entertainment hosted these open auditions. Thank you for understanding and we hope you support our future events and endeavors.

So are the auditions legitimate? It’s still unclear, but clearly Jungle has no affiliation with it and aspiring artists looking to sign with JK should look elsewhere.

source: seoulbeats.com

-Miss DrunkenCamp