Mnet has compensated the male and female trainees who were affected by the Produce 101 vote manipulation scandal.

Ahn Joon Young and Kim Yong Bum, who served as producers on the wildly popular reality competition series, were arrested on November 5, 2019. Their first trial was held on December 20 of that year, during which the Seoul District Court confirmed that all four seasons were subjected to varying degrees of manipulation. When the appeal trial finally ended on November 18, 2020, the names of the trainees who were victims of the producers’ machinations were made public.

In season one, trainees Kim Soo Hyun and Seo Hye Rim got the boot early on in the competition due to manipulation. Sung Hyun Woo of season two suffered the same fate, and later Kang Dong Ho (also known as Baekho, main vocalist of the boy group NU’EST) was eliminated too. His rank was manipulated during the season two finale, which was when the final lineup of Wanna One was chosen. Court documents revealed that Baekho’s true rank would’ve earned him a spot in the group, but producers replaced him with another trainee.

In season three—aka Produce 48, in which female Japanese and Korean trainees competed for 12 slots in IZ*ONE—Lee Ga Eun and Han Cho Won were cut from the final lineup due to manipulation. The former originally placed fifth while the latter came in sixth.

Manipulation ran rampant in the fourth season, titled Produce X 101. One of the more promising trainees, French-Korean model Timothee Anzardi, was cut in the first round. Kim Kook Heon and Lee Jin Woo fell victim to manipulation in the third. In the finale, Koo Jung Mo, Lee Jin Hyuk, and Keum Dong Hyun were removed from X1’s final lineup and replaced with other trainees. Jung Mo originally ranked sixth, while Jin Hyuk and Dong Hyun came in seventh and eighth, respectively.

The court decided not to disclose the names of the trainees whose votes were manipulated so they would make the winning project group. It was ruled that those trainees were unaware of what was happening, so they were also considered victims of manipulation.

Ahn Joon Young and Kim Yong Bum, as well as five agency representatives who were also involved in this mess, were sentenced to prison. Mnet was also ordered to compensate all the trainees who were unfairly eliminated from their respective seasons. As of August 2, the network has finished compensating all but one of them.

Mnet declined to reveal exactly how much they paid the victims, but it’s rumored that the amount was based on lost future earnings, among other things. However, they did offer an explanation regarding the one trainee who has yet to receive their compensation package. Apparently the trainee and their agency felt Mnet's offer was far too low.

“We’re negotiating with the remaining victim’s agency. We offered them what we believed was a reasonable amount in terms of compensation, but their opinion regarding this was different from ours. We will continue to take responsibility and communicate with the victim’s agency to complete the compensation,” said a source from Mnet.