Tablo's TaJinYo Scandal

In May 2010 and online Korean forum was created "We request the truth from Tablo" or more known as "TaJinYo" the abbreviation derived from Korean. Tajinyo was created by people wanting 'the truth' from Tablo from rap group Epik High, about his Stanford University degree as he revealed he graduated from the University in 3 and a half years with a Bachelors and Masters degree in English. Professors and officials from the University (Tomas Black and Tobias Wolff) began receiving messages from Koreans asking for the thrush about Tablo's credentials as a Stanford alumni- with Black receiving as many as 133 mails about it. Black released a statement confirming Tablo's Stanford degrees multiple times however, online netizens dismissed this and believed it to be a lie.

Tajinyo's Internet forum

The scandal grew bigger and bigger with TaJinYo members creating exaggerated theories about how and why Tablo may have forged his degree e.g. used his Canadian citizenship against him (apparently to get out the Korean army mandatory service that all Korean male citizens have to do). The online group also attacked Tablo's family and accused Tablo's mother of forging her accomplishments by digging through old news articles from 1995 (which later found to be a mishap by the article writer that time), as well as question his brother of attending Columbia University for a Masters degree but never finished. The group went as far as sending death threat messages and calling and mailing their homes leading to Tablo's brother to be fired from his job. Tablo released statements to counter their accuse however no one believed him

Tablo of Epik High

The accuse went on for month, leading to Tablo's depression and the Korean mainstream media have caught up with the scandal that the whole country knew about this incident. Fellow Stanford alumni anchor Sean Lim was only few of the people who knew Tablo's truth as they went to the university together. He contacted the 'Stanford Club of Korea' to release a statement supporting Tablo in Korean as he felt all the evidence supporting Tablo were in English which was why it wasn't as believable, however the club denied as they were scared of ruining their own reputations, as people releasing statements to confirm and support Tablo were also receiving threats and anonymous hate due to this.

As the scandal  grew bigger in October 2010, tv producer of human documentary 'PD Note' Ki Yeon Sung urged Tablo to personally go to Stanford and request for a transcript of his degree in person and have it all documented in a 2 part documentary series to be aired on MBC (on of Korea's biggest public broadcasting channels). Tablo agreed in order to end the scandal for sure and finally got his transcript checked for validity by Tomas Black by comparing Tablo's own copy of the original transcript and Black's.

Tablo's transcript

Tablo's identity was finally confirmed after months of allegations and with Tablo filing a lawsuit to 20 of the most prominent anonymous attackers from TaJinYo. The prosecutors demanded for a Korean online site to reveal the names of the attackers and the lead attacker and one who started the whole allegation was from to be a 57 year old Korean American businessman, Eung Kim from Chicago (better known as 'whatbecomes' as his online username id). The prosecutor issued an international warrant for Kim however it was defied and therefore he was never prosecuted. At least 8 people were sentenced to 10 months in jail and to write apology letters to Tablo about the whole incident. Meanwhile, whatbecomes was still adamant he was never in the wrong and continue to harass Tablo.