Peninsula: Starting with the nation's first love, the white moonlight

The next day, Li Luran was awakened by his cell phone ringing.

He glanced at the time; it was only 8 a.m.! Then he looked at the caller ID—twenty missed calls!

What's going on?

Before Li Luran could even process what was happening, the phone rang again.

"Lu Ran! You finally answered the phone!"

"What's wrong, senior?"

"Something terrible has happened! You need to come to the company right away. As for what happened... you can find out by searching the news on your phone on the way!"

Old Park hung up the phone in a hurry, and Li Luran realized that something was wrong, so he got up and rushed to the company.

At nine o'clock in the morning, the area in front of the LOEN company building was in complete chaos.

There were anti-fans holding protest signs, fans anxiously waiting for an official statement, and paparazzi with cameras staking out the locations to get the first scoop.

A cacophony of insults, doubts, and explanations from a few fans created chaos, with the entrance completely packed with people.

The same oppressive atmosphere filled the conference room on the third floor of the LEON company building.

As one of the main figures in this incident, Li Luran is also at the center of the storm.

He glanced at them briefly and found that the leaders did not seem to be friendly to him.

That's understandable. Being called in early on a weekend morning to handle an emergency public relations situation would make anyone angry.

But they couldn't possibly take their anger out on Lee Ji-eun, who was the company's prized possession. So, naturally, all their resentment was directed at him.

After a moment of silence, Pei Zhonghan, the head of the management team, spoke first.

"First, we need to make one thing clear."

Pei Zhonghan's tone was very serious, "Jie-eun, are you and Li Luran actually dating?"

"No!"

The two gave their answers almost simultaneously.

However, as soon as she finished speaking, Lee Ji-eun lowered her head slightly.

She dared not look Pei Zhonghan in the eye, her fingers nervously interlaced, feeling inexplicably guilty.

Although I spoke frankly, the events of last night are still vivid in my mind.

They strolled side by side under the moon, chatting and joking with each other, and there was an intentional or unintentional probing.

Aside from not holding hands, the emotional tug-of-war that couples usually experience seemed to happen last night.

Even last night, she tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep, her mind filled with that bad guy.

Having worked in the entertainment industry for so many years, how could Bae Chung-han not understand Lee Ji-eun's thoughts?

He saw through her guilty look and scoffed inwardly, "Even if this girl isn't in a relationship, she's at least fallen for someone."

"Once this wave of public opinion subsides, I must find time to give these two people a good talking to," Pei Zhonghan thought to himself, but remained outwardly calm.

"Now that it's confirmed you're not in a relationship, things are much easier."

The head of public relations stood up, holding a freshly printed draft in his hand.

"We'll draft a formal clarification announcement right away and release it to tell our fans the truth in a bit, so we can suppress the online criticism as soon as possible. The image of our nation's little sister absolutely cannot be damaged."

After the head of public relations set the tone, the publicity department and several other senior executives agreed.

The general consensus is: clarify the situation as soon as possible, distance yourself from the issue, and cut your losses in time.

"Ji-eun, what's your opinion?" Pei Zhonghan turned to look at the person in question who remained silent.

Lee Ji-eun was looking down, seemingly lost in thought. When her name was suddenly called, she looked up and replied somewhat casually, "Whatever the company thinks is best to handle, do it. I have no objections."

Pei Zhonghan nodded, then looked at Li Luran, who had been sitting quietly.

"Li Luran, what are your thoughts?" Pei Zhonghan stared at him. "After all, you are one of the parties involved. This matter concerns your life, and your opinion is also very important."

Li Luran pondered silently for a while, and finally looked at the head of the public relations department.

"If the public relations department were to issue a clarification press release now, what would it specifically say?"

The PR manager glanced at the draft in his hand and said, "Naturally, it's about emphasizing that Ji-eun and you are just ordinary colleagues. Last night, after the crew dinner, since everyone lives in the same direction, out of courtesy between colleagues, you offered to escort Ji-eun home. That's all."

After listening, Li Luran did not express his opinion, but instead turned his gaze back to Pei Zhonghan.

"Chief, what do you think of this statement?" he suddenly asked.

Pei Zhonghan frowned slightly. "There's a loophole in this statement."

He said in a deep voice, "After the dinner, there were her manager, assistant, and company van present. Why wasn't it her manager who took Ji-eun home, but instead you, a male colleague, had to walk her home alone?"

"Right now, those haters and rivals are nitpicking with a magnifying glass, and people will soon question this. We simply can't cover it up. Instead, it will make people think we're trying to cover something up."

Li Luran nodded, agreeing with Pei Zhonghan's keen insight.

"The room leader is right. Haters won't listen to our reasoning; they'll only look for loopholes."

"I have another question for the class monitor," Li Luran said, looking at Pei Zhonghan. "If this incident happened at another entertainment company, such as JYP or SM, how would they handle it, given their usual practices?"

Upon hearing this, Pei Zhonghan's eyes flashed with surprise, not understanding why he suddenly brought up competitors, but he still answered truthfully:

"Let's not even talk about JYP's PR."

"As for SM Entertainment, they probably won't respond immediately. They'll let this matter circulate online for a while, letting fans and casual observers argue about it. Once the hype reaches its peak, they'll come out and release evidence to clarify the situation."

"After all, in the entertainment industry, even negative publicity is still publicity." Pei Zhonghan looked at Li Luran and tentatively asked, "Do you perhaps think we should just copy SM Entertainment's approach and ignore the fans for now?"

Li Luran smiled.

"The manager sees things very clearly." His voice was calm and confident. "Every company has a different corporate culture, and we at LOEN don't need to completely copy SM's approach. However, we can borrow some of their methods."

"I believe the response strategy can be divided into two steps."

"The first step is that we don't need to rush to issue a clarification announcement. The public relations department can first release a statement on the official account, saying that the company is currently trying to find out the truth from the parties involved, and will immediately inform the public as soon as there is accurate information."

"And then?" the head of the publicity department couldn't help but ask.

"Then, we do nothing and wait for things to develop."

"In this way, fans saw the official stance and felt that we were taking things seriously. And we also benefited from this huge wave of popularity."

Li Luran turned around and looked at each of the executives present.

"Everyone, don't forget, IU's next album is about to enter the promotion period."

"Normally we have to spend tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of Korean won to buy trending topics, only to fail miserably. Now, the number one trending topic on the Korean Peninsula has been delivered to our doorstep. Why not take advantage of this free publicity?"

The conference room was completely silent; everyone was waiting for Li Luran's next words.

"We'll clarify things when the controversy has escalated to its peak."

Li Luran added methodically, "Last night was not only a dinner party, but also a celebration party for the completion of the new song's music video."

"We don't need to deliberately clarify the relationship between Ji-eun and me. Anyway, it's a matter of believers and non-believers will always believe. What we need is to steer the conversation toward Ji-eun's new song."

"At that time, the public relations department will cooperate with the publicity department to release a few behind-the-scenes photos from the MV shooting, naturally guiding all attention to the pre-release hype for the new album."

Pei Zhonghan stared blankly at Li Luran. Although Lao Pu had praised his professional skills before, seeing him analyze the situation so calmly and directly turn a public relations crisis into a promotional campaign for the new album was quite a surprise.

Is this kind of shrewd business sense really something an eighteen-year-old student should have?