Jihyo, the main vocalist of TWICE. Capture from official Instagram of TWICE

By Dong Sun-hwa





A scammer asks Jihyo's mom for money. Capture from official Instagram of TWICE

K-pop girl band TWICE's lead vocal Jihyo has pledged zero-tolerance to messenger app scammers after her mother was targeted in the online fraud.

"I cannot even check my business e-mail because my ID is hacked and locked ― worse, this morning, I got this message from my family," Jihyo wrote on the band's Instagram account on Saturday. "Did you get my family's phone numbers and pretend to me merely because I am a celebrity?"

"Please do not play such a malicious trick using this ridiculous method ― I will not tolerate it once more."

According to JYP, a K-pop agency representing TWICE, Jihyo's mother recently received a message on KakaoTalk, a popular Korean messenger app, from a person pretending to be the singer. The scammer asked the mother to wire 5 million won, but her mother realized it was a fraud.

JYP said it would refer the matter to police.