On November 30, 2019, AOA‘s Jimin appeared on Amazing Saturday and made a new idol friend, Hyeri.

As the hosts introduced Jimin, Hyeri playfully acted nervous — because in previous episodes, Hyeri has been imitating Jimin’s “Bingle Bangle” rap.

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Once the two came face-to-face, Jimin was asked to share how she feels about Hyeri’s imitations. Jimin lightheartedly answered, “We don’t really know each other, so it did make me wonder why she would imitate me…”

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So it turns out I’m always on this show, without really being here! (Laughter) We don’t really know each other, so it did make me wonder why she would imitate me. Plus, she hasn’t been doing the imitation lately… and that also kind of made me feel left out! — Jimin

Jimin also added that she liked Hyeri’s version of the “Bingle Bangle” rap. Hyeri, on the other hand, was relieved to hear that Jimin never felt offended about the cheeky imitations!

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From the way she kind of… gets herself into the mood before the imitation… I love everything about it. — Jimin

The two immediately became the “Bingle & Bangle” duo, with Jimin being “Bingle” and Hyeri being “Bangle”. Here’s the two of them being silly, imitating each other and trying out their teamwork as the new “Bingle Bangle” unit:

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After the show, Jimin and Hyeri — also going by Bingle-ssi and Bangle-ssi now — boasted the beginning of their beautiful new friendship on social media.

Hyeri: Bingle Bangle

Jimin: My Bangle-ie…❤️

While it sounds all good and fun, this brief interaction between Jimin and Hyeri on site unfortunately attracted the attack of haters’ malicious comments. When the Korean press began delivering articles titled along the lines of “AOA’s Jimin Doesn’t Understand Why Hyeri Keeps Imitating Her”, online haters bombarded Jimin with extreme negativity.

“Shouldn’t she be grateful for the imitations?”

“AOA is all hideous except Choa. Since Choa left, this group is pretty much done.”

“Since when do imitations need to be only of people you know? Lol.”

“But you’re not even that popular. You should be grateful that someone keeps bringing you up. Isn’t that so, Nick Fury? Lmao.”

By December 1, 2019, Jimin updated her Instagram story with a short text message that reads, “Hug me”. Though it cannot be certain that the update is indeed a call for help against the malicious comments, it is true that Jimin has suffered a tremendous amount of unreasonable negativity, post her appearance on the show.

K-Pop fans remain worried about Jimin — and are heavily criticizing haters for “not having learned anything”.

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This is ridiculous. I watched the entire episode and throughout the whole thing, they were giving off new BFF vibes. Haters really don’t learn anything, do they? Why is the Naver comments section still even live??? — Concerned Netizen

Watch the full clip here: