K-Pop Star Jaejoong Missed the April Fools’ Memo, Joked He Had the Coronavirus

Even during a pandemic, it looks like April Fools’ Day — and the fools who take it a bit too far — carries on. As much as we didn’t want to admit to ourselves, someone was bound to make a joke about the coronavirus, and Jaejoong of K-pop group JYG was the one who took the fall. After telling his fans he was hospitalized with the coronavirus on Instagram, he quickly changed course with a new post explaining that he was joking. “This prank was too much to be considered a simple April Fools’ Day joke, but many people expressed their worry for me during that short period of time,” he wrote in the apology, according to the New York Times’ translation. Jaejoong further acknowledged he would “accept all punishments that I would get for this post,” as fans criticized his actions. After his initial post, JYG’s label, C-JeS Entertainment, told Allkpop it would check on the performer. South Korea was an early center of the COVID-19 pandemic and now has nearly 10,000 cases.