Oliver Tree, a singer-songwriter who earned his recognition through TikTok, is being demanded by SHINee's fans to apologize after a resurfaced photo of him edited in an image of late singer Jonghyun.

The edited image was originally posted in Oliver Tree's official YouTube channel Community tab, where it was captioned in all caps, "Rest in peace sweet bowl cut." Fans brought up the issue as the singer used the said photo to promote his tour and album back in 2019.

The account later deleted the post after he got major backlash from fans, for which they also asked for his proper apology.

In Oliver Tree's Response

As of October 2021, the singer faced another wave of hate as the hashtag "#apology_Olivertree" trended. Under the tag, Shawols, SHINee's fans, asked for a sincere apology and raised numerous points on how Tree was disrespectful in this situation.

A week after the issue resurfaced, the "Life Goes On" singer apologized on his official Instagram Stories to address the situation. He started by saying, "In regards to the Jonghyun photo, I want to apologize to him and everyone who was hurt by the image that was posted on my account years ago."

"To clarify, I didn't make that image and me and my team didn't know what the image was taken from... The second someone told us what it was from, we removed it immediately. There was no intention of anything malicious, just no research which caused a very foolish mistake," Oliver Tree added.

The singer further explained that the reason why he did it was because he was "making an album & tour about death," and every video he made for his studio album "Ugly is Beautiful" shows his "death in different ways."

Calling Out Oliver Tree

The fans never stopped after the singer posted his apology as they called him "disrespectful," "insensitive," and "inconsiderate." Netizens also noticed that many comments on his TikTok account were deleted by Tree, making Shawols angrier towards the singer.

Some also considered his apology "insincere" as he only managed to apologize on the time when he was called out.


More comments were raised from Korean fans saying how could Tree use any funeral picture in general because who would actually use one photo and edit their image there.

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