accusing someone of bullying you, allowing other people bully that person and then being like "oh, I mistook you for another person" .... that just sounds fishy ....
if the person was sincere and they were bullied, now they caused another person so much pain. if they were bribed to keep their mouth shut .... I don´t know both scenarios sound terrible. I would not be able to live with myself if I did something like that to someone, no matter how "blurry" my memory would be. you deal with bullying at that moment, you don´t wait what 10 years to ruin someone´s career unless your intention is revenge and that just makes you not really a better person than those bullies.... just adding my five cents.
I highly doubt Starship would bribe someone to keep quiet, since their history with bribes is....Not great (see PDX101) and getting caught again would be a disaster. They also wouldn't have had Kihyun meet up and talk with the accuser (it wasn't Starship alone that met, Kihyun actually talked to the person) because he's not the type of person to stand for that sort of thing. On top of that, they released Kihyun's school records. My guess is the accuser was bitter over being bullied, but the facts were jumbled because ten years is a long time ago and memory isn't great, especially in such large schools.
I really overall don't like the way Korea handles accusations like this, because people seem to be guilty until proven innocent, and even then, sometimes the damage is already done. There's never a requirement for the accusers to actually identify themselves, so they get to keep their anonymity while the accused is dragged. It's combating bullying with more aggressive bullying. This (and lack of seriousness about mental health care & other cultural factors) is why the rates of suicide are so high. Korea expects celebrities to be absolutely flawless, which is ridiculous because no one is totally squeaky clean, and even if they are, that doesn't mean someone else didn't feel differently about the past. It's all subjective.