K-pop group IVE’s agency files for action against YouTubers

K-pop girl group IVE’s company, Starship Entertainment have taken up legal action against YouTubers making content targeting artists under them, including IVE. They released a statement on June 25 announcing the news.

They revealed that they initially filed a lawsuit against individuals making malicious comments back in October 2022.

“In October 2022, we filed a legal complaint against persistent malicious commenters, and they received sentences of six months in prison, employment restriction, and listing on the sex offender registry. Since November 2022, via LIWU Law Group (legal representative Chong Kyung Suk), we have been carrying out a criminal and civil suit and also a lawsuit overseas.”

They continued: “In May 2023, we were granted an information provision order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and in July 2023, we managed to obtain meaningful information about the 'Sojang' channel manager from the Google headquarters in the United States. Unfortunately however, around the time Google notified the 'Sojang' channel manager about the information provision order, 'Sojang' suddenly claimed that their channel was hacked and deleted the existing videos on their channel, and the channel account was deleted followed by an apology.”

They added that they are always on the lookout to prevent malicious comments against their artists. “We are constantly operating a monitoring system to protect the rights of our artists including their reputation, privacy, and their human rights, and we plan to take all possible legal actions without leniency for the current and future cases of defamation or other additional damages caused to the artists.

"We ask for fans to continuously send reports as they have been of great assistance in our response to the legal proceedings and legal actions.”