The court has sided with singer and actor Lee Seung-gi. His former agency, Hook Entertainment (hereafter referred to as Hook), has been ordered to pay Lee an additional settlement amount.
The 20th Civil Division of the Seoul Central District Court held a ruling session on the debt non-existence confirmation lawsuit filed by Hook against Lee Seung-gi on the afternoon of the 4th. Lee did not attend the hearing, and only the lawyers for both sides were present.
On this day, the court dismissed the lawsuit and ruled that the plaintiff must be paid 581.37 million won. The court also decided that the costs of the lawsuit would be borne equally by both the plaintiff and the defendant, at 50% each.
Initially, the court was scheduled to deliver a ruling on January 17, but it canceled the scheduled ruling and resumed the fifth hearing on the 7th of last month. At that time, the court briefly concluded the hearing after receiving additional evidence from both sides and set a new date for the ruling.
Previously, during the fourth hearing held in November of last year, Lee Seung-gi appeared as a defendant and appealed to the court, saying, "Please ensure that junior artists like me do not suffer from the vicious cycle of settlement issues."
Lee Seung-gi, who debuted under Hook in 2004, filed a complaint in November 2022 against Hook's CEO Kwon Jin-young and others, claiming that the settlement of music revenue had not been carried out.
Subsequently, Hook paid Lee Seung-gi a settlement amount of 5.4 billion won. In this process, CEO Kwon claimed that in addition to the previously paid settlement of 1.3 billion won, he had to pay an additional 4.1 billion won for unaccounted music revenue and interest, arguing that he had overpaid in advertising revenue and needed to recover some of the money, leading to the debt non-existence confirmation lawsuit.
Lee Seung-gi's side stated that the music revenue from October 2009, when he was under Hook, until September 2022, amounted to approximately 9.6 billion won, which they explained was the limited amount of music revenue for the first five years from June 2004 to August 2009. They argued that he should receive more advertising settlement money.
[Ji Seung-hoon, Star Today Reporter]
