Blockberry, which denied the rumor of LOONA members’ contract lawsuit, remained silent after losing
While LOONA is practically in the process of disbanding, their agency Blockberry Entertainment remains silent.
However, five members Ha Seul, Yeo Jin, Yves, Olivia Hye, and Go Won, who also filed the same lawsuit, lost, while Vivi and Hyun Jin did not file a lawsuit against their agency.
Based on the result, the contract between 4 winning members and Blockberry will be terminated. Some of them later opened their personal SNS accounts and started communicating with their fans.
Before this, the 4 winning members had reportedly maintained their contracts with the agency on the same conditions as Chuu, who has left LOONA first. Chuu previously filed and won the lawsuit against Blockberry as she claimed the ratio of the payment she received and her activity expenses was different, which negatively affected her. On the other hand, the five members who lost reportedly partially changed the terms of their contract a few years ago.
Blockberry, which had insisted the contract dispute rumors between it and the remaining LOONA members were “groundless” after announcing Chuu’s expulsion in November last year, has remained eerily quiet since the news of it losing in court. The only answer form Blockberry since then was, “We will announce our position after organizing everything.“
As Blockberry’s previous position was found to be practically false, the agency seems to be considering its position more carefully. Blockberry also claimed the rumor was “groundless” regarding its contract lawsuit with Chuu, but it was also false.
This means LOONA’s comeback activities have been postponed indefinitely. Earlier this month, Blockberry announced LOONA’s comeback as an 11-member group, but failed to proceed with the album activities. On Dec 22nd, 2022, with about two weeks left before LOONA’s planned comeback then, Blockberry announced, “Many concerns related to the members’ situation have not been resolved,” and expressed its position to postpone the comeback indefinitely.
Although the change in attitude an ex-member was pointed out as the beginning of the crisis, the opinion dispute between the agency and many LOONA members is the knock-out punch. Naturally, the public believed LOONA will soon disband. Blockberry still has the contracts with 7 members, but the lawsuit confirmed that 5 of them are not very happy with the agency.
LOONA, which introduced 12 members one after another throughout a long period of 542 days, from Hee Jin in October 2016 to Olivia Hye in March 2018 before the group’s official debut, is on the verge of disbanding. It took LOONA 684 days to debut as a full group, and the cost invested in LOONA’s debut project is known to amount to 10 billion won.
Source: TV Daily
