Despite Winning The Lawsuit Against Sojang, Jang Won-young Still Has Many Things To Overcome
Jang Won-young filed a lawsuit against YouTube channel “Sojang in October 2023 for damages worth 100 million won. The lawsuit was filed in the court in October 2023, and the court later asked the accused for an answer, but they did not respond, and after a while, the court ruled in favor of Jang Won-young without pleading.
However, after submitting an appeal against the sentencing result through a legal representative on January 17th, Sojang applied to the court on the 23rd to suspend the execution of the lawsuit, expressing his willingness not to accept Jang Won-young and Starship’s strong legal response and subsequent court rulings.
At the same time, while the 50th Seoul Central District Court held a hearing date for the lawsuit, Sojang’s lawyer claimed, “It was for public interest purposes and he didn’t know the contents were false,” angering everyone, including Jang Won-young’s fandom as well as the public as he did not admit wrongdoing.
Sojang has been criticized for spreading groundless news and malicious rumors against popular celebrities. Sojang caused great confusion by using celebrities as scapegoats to increase the number of views and spreading false information. Since then, Starship Entertainment has taken it to the U.S. court (US DISTRIBUTION FOR THE NORTHRN DISTRIBUTION OF CALIFORNIA) in May 2023, and announced that it has obtained meaningful information about the operator of “Sojang” from Google headquarters in the U.S. With Google’s cooperation, it strongly expressed its will to take legal action against Sojang and won the first victory.
Starship Entertainment said, “We have been filing civil and criminal lawsuits and overseas lawsuits since November 2022 against Sojang, who has been continuously harassing our artists,” adding, “Sojang has not only severely defamed our company through continuous dissemination of false information, but also caused serious pain to our artists and fans. We are doing our best to hold civil and criminal liability to the end through the ongoing lawsuit.”
Although Starship and Jang Won-young’s will to respond to the legal action is clear, it is not likely that the lawsuit will be solved as easily as we think. It is pointed out that it is not because A’s argument is persuasive or because Jang Won-young’s argument does not make sense, but because of the frustration of going through legal procedures.
Apart from this, Starship and Jang Won-young have already stepped up to claim damages against Sojang, spending a lot of time collecting evidence for this, along with dozens of applications for fact-finding. The winning time of the first trial was more than a year after filing the lawsuit. It took at least a year to prove that the numerous videos Sojang created were false news. This alone seems to have been a tremendous time of pain for the victims.
What’s more speechless is after the court ended the first date of the lawsuit filed by Starship on the 24th, it set the next date as April, three months later. In response, lawyer Chung Kyung-seok told Star News that the Ministry of Justice’s personnel issues are held at the beginning of each year as to why the next date will be until April. Of course, it is not wrong in itself, but from the standpoint of filing a lawsuit, it is inevitably regarded as an unexpected obstacle that emerged at a time when it should be continued. In many ways, Jang Won-young has no choice but to wait and endure.
Source: StarNews
