Celebrity

JYP requests reinvestigation into ITZY Lia’s case

JYP Entertainment requested a reinvestigation to re-examine the facts of school bullying allegations against Lia.

In December last year, Lia took legal action against malicious commenters. So many posts targeting Lia are presumed to be written by the same person with different nicknames.

Lia

In February, this person said, “I am not a malicious commenter, but a victim,” and “I (A) and an acquaintance (B) were victims of school violence.”

JYP filed a suit against anonymous haters in December last year. “At that time, malicious posts without specifically appealing to school violence were written and then deleted repeatedly,” he explained the reason for the reinvestigation request.

According to the police investigation, A and B were designated as the ones who uploaded the posts. JYP explained, “A wrote four posts with different nicknames. Another person (B) wrote another post.”

A complained about being bullied at school during a police investigation last February. “We are currently under police investigation,” she said. “My acquaintance (C) and I suffered from school violence.” She claims that she was a victim of school violence, not a hater.

However, a netizen believed to be C made a different claim. “I don’t think of this as school bullying. I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said.

On the 13th, the Yeonsu Police Station revealed that A and B had ultimately been cleared of defamation charges, explaining that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the claims made in the post were false. But it did not mean they were confirming that Lia had participated in school violence.

JYP expected a step closer to the truth. “There should be no victims who have been unfairly treated, but at the same time, there should not be any victims of untrue or distorted information” he said

The following is the full text of JYP’s statement:

We would like to inform you of the company’s position regarding the recent media coverage of label artist Lia. The first charges concerning A were not against A as a victim of school violence, but against the posts and comments that were judged as malicious, including A’s posts.

1. When we first filed a suit against [the individual in question], we were not filing a suit against a victim of school violence, but a suit against posts and comments that we determined to be malicious, like those below.

[Image of various posts and comments accusing Lia of having been a bully in middle school, four of which JYP later explains were written by the same individual under different online nicknames.]

The above posts were uploaded on online communities over the course of two years, starting from 2018. It was impossible for us to know who was posting them, and they were not concrete complaints about suffering school violence.

Using fans’ reports and our routine monitoring of posts as a basis, our company currently has a system of regularly taking legal action against malicious online posts. Under that system, we ended up also taking legal action against the above posts in December 2020.

2. During the police investigation, it was discovered that 4 of the above 5 posts were written by the same person with different nicknames, and the other 1 post was written by another person. However, while the police were investigating the case in February of this year, another Internet community post was posted by the person believed to be the author of the above post, stating that they were under investigation by the police. The author and their acquaintances complained about being bullied at school, but soon a person who was supposedly an acquaintance posted an article on the same internet community that they did not consider the incident to be school violence and thought it was not a big deal. The person who posted the original article also posted and deleted the article repeatedly.

3. After our legal representative filed a complaint on Lia’s behalf and responded with legal action, the police decided not to forward the case against the two writers of the [malicious] posts to the prosecution. However, the police stated in their press interviews that while they decided not to forward the case to the prosecution because they did not have proof that the posts were false, they were not acknowledging that the posts were true. In other words, they were saying that their decision not to forward the case to the prosecution did not mean they were confirming that Lia had participated in school violence.

Accordingly, our artist and the company plan to file an appeal and request a reinvestigation into the charge of defamation of character through falsehoods. This is because we want the truth to be clearly revealed through a deeper investigation.

This is because we believe that while it is unacceptable for there to be victims who unfairly suffered [school violence], it is also unacceptable for there to be victims who suffer because of false accusations and distorted claims.”

Source: dispatch

Back to top button