Lee Kang-in’s CF Lawsuit Arises Amid Controversy Over Conflict With Son Heung-min

On February 17th, Money Today exclusively reported the legal dispute between football star Lee Kang-in and an advertising company. At this moment, Lee Kang-in is facing a backlash from Korean netizens due to his physical confrontation with Son Heung-min before the Asian Cup semifinal.

According to the media, Lee Kang-in entrusted Company A with handling his advertisement contracts and sponsorship in Korea from March to July 2023. On July 12th, 2023, Lee Kang-in requested and received the list of all advertisements managed by Company A, including the one with Nexon and Naver. 5 days later when Lee Kang-in moved to PSG, his side sent an e-mail to Company A and unilaterally ended their contract, citing that they only signed an oral contract and offering a to pay the company 500,000 won.

From the revealed Kakaotalk conversations and e-mails, it is known that Company A sent the offer for a collaboration with Nexon using Lee Kang-in as an advertising model. However, Nexon and Lee Kang-in signed the contract without consulting with Company A. Therefore, Company A claimed that Lee Kang-in stole the advertisement from them and demanded a share of profits of 10%, which was about 120 million won. However, Lee Kang-in denied it and filed a lawsuit against Company A. 

In January 2024, Lee Kang-in signed with K10 Limited, which was established by his family. As the information about the CF lawsuit was reported, netizens continued to pour criticism against Lee Kang-in, such as “He’s talented but he has such a bad personality. He should be eliminated from the national team as well as the advertising and media industries”, “He ignores people who helped him during the hard time”, “He earned 1 billion won but did not pay them.. I’m so shocked”, “At this point, shouldn’t we make Lee Kang-in enlist?”, etc. 

Source: K14