On September 5th, the National Assembly’s Committee on Culture, Sports, and Tourism held a plenary session and passed a revised bill of the Popular Culture and Arts Industry Development Act, sending it to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee.
This amendment, dubbed the “Lee Seung-gi Law” and mandates that entertainment companies must provide revenue settlement details, even if the artist does not request it, had passed the Culture Committee in the 21st National Assembly but was scrapped when the legislative term ended before it could pass the Judiciary Committee.
The original bill discussed in the 21st Assembly set the frequency of revenue disclosure to at least once a year, but the current bill allows this frequency to be set by presidential decree.
On the other hand, Lee Seung-gi has been in conflict with his former agency, Hook Entertainment, over settlement payments since 2022. He claimed that he had not received any revenue from music-related activities during his 18 years since debut, while Hook Entertainment denied the claim of “zero settlement”.
Subsequently, Hook paid Lee Seung-gi about 5.4 billion KRW (approx 4 million USD), including 2.9 billion KRW (approx 2.1 million USD) in unpaid settlements and 1.2 billion KRW (around 900,000 USD) in delayed interest, in addition to the 1.3 billion KRW (around 973,000 USD) already paid.
Hook has also filed a lawsuit to confirm the non-existence of further debt, while Lee Seung-gi claims the agency owes him more for advertising revenue.
Source: Daum
