Lee Seung Gi Formally Sues Hook Entertainment — Here’s The Full Translation Of His Legal Letter
Lee Seung Gi has officially filed a lawsuit against HOOK Entertainment‘s CEO, Kwon Jin Young, and two other directors at the company. On December 22, 2022, his legal team addressed the public to explain the lawsuit.
Hello. This is Lee Seung Gi’s legal representative.
Lee Seung Gi filed his lawsuit against HOOK Entertainment’s CEO Kwon Jin Young, and its directors today at the Seoul Central District Police Station.
Just as it has been reported in the press a few times already,HOOK Entertainment has been hiding the truth about the profits from Lee Seung Gi’s music for the past 18 years and did not pay him for it. Regarding this, we have sued Hook Entertainment’s CEO Kwon Jin Young, and the executive directors for violating the act for specific economic crimes (occupational embezzlement) and specific economic crimes (fraud).
— Lee Seung Gi’s legal team
The company had also been embezzling a portion of his advertisement model fees.
In addition, we found out through a recent tip-off that the current and previous directors of HOOK Entertainment had fooled Lee Seung Gi and embezzled a portion of his fees as a CF model. He thought that about 10% of his fees as a model for a few years was provided to the advertisement company as “agency fees,” but in truth, the previous and current directors had not given it to the advertisement company and shared a portion amongst themselves instead.
It was only when Lee Seung Gi brought this up that HOOK Entertainment admitted the truth and on December 16, 2022, they provided him with the delayed payments of about ₩630 million KRW (about $492,000 USD) including for his CFs and music. Regarding these crimes, our legal team has sued three people, CEO Kwon Jin Young and the current and previous directors, for fraud and embezzlement.
— Lee Seung Gi’s legal team
Lastly, the company had attempted to deflect some of the legal damages by unilaterally transferring payments to Lee Seung Gi belatedly.
Regarding the music payments, Lee Seung Gi has never agreed to settle with HOOK Entertainment. Despite this, on December 16, 2022, HOOK Entertainment said that they filed a lawsuit to confirm the absence of debt after unilaterally transferring about ₩4.81 billion KRW (about $3.76 million USD) without notifying him. Lee Seung Gi first found out about this through media reports and has not received any notification about the lawsuit.
The above settlement amount remitted unilaterally by HOOK Entertainment is also different from that of the one that Lee Seung Gi is aware of. He will hence respond to the claim for the non-existence of debt and file a counterclaim to claim unpaid fees for music and damages for their illegal activities.
Lee Seung Gi has decided that similar victims should not occur any further and will be legally suing HOOK Entedrtainment’s CEO Kwon Jin Young and the previous and current directors just as we have explained earlier. We will do our best so that no similar victims will occur, unveiling the accurate truth regarding this matter through the trial.
Thank you.
— Lee Seung Gi’s legal team
The battle began when Lee Seung Gi realized that his company had been withholding accurate payments and accounting from him.
