Victory Contents, the company that produced River Where The Moon Rises, has sued Ji Soo and KeyEast for ₩3 billion KRW ($2,661,771 USD) in damages following his bullying scandal.
According to Victory Contents’ press release, they have filed a compensation suit to the Seoul Central District Court against KeyEast to claim damages following Ji Soo’s bullying scandal. Ji Soo began filming the drama as a the male lead, but dropped out in early March following his scandal. At the time of him dropping out, nearly 90% of the drama was already filmed, which meant nearly the entire drama was re-filmed with Na In Woo after Ji Soo was replaced.
We have filed a compensation suit against KeyEast with the Seoul Central District Court to claim our portion of damages.
As many of you are familiar with this case, this is related to the school violence controversy by KeyEast actor Ji Soo. KeyEast and Ji Soo signed an actor appearance contract with us to appear in River Where The Moon Rises and the drama has received a lot of love from viewers since it began airing on February 15, 2021.
However in March 2021, reports started surfacing about Ji Soo’s involvement in school violence. It wasn’t limited to just fighting between students, but also extortion, proxy testing, sexual crimes, a level of terrible things that are difficult to state. Ji Soo and KeyEast acknowledged his misdeeds, and decided to drop out of River Where The Moon Rises. (This content came from MBC’s show True Story of Exploration).
River Where The Moon Rises was in the process of pre-production and when the school violence controversy surfaced, filming for the drama was nearly complete. However, when the actor was replaced, we had to refilm all of Ji Soo’s scenes. The production cost of this drama was huge, and the amount of additional costs we had to incur was severe due to the re-filming, but we decided to re-film episodes 1-6 in order to keep our promise to the viewers that we would show them a complete, finished work. This promise is not only for domestic viewers, but also global viewers, as the Hallyu Wave boom cannot be ruined by one school violence offender.
However, we have suffered direct damage due to this, from staff costs, location and equipment fees, appearance fees, art fees, and many more. We have also suffered other serious damage that could affect the us for a long time, such as a decline in viewer ratings, complaints from overseas distributors, a decrease in sales, and damage to the company’s image.
In order to recover these damages as soon as possible and to concentrate on producing good dramas, we tried to negotiate compensation with KeyEast, but were unsuccessful due to the non-cooperation of KeyEast.
We would like to conclude this suit and receive compensation as soon as possible, and we will continue to make great efforts to ensure the broadcasting stations and viewers around the world can continue to enjoy watching healthy and wholesome programs.
— Victory Contents
Ji Soo was accused of school bullying and violence in March 2021, and shortly after, more accusations against him came out. KeyEast stated they were looking into the accusations, and Ji Soo posted an apology for his past actions. Due to his scandal, Ji Soo was replaced in River Where The Moon Rises. KeyEast has also denied the claims of sexual assault.
