Singer Seo In Young Receives Backlash After Being Accused Of Stealing A Tattoo Design

Solo artist Seo In Young is receiving backlash after posting a photo of her newest tattoo.

Just a couple days ago, Seo In Young posted what she thought was an innocent photo of her newest tattoo. She uploaded the photo onto her Instagram page, showing off her matching tattoo with one of her close friends. She captioned the now deleted post with, “couple tattoo with unnie. 22 years of friendship” with a blurred out, unknown female.

The controversial tattoo in question is the phrase, “ALL IS WELL” that can be seen tattooed on Seo In Young’s right arm. The issue arose when the former girl group member’s followers recognized the familiar font and colorful ink to be a personal design done by a famous tattoo artist.

Her followers flocked to her comments to ask if she knew about the original design, with a majority of them tagging the original tattoo artist.

• “Tattoo artist unnie isn’t this your handwriting? Wow I got chills…isn’t this theft?”
• “Tattoo artist noona isn’t this noona’s custom tattoo? Please take a look, I’m getting chills”
• “Isn’t this plagiarism?”
• “Tattoo artist unnie you wrote this yourself and made this design, but she copied even the colors?”
• “I thought the tattoo artist did it for her…it’s the same”
• “Tattoo artist unnie made this…the writing and even the colors were completely stolen”

After the backlash, Seo In Young deleted her post and addressed the situation by apologizing for the controversy.

I regret my actions that have created such a controversy. This design is something that my friend saw on a website long time ago and it’s a design she has been hanging onto. It happened to be her birthday so we ended up getting it together.

— Seo In Young

Seo In Young’s friend uploaded a separate apology onto her personal Instagram page, taking full responsibility of the situation.

I found the design while I was browsing online and decided to save it. I didn’t realize it was the design of a Korean artist and I used it. I want to deeply apologize to the tattoo artist again and let you all know that this happened because of my decision.

— Seo In Young’s friend

Since the scrutiny, Seo In Young has deleted her post and has remained quiet on her social media.