JYP Announces Plans To Request Reinvestigation Into ITZY's Lia's Case + Explains Details

JYP Entertainment will be requesting a reinvestigation into the case against the individual who accused ITZY’s Lia of school violence.

Back in February, one of Lia’s middle school classmates (henceforth referred to as “A”) uploaded a post on an online community claiming to have been a victim of school violence. A wrote that a “famous female idol born in 2000” had borrowed money from a classmate without returning it, had spoken badly of her to other students, and had made her and others outcasts for no reason. When the post was uploaded, JYP Entertainment responded by stating that they had already filed a suit against A for defamation and that investigations were ongoing.

Earlier this week, Incheon Yeonsu Police Station revealed that A had ultimately been cleared of her defamation charges, explaining that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the claims made in the post were false.

On June 15, JYP Entertainment released a detailed statement announcing their plans to request a reinvestigation into the case against A. The agency also emphasized that while the police had dropped the charges against A “because they did not have proof that the posts were false,” the police also stated that “they were not acknowledging that the posts were true… [meaning] their decision not to forward the case to the prosecution did not mean they were confirming that Lia had participated in school violence.”

The agency’s full statement is as follows:

This is JYP Entertainment.

We are informing you of our company position on the case related to our artist ITZY’s Lia that was recently reported in the media.

1. When we first filed a suit against [the individual in question], we were not filing a suit against a victim of school violence, but a suit against posts and comments that we determined to be malicious, like those below.

[Image of various posts and comments accusing Lia of having been a bully in middle school, four of which JYP later explains were written by the same individual under different online nicknames.]

The above posts were uploaded on online communities over the course of two years, starting from 2018. It was impossible for us to know who was posting them, and they were not concrete complaints about suffering school violence.

Using fans’ reports and our routine monitoring of posts as a basis, our company currently has a system of regularly taking legal action against malicious online posts. Under that system, we ended up also taking legal action against the above posts in December 2020.

2. During the police investigation, we learned that of the five above posts, four of the posts were written by the same individual while switching online nicknames, while one post was written by a different individual.

However, while the police was still investigating this case, a person who appeared to be the writer of the above posts wrote on another online community last February that they were being investigated by the police. The writer complained in the post that they and their acquaintance had been victims of school violence, but shortly afterwards, someone who seemed to be the acquaintance mentioned in the original post uploaded their own post on the same online community, saying that they did not consider the incident in question school violence and that they thought it was not a big deal. After that, the writer of the original post repeatedly uploaded posts before deleting them.

3. After our legal representative filed a complaint on Lia’s behalf and responded with legal action, the police decided not to forward the case against the two writers of the [malicious] posts to the prosecution. However, the police stated in their press interviews that while they decided not to forward the case to the prosecution because they did not have proof that the posts were false, they were not acknowledging that the posts were true. In other words, they were saying that their decision not to forward the case to the prosecution did not mean they were confirming that Lia had participated in school violence.

Accordingly, our artist and the company plan to file an appeal and request a reinvestigation into the charge of defamation of character through falsehoods. This is because we want the truth to be clearly revealed through a deeper investigation.

This is because we believe that while it is unacceptable for there to be victims who unfairly suffered [school violence], it is also unacceptable for there to be victims who suffer because of false accusations and distorted claims.

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