HYBE Shares Update On Legal Action Against Malicious Commenters & Defamation Of Artists

HYBE has released a statement about its legal response to malicious commenters and other individuals attacking its artists.

On June 29, HYBE shared the following statement in English regarding the protection of its artists BTS, TXT, SEVENTEEN, NU’EST, and ENHYPEN:

Our company regularly initiates legal proceedings against perpetrators of malicious activities related to our artists [BTS, TXT, SEVENTEEN, NU’EST, and ENHYPEN], including ill-intentioned criticism, the spread of groundless information, sexual harassment, personal attacks and defamation. We would like to provide an update on these activities.

We have filed criminal complaints for defamation (Article 70 of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc.) and insult (Article 311 of the Criminal Act) against perpetrators who engaged in repeated posting or spreading malicious replies and writings exceeding the boundaries of socially-acceptable expression of opinions on online communities, blogs and social media.

Criminal complaints were filed against perpetrators that included anonymous posters; even in instances of postings that were created and then deleted to avoid leaving evidence, we performed real-time monitoring to collect and deliver the contents of such postings to law enforcement agencies. We ask for your understanding that we may be unable to release further details or comment on pending cases to ensure that perpetrators can be identified and investigations remain confidential, and we would like to make it clear that any attempts to create malicious online postings that evade collection of evidence or deliberately misleading law enforcement investigation will result in a stronger response. As we have already noted, we maintain a strict policy of no settlement and no leniency in the prosecution of any violation of artist rights.

We regularly collect information on malicious postings regarding our artists, report them to the authorities, and file criminal complaints. We ask all fans to submit information regarding our artists to our legal hotlines.

We are always grateful for the affection and dedication shown by fans of our artists.

We will continue to work to ensure that the rights of our artists are fully protected.

Thank you.

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