Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
FIFTY FIFTY’s contract dispute with ATTRAKT continues on, this time starting with more lawsuit and legal stuff, and ending with perhaps FIFTY FIFTY’s telling the harrowing stories of their health issues that haven’t had details released about them yet.
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First, some legal stuff.
ATTRAKT filed a lawsuit against The Givers, SIAHN, and Baek Jin Sil (Senior Director) for ~$736k for allegedly violating their contract, impeding their business, and causing property damage. It also says SIAHN had a project management contract through June 2026 to produce for the company and that Baek was in charge of overall management. ATTRAKT reiterated that they believe The Givers are behind FIFTY FIFTY terminating their contract.
“The amount of compensation we are filing for is for a partial loss of major business opportunities, such as advertisements or sponsors, caused by The Givers’ Siahn and Baek’s breach of duty and embezzlement. We also believe these defaults to financial obligations and illegal activities caused direct disputes between the company and Fifty Fifty that prevented normal business activities. We plan to raise the amount of damages as the trial progresses,” added Attrakt.
For the people asking why ATTRAKT would even bother continuing on with this despite the group likely not having upside anymore, it’s presumably for getting financial victories like this that’ll have tangible rewards. We already know The Givers and SIAHN are extremely shady, but the most interesting part of the lawsuit is the section about whether they tampered with FIFTY FIFTY.
It was also revealed that ATTRAKT was filing a lawsuit against an alleged employee of the company who went on Unanswered Questions, claiming the entire interview was false and defamatory to CEO Jeon Hong Joon.
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So that’s what’s going on legally, but the big recent news is FIFTY FIFTY have spoken up about multiple issues on the Instagram account that the members control.
First, they talked about the financial aspects of things, saying that ATTRAKT was framing them without proof. They accuse the company of using them to solve their liabilities elsewhere, providing a KakaoTak convo between ATTRAKT’s Jeon Hong Joon and the CEO of an external company.
A: After we have collected our first round of data, we plan on making our decision after the feedback and the last Thailand interview.
J: Ah… Okay.
A: We have scheduled a meeting with the distribution company.
J: Hwaiting! I’ve matched up stories that we’ve received ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.74 million USD) as an advance payment for our girl group.
J: 2 years and 6 months. ₩100 million KRW (about $74,700 USD) per month… over 30 months… ₩3.00 billion KRW (about $2.24 million USD)
J: ₩1.60 billion KRW (about $1.20 million USD) for the first album this time. ₩1.00 billion KRW (about $747,000 USD) after. It’s ₩5.60 billion KRW (about $4.19 million USD). I think we can match up to ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.74 million USD) in advance payments.
The statement then goes on to explain that essentially the CEO planned to claim he put all the money into FIFTY FIFTY (and thus their debt), while actually using it elsewhere.
CEO J plotted with external company CEO A, planning to frame that they invested ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.74 million USD) of advance payment into FIFTY FIFTY, but the money was actually owed to another company, S.
They planned on framing that the company spent ₩100 million KRW (about $74,700 USD) per month over 30 months, totalling ₩3.00 billion KRW (about $2.24 million USD) on FIFTY FIFTY.
They planned that the total expenses after the first album (guessed to be CUPID) would add up to be ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.74 million USD). The actual amount in advances received from the distribution company for the first album was ₩2.00 billion KRW (about $1.49 million USD).
As such, the company liable for the advance was not ATTRAKT, but external company S.
FIFTY FIFTY go on to say that the company is still evading explanations for this and have not yet been granted any explanation. Instead, ATTRAKT has gone to YouTubers to claim the debt was 8 billion won. They explain that the company has claimed 3 billion won in costs in statements sent to them, but have yet to provide transparency about 3.3 billion won in maintenance and operating expenses and 1.7 billion won in deposits.
Their side then explains that the tampering allegations is an attempt to evade having to provide answers to their questions, and that as a result they have requested data from the external contractors, agencies, and distributors since ATTRAKT won’t provide it for them. FIFTY FIFTY then call on the CEO to tell the whole truth and promise to reveal further details.
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A day later they then proceeded to share their health struggles with the company, making alarming reveals about the situation they were forced to work through. They ask in the lead, “How Much Longer Do We Need To Hurt To Receive Proper Care?“.
FIFTY FIFTY start by talking about not wanting to give up and apologizing to fans, then go into detail on the health front, with the members explaining their situations. Seemingly understanding what netizens have been saying about them, they acknowledge that basically pushing through hardship is part of the idol deal.
Injuries are like air to idols — they will always be around. We were able to perform because of our desperate desire to keep making music. We know that this is what it takes to achieve our irreplaceable dreams of making music, and so we are rooting for all the artists who are going through this. But we can’t say that the things we went through were normal and minimize them. Even when a member had to call an ambulance alone, barefoot, due to pain, and even we fainted, there was nobody to protect us. We had to carry the members on our back to the emergency room.
But the situations Saena, Sio, and Aran describe in the following paragraphs seem anything but typical, and the trio have provided medical documentation of their health statuses.
Saena – Says harsh dieting caused her to lose hair and be unable to have her period without medicine, and it took six months for her hormones to stabilize. She had anorexia and bulimia, which got to the point that she weighed 39 kg.
Sio – Diagnosed with severe anxiety and social phobias, but the label did nothing to help her. She would have tremors and headaches, suffering from frequent blackouts, and had to rely on medicine to not faint. She describes an incident where she ripped into her skin due to anxiety and went to the hospital, where she fainted and was put on a respirator. However, the company told her to just catch a cab back to the dorms without saying anything else, and she says episodes like this were common. She says that around her debut, she had stomach issues and the hospital told her that if she didn’t start eating healthy she’d have to go on dialysis for her kidneys, but the label insisted that she continue dieting.
Aran – Her health started failing 10 months before debut, and was only diagnosed correctly a month after their comeback date was set. She kept trying to get options for treatment that wouldn’t interfere with promotions, but her gall bladder’s condition continued to deteriorate, and the number of large polyps had increased (specifically it was chronic cholangitis). The doctor recommended surgery because they could become cancerous, but she choose to risk her health to come back. She states she was in pain every day, threw up what she ate every night, was in pain from bloating, and survived on pain meds, which led to her not being able to use the bathroom for as many as 20 days. Despite this, she was still subject to weight restrictions, which led to her fasting and leading to her reaching her limit. The surgery to remove her gall bladder was pushed back to April but finally happened in May, yet a week later the company asked when she’d return and offered a commercial in June. She says there was no understanding or kind words from the company, just people knocking loudly at her family’s home after they filed the lawsuit, which scared her further. She had trouble eating and sleeping for a month, and lost 7 kg over that time and had trouble even standing.
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Regardless of anything else going on with this case, it’s clear at this point that the health struggles of FIFTY FIFTY were very serious and well beyond any reasonable standard of having to ‘power through it’ like many were suggesting was the case before. I really don’t even care if like Sio and Aran agreed to risk serious illness to not mess up the debut schedule, that’s not the point. Whether it removes the company’s legal liability or not, as a company (and as adults, in general) it’s morally incumbent on you to take that out of their hands, especially as opposed to encouraging it.
As I’ve said throughout this saga, I have no idea if they’ll be able to prove their case to either the courts or public that their contracts were a problem — and it admittedly still doesn’t look good on that front — but barring the medical records being fabricated it’s also very clear at this point that there were major health issues that ATTRAKT should have to answer tough questions about, especially if Jeon Hong Joon is gonna do his good guy CEO press tours. At the very least, people could stop being celebratory about FIFTY FIFTY’s current situation.
