Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After all the recent controversy with two of the company’s artists, Soul Shop Entertainment CEO Kim Tae Woo announced at a press conference that he was withdrawing the lawsuits against Megan Lee and would terminate the contract of Gilgun.
“To get rid of the pain and hurt, I decided to terminate the contracts of the two singers that our company currently has conflicts with. Regarding the lawsuit with Megan Lee, the company will be withdrawing from it. For Gilgun′s case, the contract has already been terminated. There are certain situations that the company wanted that Gilgun did not want to accept. I plan on bringing the two sides together as soon as possible to get rid of all misunderstandings and find a middle ground to continue the steps toward contract termination.”
“I made the decision after thinking whether there were reasons to fight and go through this as my family and my wife gained negative attention instead of me.”
“Many people have been crticizing the family-run Soul Shop Entertainment. Around this time last year, our family was not involved with the company. But the company ran into financial troubles and it was something I decided on. For the first time since the company was founded, we saw a surplus last year. I understand how people are looking at us, but my wife and mother-in-law have not once regretted helping with the company when I asked. A lot of people are misunderstanding, but I run everything in the company. All the decisions made about the auditions and album promotions have been by me.”
Megan Lee’s disputes with both the appeal of her nullification lawsuit and the injunction against her activities are now apparently over, and she’s free to move on to her terrible Nickelodeon show. I’m curious as to the public perception of her now, because she was getting ripped before for being a foreigner that had a favorable contract, but now she’s basically been exonerated.
As for Gilgun, she arguably had it worse, with Soul Shop releasing CCTV clips and her audition videos in an attempt to win over the public. That ploy curiously backfired even though in the video she was the aggressor. Granted, I thought it was out of context, but I didn’t expect the public sentiment to figure that as well. The conflict Gilgun had with Soul Shop was about the compensation fee she needed to pay, and Soul Shop is basically saying they will no longer pursue that.
—–
Megan Lee comes out of this essentially clean, as she’s still young and gets to move on with her projects. Plus, the ruling of the court and Soul Shop dropping the cases against her would seem to leave an open door in Korea. Gilgun won, but she’s 36, hasn’t released anything since 2008, and the industry isn’t kind to nugu women in this stage of their career. So unfortunately, it’s still an uphill battle for her to even get signed again, I think. As for Soul Shop, well, hopefully Kim Tae Woo manages to get his company’s shit together, but the only people remaining with his company are himself and a former DMTN member, which doesn’t sound so promising.
