Supreme Court upholds ruling for abusive entertainment agency CEO

The Supreme Court of Korea upheld a decision made by a lower court to give a suspended sentence to Media Line Entertainment’s CEO Kim Chang-hwan, who was indicted for physically abusing members of the boy band The East Light.

Two teenage members of the boy band, Lee Seung-hyun and Lee Seok-cheol, told the press in 2018 that their producer, a man surnamed Moon, physically abused them continuously from 2015 to 2018. At a press conference in 2018, Lee Seok-cheol said that Moon would even “tie a guitar cable around his neck” when Lee was practicing and tighten the cable whenever he made a mistake so that the cable would cut his skin.

Lee said that Moon would use a baseball bat, a mop and other objects to hit them and that he threatened to “kill them” if they told their parents.

Lee said Kim “saw everything but didn’t take action.” Kim was also accused of hitting Lee Seung-hyun’s head twice and forcing him to smoke an electronic cigarette.

Moon and Kim were indicted and tried last year. Kim received an eight-month sentence suspended for two years. Moon was sentenced to one year and four months in prison.

Both parties appealed.

“We saw that Kim took part in physically abusing the members, but his crime wasn’t heavy enough to deserve a prison sentence,” the Supreme Court said in its decision on Thursday.

By Esther Chung