Kim Jun-su accused of mismanaging hotel
Idol singer Kim Jun-su from boy band JYJ is under heat for selling off his family-owned Toscana Hotel located on Jeju Island amid reports of the poor treatment and missing payments to employees.
According to a report by Dispatch on Tuesday, the hotel was sold by Kim last month at a sum of 24 billion won ($20.9 million), earning him a profit of 3 billion won.
The hotel was originally conceived in January 2011 by Kim after receiving a 15 billion won loan, and started business in September 2014.
Dispatch further revealed in its investigation that hotel employees were receiving delayed payments, and had to rely on credit cards to make ends meet, often being denied loans from banks due to their resulting poor credit scores. Additionally, many employees were not aware of the sale of the hotel for a month and had not been given a retirement pension.
Just hours after the controversy, Kim’s agency C-JeS Entertainment released an official statement regarding the issue, denying claims of delayed salaries and related accusations.
“Kim is not completely dropping out of his position as an authoritative figure of the hotel,” they said. “He is acquiring a small stake of the company from the proceeds of the sale and will be involved with the hotel indirectly.”
Additionally, in response to allegations of conducting “eat and run,” Kim, who is leaving to enlist for his mandatory military service today, personally uploaded a message to his Instagram saying, “this has gotten past the point of simple defamation of character, it is assassination. People have been accusing me of immorally making a profit at the expense of others due to my possession of supercars or living in a nice house, but that isn’t the case,” he said.
“I decided to build the hotel to accomplish my dreams of creating my ideal space, but due to leaving the hotel in the hands of inexperienced businessmen there was never any profit earned from the business.”
Kim said the decision to sell the hotel was made after consulting a specialist to “hope for a better future for the hotel and its employees.”
Meanwhile, Kim’s twin brother Kim Mu-yeong, who was listed as the representative of the hotel, said on his Instagram on Wednesday that their hotel started losing money due to the delayed opening of the hotel caused by the construction company. According to the post, Jun-su would make up lacking funds for the hotel by using money earned from his career.
“Jun-su would provide the lacking funds without even knowing the situation when we requested it from him,” he said. “He worked to pay the salaries of the employees by selling everything, including his car and watch.”
Kim Mu-yeong concluded the now-deleted Instagram post saying, “Jun-su has been attacked by those who haven’t heard our side of the story just because he is a public figure.”
By Chung Jin-hong
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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