Hyunjin and ViVi of Loona leave agency BlockBerry Creative

Hyunjin and ViVi from girl group Loona [BLOCKBERRY CREATIVE]

Hyunjin and ViVi of Loona will part ways with their agency BlockBerry Creative, leaving the once-12-member girl group with only five.

A court recently ruled partially in favor of Hyunjin and ViVi, suspending their exclusive contracts signed with BlockBerry Creative, according to a local media report on Tuesday.

This decision comes more than a year after member Chuu first had her exclusive contract with BlockBerry Creative partially suspended back in March 2022, and four months after the Seoul Northern District Court ruled in favor of Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul and Choerry but dismissed Haseul, Yeojin, Yves, Olivia Hye and Gowon’s case to end their exclusive contracts in January 2023. All of the cases are related to unfair contract terms.

The court had ordered to suspend Chuu, Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul and Choerry's exclusive contracts as their clauses on profit and expense splitting were deemed unfair: the artist and the company splitting income 3 to 7 but the company splitting expenses with the artist 50:50. The five members who the court didn’t rule in favor of had previously had their contracts changed with the agency.

Chuu signed an exclusive contract with ATRP in April 2023, a year after she established her own management company, Chuu Inc. in 2022 and is currently continuing her activities under ATRP as a solo artist. Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul and Choerry signed with Modhaus in the same month, announcing that the quartet will be a part of a project called Artms.

Modhaus explained that Artms is not the name of the girl group, but the name of a "project," without giving further details.

Modhaus was founded by Jaden Jeong in 2021, who previously designed girl group Loona’s fictional universe at BlockBerry Creative. A fictional universe in K-pop refers to the unique background stories and concepts the members follow. In the case of Loona, each of the twelve members had their own background stories as they made their solo debuts, which combined into one big Loonaverse upon the group's debut in 2018.

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]