LOONA members Vivi and Hyunjin have reportedly filed lawsuits to suspend their exclusive contracts with Blockberry Creative.
JTBC News reported earlier today (February 3) that both members have filed for an injunction to suspend their contracts with the embattled agency – which would mean that all 11 members of the girl group (which was a 12-member group before the firing of Chuu in November) have filed to exit their contracts with Blockberry Creative.
The JTBC News report claims that Vivi and Hyunjin have “a high chance” of securing their injunction, as both members allegedly have similar contract terms as Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul and Choerry. These members successfully secured injunctions to suspend their contracts with Blockberry Creative last month.
Neither Vivi and Hyunjin, nor Blockberry Creative, have commented on the report at the time of publication.
Should Vivi and Hyunjin secure their injunction to terminate their contracts, Haseul, Yeojin, Yves, Gowon and Olivia Hye will be the only LOONA members remaining under BlockBerry Creative’s management. The five members requested the same injunction as the four successful members in January, but were rejected as they had reportedly amended parts of their contracts with the agency in the past.
Earlier this week, the Korea Entertainment Management Association (KEMA) revealed that Blockberry Creative had petitioned both KEMA and Korea Entertainment Producers Association in December 2022 to suspend former LOONA singer Chuu’s entertainment activities in the country.
The agency’s petition claimed Chuu had “tamper[ed]” with and allegedly “violat[ed] the management contract” with the agency after she allegedly moved to sign a new contract with a different agency named BY4M Studio in 2021.
In response to the petition, KEMA requested Chuu’s attendance at its Reward and Punishment committee. Chuu’s legal counsel responded with their intent to attend the committee “to confirm the facts regarding Blockberry Creative’s claims and… investigate the case fairly”, as translated by Soompi.
Blockberry Creative later confirmed that it had indeed filed the petition regarding Chuu and also revealed plans to submit a similar but separate petition to “prohibit the entertainment activities of the following four people, Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, and Choerry, to the committee as well”.
While those four members have yet to respond to Blockberry’s statement at the time of writing, Chuu has responded to the agency through a brief statement on her personal Instagram account. In it, she claimed that “slanderous articles based on false reports have gone too far” and that she was not aware of the company BY4M in December 2021, per translations by Soompi.
LOONA were previously set to release a new record titled ‘The Origin Album: 0’ via Blockberry Creative on January 3. ‘The Origin Album: 0’ would have marked their first record as an 11-member group, but its release has been “postponed indefinitely” as “various concerns about the members’ situation are not resolved.”