The Trials and Bravery of LOONA
Late in March 2022, journalist Kim Hae-yeon of Wikitree published a story that alleged LOONA’s Chuu was suing her company Blackberry Creative. “In an application for a provisional injunction filed against Chuu's agency Blackberry Creative to suspend the effect of the exclusive contract, the court gave a partial ruling in favor [of Chuu],” Kim detailed in her story.
For a while, the reason behind Chuu suing Blackberry Creative was unclear. Both the agency and idol stonewalled any request for comment. To some fans, the report was easy to overlook. The girls worked at breakneck speed from spring to summer: First as contestants on Queendom 2 where they placed second behind WJSN. Followed the release of a new album, “Flip That”, and finally, the announcement of their first world tour “LOONATHEWORLD”.
But on the morning that tickets went on sale, Blackberry Creative stated that Chuu would not participate due to “scheduling conflicts”. Questions began to arise: Wouldn’t she want to participate in the group's first world tour?
But the tour was not easy for the girls: Dates were fast paced with fourteen shows scheduled over 28 days, leaving only one off day between each date. This intense schedule began to wear on the members. On August 12, Kim Lip sat out of the group’s meet and greet portion due to “health reasons''. A few days later on August 18, JinSoul didn’t participate in the Washington D.C. concert for similar reasons. Yeojin also didn’t perform at the group’s August 24 concert in Atlanta because she suffered from “body pain”. Two days later Cheorry sat out of the Houston concert because she felt sick. Yeojin returned to the stage after Atlanta but collapsed in Mexico City. Once the European leg began, My Music Taste announced the group’s leader HaSeoul, who wore an arm sling for several dates, had completely dropped out.
These conflicts reached a crescendo in November when Chuu was officially kicked out of LOONA. ‘We [Blackberry Creative] have decided that our agency artist Chuu will be expelled and withdrawn as a member of LOONA as of November 25, 2022,” the agency wrote in a post on the group’s FanCafe. Blackberry Creative accused the idol of “violent language and misuse of power towards our staff”. The company provided no evidence to back up these claims – and said that the burden lay on Chuu – but that didn’t matter. The statement was meant to cause damage.
Just days later, nine of the eleven remaining members moved to have their contracts terminated.
“It has been confirmed that the nine members made this decision after judging that the relationship of mutual trust, which is the premise of the contract, has collapsed,” reporter Park Sangoo wrote. She went on, “It has reached the point where it is difficult to expect management work and entertainment activities based on cooperation.”
LOONA was positioned as a refreshing, edgy girl group when they debuted in 2018.
LOONA’s lore comes from their Korean name 이달의 소녀 which translates to “girl of the month”. LOONA’s debut was unique: Members were divided into subunits and released diverse EPs over the span of two years. When LOONA finally debuted as a group in 2018, fans were already well acquainted with each member. Yves told Teen Vogue how much she appreciated the pre-debut structure at the group’s Los Angeles show. “For me, it feels a bit like a music chart. There’s a variety of songs in the Top 10 [at any given time],” she said. “If you watch a LOONA performance, there are many different genres. You can hear the whole spectrum of the music chart in one sitting.”
Many fans were drawn in by LOONA’s concept, which demonstrated how K-Pop can portray big stories. But their greatest achievement was their sound. Take LOONA’s predebut subunit yyxy’s single “Love Forever”, which featured and was produced by the indie music darling Grimes. “Love Forever” signaled a group that was unafraid of experimentation or the strange. In the years that followed, LOONA skated between mainstream K-Pop with tracks like “So What” and the weirder, wilder b-sides, like “Playback”.
Their fanbase, known as Orbits, became an important arm of LOONA’s success. Orbits made it so easy to become a fan: New fans are afforded an abundance of fan-written articles about the group’s origins, fan art, subtitled content, and constant chart updates. The search for LOONA albums is an adventure of its own, too, due to all of their pre-debut releases being out of print. To many Orbits, collecting LOONA became half the fun of being a member of the fandom.
2022 was a year of reckoning for K-Pop companies. This was the year, after decades of documented mistreatment and abuse, idols fought back. LOONA’s fight is one of three high-profile cases that are taking companies to court for their mistreatment and abusive behavior.
In the fall of 2022, boy group OMEGA X completed a miserable tour of North America that ended with a fan filming Jaehan, the group’s leader being pushed and abused by the group's CEO. Their tickets for their flight home were canceled which forced the members to pay for their own return. Once home, the men lawyered up and sued. Just last week, a judge sided with them and granted them a termination of their contract. Next, the group’s lawyer says, there will be criminal charges for the company’s CEO.
Lee Seung Gi, a popular soloist who’s been active for twenty years, recently sued Hook Entertainment because he, too, had not been paid for his music sales. He claimed the company embezzled and defrauded him of eighteen years worth of payments for his music. After initially denying the reports, Hook Entertainment admitted that Lee would be paid.
This behavior is, of course, nothing new. Take the sad case of Nine Muses, which experienced multiple lineup changes. Their mistreatment was so normalized that it appeared in a documentary about the group. Sera, the group’s effervescent, talented leader, remembered how the company retaliated against her because she dared to speak up for herself. “I was kicked out of 9MUSES, because I openly vented all my grievances about our excessive use of sex appeal,” she said in a 2021 interview with The Korea Times..
Current plans for a LOONA comeback are on hold. Blackberry Creative indefinitely delayed the release of a new album after Orbits staged a massive boycott which many online retailers, both in the United States and the UK, supported. In between corporation dramas, there are real young women who are suffering.
Chuu has weathered the storm as best she can. Her fans and brand sponsorships have all stood by her. Beyond one statement on Instagram, she has not said anything more about her removal. “What I’m sure of is that I haven’t done anything that would be shameful to my fans,” she wrote. But there is the pain of losing a group she was so proud to be in – and that takes time to heal from.
As news trickled out this week about the court’s decision regarding the remaining LOONA members’ contracts, the girls began to communicate with fans. Yves messaged Orbits on Fab, a messaging service for LOONA, to describe how depressed she’s felt.
"I'm sorry I didn't update you for a while. Every day was mentally exhausting and painful...I couldn't sleep because my chest felt heavy as if there was a truck on my chest. I didn't want to let you know...I'm sorry,” she wrote. “I wonder what I can do when I'm so used to dread whenever I open or close my eyes. I have no idea how long or how much more painful it would be...but I'm going to do everything I can do... I'm sorry I'm hanging by a thread and reaching out to you.”
Yeojin, the macknae, also sent several late night messages on Fab. “What if I can never return to the stage again? This anxious thought keeps circling in my head and I don’t know what to do,” she wondered. “Watching fancams makes me tear up because I just want to get back on the stage.”
Feeling scared and depressed she concluded, “I’ve never been this desperate before.”
