Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Well, I thought I had caught up on all the FIFTY FIFTY/ATTRAKT/Warner Music Korea/The Givers/SIAHN contract drama earlier today when the latest from both sides was updated. However, moments ago Dispatch posted about the saga and supposedly refute FIFTY FIFTY’s claimed reasons for the lawsuit.
The group has wanted to suspend their contract primarily because there was a lack of financial transparency and their health wasn’t managed right. But Dispatch reports that there was minimal evidence that the health concerns of the members were ignored and claim that the members are still in debt.
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Dispatch starts with a surprise in establishing the main players, as SIAHN and ATTRAKT were known as involved in FIFTY FIFTY, but KAMP was also revealed to be involved as well.
Ahn Sung Il: The CEO and producer for The Givers. He is known to have produced singers J-Walk, Eun Ji Won’s solo career, Rumble Fish, and more. Currently, his agency is also the home to Son Seung Yeon.
Jeon Hong Joon: The CEO of Attrakt. He was born in 1964. He has managed artists including Cho Kwan Woo, Yang Soo Kyung, Bobby Kim, Yoon Mirae, and Ha Sungwoon.
KAMP: A performance production company based in the United States. They have hosted several K-Pop festivals. Ahn Sung Il worked as an employee here in 2019.
The relationship is traced by to KAMP Singapore 2019, when ATTRAKT’s CEO Jeon Hong Joon suggested to the KAMP CEO that they should create a K-pop group.
ATTRAKT did the recruiting and evaluations of the group members, while KAMP assisted in evaluations and were tasked with global marketing, searching for foreign composers, and finding songs. KAMP’s involvement in the project ended in 2021, as KAMP and ATTRAKT disagreed on how to proceed forward, so ATTRAKT replaced them with SIAHN. In May of 2021, SIAHN and two others resigned from KAMP to form The Givers.
The pair of them worked together, as ATTRAKT looked for investments and SIAHN did the training, but the ATTRAKT CEO says the money went dry quickly. It’s mentioned that the average cost of a girl group is ~$1.5 million and that FIFTY FIFTY’s lessons were between $15k and $23k a month, while the pre-debut music videos were ~$760k, the debut music videos were another ~$380k, and the “Cupid” one was ~$200k. ATTRAKT’s CEO ended up selling his car and watch to help fund FIFTY FIFTY.
SIAHN got a lot of attention after the viral success of “Cupid”, using the strategy of trying to appeal to listeners without them even knowing that the song was K-pop, and the sped-up version of the track went viral on TikTok. At that point, he was a successful FIFTY FIFTY producer, picking the song out of 2000 possible ones, with Swedish School Of Music students (Adam Von Mentzer, Mac Fellander-Tsai, Louise Udin) writing it while SIAHN arranged.
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So that’s the back story, now to the two points of FIFTY FIFTY’s contract dispute.
It’s not questioned that SIAHN played an important role in FIFTY FIFTY’s rise, but he also benefitted greatly from it as the “Cupid” copyright mainly belongs to him.
Ahn Sung Il (SIAHN) – 28.65%
Employee “B” (AHIN) – 4%
Song Ja Kyung (Keena’s real name) – 0.5%
The Givers – 66.85%
The Swedish students are missing here because SIAHN bought them out, but in a text convo with ATTRAKT’s CEO, he downplays his 95% stake between him and his company.
Jeon Hong Joon: SIAHN, the copyright royalties will be huge. Congratulations.
Ahn Sung Il: I’m a minority shareholder, so there won’t be that much.
Jeon Hong Joon: Aigoo, next time make it higher. As the writer.
SIAHN actually paid the Swedish students $9000 for their copyright in January of 2023. There’s nothing wrong with this, but he took control of the copyright while seemingly sending the bill to ATTRAKT.
“The funds weren’t looking good at the time. I asked Ahn Sung Il to send me how much the song cost first. Fortunately, we received some investment in March and paid it back to The Givers. It turns out, he took ownership of the copyright.” – Jeon Hong Joon
One of the problems was ATTRAKT’s CEO perhaps naively let The Givers basically run the group. Management was given to a member of The Givers, which included communicating things to the members and their parents.
That brings up member Aran‘s surgery, and a convo between ATTRAKT and SIAHN on May 2.
Jeon Hong Joon: The exact disease?
Jeon Hong Joon: Did the surgery go well? Are you communicating well with the company staff and the parents? So that they won’t feel sad.
Jeon Hong Joon: This morning … I prayed! That it would go well.
Ahn Sung Il: Yes. The surgery is the fourth one on the [operating] schedule. “B” is in charge of the parents and is communicating well with them. I talked with Aran’s mother personally yesterday.
Ahn Sung Il: There is no need to say the exact disease. We will say that she had surgery because she felt uncomfortable somewhere.
Ahn Sung Il: And once the surgery is complete, we plan to upload a photo.
On the same day, The Givers employee managing FIFTY FIFTY also sent a message to the CEO.
CEO, they said Aran’s surgery will go well and she will be moved to a hospital room to recover. The surgery is currently going well, but I will continue to monitor as they said we have to watch her condition.
I’m going to give the other members a break while Aran recovers, is that okay? May 10 to May 28. The other members would need to return to the dorms by May 28.
ATTRAKT’s CEO said to only give the other members a week off, and then The Givers member replied.
“That’s too long. What will you do if there’s an accident? Give them a week off and then have them come back to the dorms. I’m concerned about an accident regarding their safety. Give them a week. After they go back to the dorms, give them more personal improvement time.”
“Ok. I was worried about the same thing, but there were requests from both the members and their parents. Also, Aran needs to rest for at least two weeks but she complained to Ahn Sung Il that she would only get one week of rest, out of worry.”
Eventually ATTRAKT gave them until May 25, just over two weeks.
That seems to show that there was constant communication about their health condition and that ATTRAKT’s CEO was concerned and eventually compromised on time off. The only thing I can think of from this that may cause issue is that the dispute over the week or two weeks of rest, which doesn’t seem like that big of a deal in the big picture.
In a convo about their involvement in the Barbie movie, SIAHN and Jeon Hong Joon talked about promoting for it on June 9.
Ahn Sung Il: It will definitely be good to do the Barbie movie. I’ll meet with them first to try to persuade them and I will communicate with Aran.
Jeon Hong Joon: It’s good for you, the group, and the company, but since it’s also a matter of dealing with a health issue, communicate well with both the parents and the members so that there are no misunderstandings~!
Jeon Hong Joon: With such a good showing its frustrating that they cannot do anything these days~!
Ahn Sung Il: Ok. Aran listens well to my opinions anyway so I’ll check her condition first.
Ahn Sung Il: I’ll go to personally see her mother.
This shows they both wanted them to do promo for the movie, and that ATTRAKT’s CEO was concerned about Aran’s health.
Jeon Hong Joon went on to say that he didn’t ignore the health of the members, he simply trusted The Givers employee with those matters.
“‘B’ said he would take good care of them, so I trusted him and left it to him. I think trusting him too much was the start of all this trouble. When I said I wanted to go to the practice room to see them, he would say that the members are uncomfortable with me being there. I didn’t want to interrupt their practicing, so I just held it in and dealt with it. Just think about how much I also wanted to see them.”
The CEO now says he can’t speak to the FIFTY FIFTY members directly at this point and has to convey everything through The Givers. He also gave some media play about him crying and what not.
Dispatch concludes by saying that SIAHN’s LinkedIn claims he’s the CEO of ATTRAKT, and that the court case begins July 5.
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As I’ve said many times over regarding Dispatch, it’s important to figure out whose side they’re getting for context, and this is clearly ATTRAKT’s side of things. Thus, any response to this from FIFTY FIFTY’s side should be interesting and is probably necessary for PR reasons, if nothing else.
That said, as it stands their problem appears to be two-fold. One was that SIAHN seemingly used ATTRAKT money to pay for the “Cupid” copyright despite taking ownership himself, which is basically used to imply he was the one profiting off the song and not ATTRAKT or the group, hence they haven’t made a ton of money yet. The other was that ATTRAKT’s CEO was portrayed as being concerned about the members health a bunch. The only time there was conflict about that was regarding the amount of break time, which he eventually relented on, and both SIAHN and ATTRAKT wanted FIFTY FIFTY to promote for Barbie.
As far as the seemingly odd arrangement between ATTRAKT and The Givers, it’s actually not new information since it was hyped up in Billboard months ago, and it’s probably the reason the FIFTY FIFTY members felt closer to The Givers and SIAHN. Even the Dispatch article basically admits that The Givers handled almost everything for them.
🏹 Billboard article on Cupid’s success and Attrakt’s plans for the future, including a new label structure!
— fifty fifty archive (@fiftyfiftylog) April 24, 2023
🔗 https://t.co/JXowyCNZPV#FIFTYFIFTY #피프티피프티 pic.twitter.com/SQXciFKIcG
Granted, this exact kind of conflict is why companies likely don’t normalize this structure, but one has to assume that any rebuttal from The Givers and/or FIFTY FIFTY will revolve around that somehow. We shall see.
Regardless, none of what’s going on so far has been playing well with the public, especially since they already largely side with companies (more so if they don’t think the group has paid their dues) out of some sense that artists owe them loyalty and all that. So now we wait to see if there’s any rebuttal, and if there is, hopefully it’s stronger than The Givers’ last one. Or one can just wait for the court case to start in a couple days, but in the PR war, The Givers need to make their case to the public and soon.
