With their recent concert in Seoul, LOONA successfully wrapped up their world tour. LOONA is famous for their production cost, which is said to be about 9.9 billion won.
After Heejin was revealed to the public with the MV of her solo song ‘ViViD’ in October 2016, a new solo song and MV were released every time a new LOONA member was revealed and as unit albums were released at some points, many people thought that it must’ve cost a lot of money.
So they didn’t really suspect much about LOONA’s 9.9-billion-won production cost. But recently, Jeong Byeong-gi, who is known to be LOONA’s creative director, revealed a shocking fact through his blog.
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Jeong Byeong-gi is the head of the agency of tripleS, which will be a 24-member girl group, and he is known to the fans as the one who made LOONA and their unique concept. And recently, Jeong Byeong-gi wrote a shocking post on his diary-like blog.
“When doing music marketing, I’ve bluffed that I spent 10 billion won, and I’ve been stuck in the frame created by that bluff, but the attention for it was better than nothing.”
After reading this, Kpop fans thought that this might be about the backstory about LOONA whose production cost was apparently 9.9 billion won.
If he was referring to LOONA, then that means the 9.9-billion-won production cost was not true.
To a question that said “Did you throw 10 billion won down the drain?”, Jeong Byeong-gi answered, “I spent about 2 billion won.”So if he was actually referring to LOONA in the post, that means the 9.9-billion-won production cost was a lie and the real cost was only about 2 billion won.
Some LOONA fans started to get angry with this.
[Why they got angry]
Starting last year, there has been something that LOONA fans and Kpop fans were worried about. It was the payment issue regarding LOONA.
In Sept 2021, when LOONA’s Chuu said on a show that she hadn’t been paid yet, it shocked the fans. People found it absurd that a popular idol who was in her 4th year since debut and was achieving high album sales had not been paid yet.
Also, in 2021, Chuu received lots of attention on variety shows and appeared on tv a lot and shot commercials too. And LOONA’s 4th mini album [&] sold about 120,000 copies, so fans said that there was something wrong.
But every time, the 9.9-billion-won production cost was brought up. Since LOONA members had to deal with such a huge amount of production cost, people assumed that they probably weren’t making enough profits yet to be paid.
While some fans agreed, they still hoped that it was about time that the company made a surplus of money.
But when it was implied that the 9.9-billion-won production cost, which made the fans worried for a long time, was just a bluff and that the actual production cost was only about 2 billion won, fans were furious. People couldn’t understand why LOONA members, who worked so hard all along, were still not paid yet.
[Did they not even make 2 billion won?]
Idols’ profits are hard to estimate. There are many ways to make profits, including albums, concerts, events, ads, and it’s unclear how much exactly the idols are paid.
But let’s just look at the profits from LOONA’s albums, which is most intuitive.
Since we are only using the fixed price in this calculation, we can’t say it’s 100% accurate,
but LOONA’s debut album made a profit of about 1.1 billion won according to GAON Chart in 2018, and the 1st mini repackage album in 2019 sold about 45,000 copies, which is about 970 million won, and the 2nd mini album in 2020 sold about 80,000 copies, which is worth about 1.6 billion won.
And the 3rd mini album, released in Oct 2020, sold about 110,000 copies, which is worth about 2.5 billion won.
So, by 2020, the total profit from album sales alone was over 6.1 billion won.
Even if it cost about 1 billion won to make an album, it is expected that LOONA made about 2.1 billion won by the end of 2020.
Since we didn’t include discounts or events or other extra costs, we can’t say that this calculation is 100% correct, but the album sales alone show that LOONA made plenty of profits.
Plus, starting in 2017, LOONA members have shot about 8 commercials, either individually or as a unit.
As a group, they shot 2 commercials. So they shot over 10 commercials and they’ve been holding a concert every year since debut.
So some fans are claiming that if the actual production cost was 2 billion won, then LOONA is making plenty of money to receive payments, starting in 2021.
Also, in 2021, LOONA’s 4th mini album was a success and Chuu alone has shot about 8 commercials, receiving so much love since the early half of 2021. So fans are even more curious why LOONA members haven’t been paid yet.
[The agency’s financial difficulty?]
Even though LOONA members made high profits, it was reported in 2021 that LOONA’s agency Blockberry Creative was struggling with a serious financial difficulty.
According to multiple officials, the money owed to the many companies and their manpower that have collaborated with Blockberry Creative is from tens to hundreds of millions of won.
Kim Hwayoung, who used to be LOONA choreographer, once demanded Blockberry Creative via Instagram that it pay the unpaid dues for the choreo.
Not only that, companies that specialize in hairstyle, make-up, and stylists, stated that they were told by Blockberry Creative in a tyrannical way to “Quit work”. About this, “A”, who used to be in charge of LOONA members’ make-up, wrote a post on Instagram about unpaid dues, and stated that the person who did the hair styling couldn’t speak out at first in case it might cause any harm to LOONA, but when she finally brought up the courage and uploaded a post about it, Blockberry Creative said it was defamation and made “A” take down the post.
Also, it was reported in articles that Blockberry Creative didn’t pay for Korea’s 4 major insurance schemes as well as the employees’ wages & expenses on time.
In addition to this news, the news about Chuu not getting paid was reported. But some people found it suspicious that the agency’s financial difficulty was reported at this exact timing. When the agency’s financial difficulty was brought up in September, LOONA’s collaborative album [Not Friends] and 1st Japanese single were released.
Also, they carried out the 2022 Season’s Greeting in November and an offline fan signing event in December.
These activities didn’t really seem like what a company with financial difficulties would do. Blockberry Creative’s parent company is Ilkwang Gongyoung, which is a company in the defense industry.
People claimed that it makes no sense that subsidiaries of a defense industry company are having financial difficulties. Meanwhile, the company is also under suspicion of acting like it’s poor.
Blockberry Creative is a subsidiary of Polaris Entertainment. But Polaris Entertainment lost a lawsuit over a deposit and was ordered to pay about 360 million won to a Japanese company.
When Polaris Entertainment didn’t make the payment, it was reported that Blockberry Creative’s CEO Kim Sun-hye whose husband Lee Jong-myung who is a joint surety of the deposit, filed a lawsuit to demand that Polaris pay him back in stocks.
So some people are suspecting that Blockberry Creative is saying that it’s struggling with financial difficulties in order to avoid having to pay money.
[Recent problems]
But when Chuu recently said on ‘Oh Eun Young’s Golden Clinic’ that she had no income until last year, people expected that she received a payment this year.
This year, LOONA received positive reviews through ‘Queendom 2’, and their summer album [Flip That] sold about 110,000 copies in the first week of its release, which was pretty good.
As LOONA got even more popular that way, people expected the problems related to LOONA’s agency to be solved, but the agency managed LOONA in an odd way that made fans worried again. It’s because LOONA’s Chuu has been completely excluded from LOONA’s group activities since the promotions of [Flip That].
Chuu couldn’t participate in LOONA’s concert early this year due to health reasons, and she couldn’t participate in any of the concerts during LOONA’s world tour due to her work schedule.
Not only that, it turned out that Chuu spent her own money to hold a birthday party with her fans, which made people speculate that Chuu is no longer getting any care from the agency.
The agency Blockberry Creative is seemingly separating LOONA and Chuu, but LOONA members’ opinions were always the same.
Chuu has said in a paid communication app that she’d protect all the precious things, and LOONA’s Hyunjin said at the recent concert in Seoul that she hopes the 12 members of LOONA would be together forever.
She said she wishes that everyone knew that LOONA consists of 12 members. Just as LOONA members wish, I hope we get to see all 12 members on stage together.