Photo credit: Marie Claire Korea / CC from 3.0
EDAM Entertainment has issued a statement on allegations that singer-songwriter IU plagiarized elements from six of her songs.
South Korean singer-songwriter IU has been anonymously accused of plagiarizing six songs by other artists, which her agency EDAM Entertainment has done issued an opinion.
As originally reported by Maeil Kyungjae, the Seoul Seongbuk Police Station announced that a “non-celebrity person” referred to only as “A” filed a complaint against IU on May 8, citing alleged copyright infringement.
Police are reportedly investigating the complaint against a total of six IU songs: “The Red Shoes”, “Good Day”, “BBIBBI”, “Pitiful”, “Boo” and “Celebrity”. Of the six, IU co-wrote Celebrity and helped produce BBIBBI.
“Many of these songs are identical in melody, rhythm and chord progression to the original works, notably ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘Good Day’, which bear a high degree of resemblance even to the casual listener,” the indictment states. “The introductory parts of all six songs, which determine the atmosphere and identity of the music and arouse the listener’s curiosity, are suspected of being plagiarized.”
“The Red Shoes” in particular caused controversy upon its release in 2013 as it shared many similarities with “Here’s Us” by German band Nekta.
Copyright infringement is typically a complaint-based crime. This means that the original creators of the infringing content must file a complaint in order for litigation to commence. In addition, EDAM Entertainment, the agency representing IU, said in its statement that it had not received a complaint prior to Maeil Kyungjae’s report.
“We came across the news article today claiming we had been accused of plagiarism by police while awaiting the investigation. To date, we have not received any official contact from the investigating agency and only learned of the allegation through the news article,” wrote EDAM Entertainment. “We could not confirm the content of the complaint mentioned in the media and are in the process of understanding it.”
“We would like to emphasize that disseminating false information as if it were true and maliciously tarnishing the artist’s reputation is a clear illegal act and should result in strict legal action,” the statement continued. “Our company intends to take strict legal action without leniency in cases where criminal acts such as repeatedly posting defamatory and malicious content or reproducing false information are committed.”