BTS‘ label, Big Hit Entertainment, shared a statement to Weverse on Thursday (Sept. 29) revealing that it has filed a “criminal complaint” against an unidentified individual who was spreading rumors online about the group.
“Our company regularly initiates legal proceedings against perpetrators of malicious activities related to BTS, including defamation, personal attacks, sexual harassment, the spread of groundless information, and ill-intentioned criticism. We would like to provide an update on these activities,” the statement began, noting that they found the individual who was spreading posts with “personal attacks and defamation” via their “monitoring initiatives” and with the help of BTS’ fanbase, ARMY.
“We have found multiple defamation postings containing false information about the artists on platforms in and outside of Korea,” the statement continued. “We also have found that a specific poster has been spreading the same ill-intentioned rumor in multiple platforms and filed a criminal complaint against the poster after gathering all of the repetitively uploaded postings.”
Big Hit shared that its “legal response process” including monitoring and collecting “evidence on malicious postings for 365 days and then includes them on the complaint.” The suspect has also been “sent to the prosecutor’s office.”
“We would like to stress that we will continue to initiate strict measures to ensure that these malicious acts are not repeated, and our policy of no settlement and no leniency remains in effect,” the statement concluded. “We will continue to work to ensure that the rights of our artists are fully protected.”
The name of the suspect and the nature of the online comments were not revealed publicly. Billboard has reached out to Bit Hit for comment.
