LOONA’s Comeback Postponed Amid Backlash After Member Chuu Got Kicked Out of Group by Agency

LOONA‘s comeback is no longer moving forward.

The agency behind the South Korean K-pop girl group, which had a comeback scheduled for January 3, 2023, confirmed that the project was indefinitely postponed following the removal of member Chuu from the group, sparking international outrage.

While the agency initially blamed Chuu‘s removal on “violent language and misuse of power,” many people and fellow stars in the industry spoke out in her defense. Later, text exchanges and information regarding the contract terms and finances for all the members surfaced, further fueling fan backlash and boycotting against BlockBerry Creative.

The agency released a statement on the group’s fan cafe website.

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“Hello. This is BlockBerryCreative. First of all, we would like to express our apologies for causing concerns to Orbit due to various issues concerned with our agency. We also sincerely apologize for causing fatigue to the public who is watching [this situation],” they wrote. (Translation via Soompi.)

“After taking the opinions of many people including Orbit into consideration, we have decided that [LOONA’s] comeback activities would be meaningless when various concerns about the members’ circumstances are not yet sorted out. Therefore, it has been decided that LOONA’s “The Origin Album [0],” which was diligently prepared by 11 members and scheduled to be released on January 3, 2023, will be postponed indefinitely,” they confirmed.

“In addition, we would like to give explanations for the series of issues to Orbit and many others who support LOONA,” BlockBerry Creative went on to say.

“LOONA is a project that took a lot of effort over a long period of time. As it was a major long-term project that required a lot of investment and money compared to typical idol groups, the results that appeared on the surface often did not match with our efforts. After LOONA was planned and formed, [the group] needed endless costs that were not easy for a small/mid-sized company to handle, but we endured this because we of course believed it was up to the agency to handle the costs of upfront investment,” they wrote.

“Furthermore, there are a lot of misunderstandings and speculations on issues involving pay settlement. Ultimately, the agency has always harbored apologetic feelings to the LOONA members for not being able to generate profit over a long period of time. From the beginning, LOONA’s success was a near-impossible task that needed to be made by the investment and efforts of the agency without a promise to reach a break-even point and the trust and sacrifices of the members while believing in [the company]. This was a reckless challenge by a small company that was lacking, but this year, after six years since starting our first debut project, the efforts and waiting of the members who trusted such a company had finally gone on to discover a ray of hope.”

“Although it would be great if LOONA as a whole is imprinted as one to the public, a characteristic of a large girl group is that there is bound to be a member who becomes known first, and it was an inevitable decision for the agency to support and cheer on the member who had become well-known with the public. Although we wanted all the members to go forward together as one, unfortunately against our expectations, the behavior of a former member began to change. Due to this, the agency accepted the risk of upfront investment, and we came to an agreement to a change in the contract details for the sake of the future ahead, and we tried to protect LOONA with whatever method possible, but as everyone knows, we reached an unfortunate conclusion,” BBC went on to say.

“As a small/mid-sized agency, we take pride in having marked a milestone in the history of K-pop by just taking on a challenge of producing LOONA, regardless of the success or failure or the series of attempts. Of course, all the series of events have resulted from our agency’s shortcomings, and we should take proper responsibilities, but we cannot stop our efforts to protect LOONA no matter what and our efforts to achieve our dream together. Furthermore, we are very aware that we can only achieve the dream if Orbits and many others do this together with us. We will definitely make an environment in which fans can all happily cheer on LOONA. We sincerely once again to everyone, and we ask that you support LOONA’s continuing dream and future. Thank you.”

Find out what Chuu said after being kicked out.