4 Claims By SM Entertainment's Boss Regarding Lee Soo Man: Create A New Contract To Aespa Comeback Monument

Lee Sung Su (screenshot)

JAKARTA - The stake between SM Entertainment and its founder, Lee Soo Man continues to grow. Lee Sung Su as CEO of SM Entertainment released a new video containing claims about SM Entertainment and Lee Soo Man.

He said the video uploaded on his personal channel was the first part of a series of videos he would upload. This concerns HYBE Labels who bought Lee Soo Man's SM Entertainment's biggest stake.

Several points were conveyed by Lee Sung Su, ranging from allegations of a new company for profit to aespa's comeback plan which was postponed due to Lee Soo Man's treatment.

Launching Lee Sung Su's statement, Lee Soo Man founded an international company, CTP (CT Planning Limited) in Hong Kong with 1 million dollars like he founded Like Planning. With the company, the distribution of music for WayV, SuperM, and aespa has changed towards the labels of China and the United States.

Usually the profits are shared between SM and the label first then the Like Planning company that oversees this distribution. But Lee Soo Man made a separate contract stating he had to take a 6 percent profit before the profit was shared between SM and the related label.

Lee Sung Su suspects Lee Soo Man is doing this to avoid the Korean National Tax Service. CTP was created for overseas expansion but still received profits from production. CTP and Like Planning are two different companies.

Lee Sung Su accused Lee Soo Man of asking employees or executives at SM Entertainment who were close to him to make the following statement:

Lee Sung Su explained that one of the points in Lee Soo Man's contract with SM Entertainment is that Lee Soo Man is required to receive 6 percent of sales from an album that has been released for 70 years and 3 percent of management sales from 2023 for three years even though Lee Soo Man and SM Entertainment's contracts have expired.

"Even though he stopped being a producer, SM had to pay Lee Soo Man 6 percent of the artist's profit for 70 years. I am ashamed to meet SM employees, artists and all investors," said Lee Sung Su in the video.

Aespa called Lee Sung Su plans a comeback on February 20 with their first concerts being held on February 25 and 26. However, this comeback was postponed due to Lee Soo Man's persistence in the production of the song.

Lee Soo Man asked the A&R team and producer Yoo Young Jin to add lyrics about tree planning, sustainability, at least one degree lower, coexistence, greenism (greenness) in their main single lyrics.

The concept of planting trees is one of Lee Soo Man's other plans. He wants to make a "smart entertainment city" in a K-pop festival with the aim of promoting planting trees and sustainable systems. Lee Sung Su said the festival in question was related to casinos and the legality of marijuana use.

"Aespa, who has a concept about the conceptual world, is asked to sing songs with lyrics about planting trees. The aespa members were angry and even cried," said Lee Sung Su.

This concept is very far from the aespa concept, so Lee Sung Su decided to postpone aespa's comeback and is preparing a new song. This can be seen in several videos shared by aespa where they will perform new songs at the inaugural concert.