The rather expansive set of lawsuits against cyberwrecker Sojang that was started by IVE‘s Wonyoung and Starship Entertainment has led to Sojang being handed a suspended prison sentence of two years with a three-year probationary period, as well as a 210 million won fine and 120 hours of community service.*
*Can I just rant about how everybody gets these types of sentencing wrong? I expect it out of translation mills, but even mainstream outlets fucked it up, and they always seem to. Fans get the impression that criminals are going to prison, but they are basically out on parole in a lot of cases. The other thing they do is report the punishment the prosecution asks for as the actual sentence. It’s maddening. Get it together. A shitposting blog shouldn’t have to dig to find this simple shit out.
Additionally, this seems as good a time as any to stop slacking and catch you up on what else has been going on in this Sojang case.
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Let’s backtrack a bit to start things off.
Unbeknownst to most at the time, Starship Entertainment and IVE member Wonyoung filed a lawsuit to unmask Sojang back in the middle of 2023, which was ultimately granted by the court. This became public about a year ago when Wonyoung was granted a 100 million won judgement against Sojang (who made a comical appeal) in a civil suit while a different civil suit from Starship and criminal charges from both her and Starship were still pending. All of this proved important because it set precedent for other cyberwrecker accounts and allowed legal action from others against Sojang to proceed.
Thus, later on those criminal lawsuits resulted in an indictment of Sojang for defamation of Wonyoung and six other celebrities. Among those were EXO‘s Suho and aespa, who filed in April and whose criminal case was accounted for in the judgment.
In a separate case was Kang Daniel against Sojang. He had filed criminal charges back in 2022, but was only able to proceed after the Wonyoung/Starship ruling. Eventually, and after some hilarious footage of Sojang running, Daniel’s agency ARA announced that Sojang had been fined 10 million won in the criminal trial for defamation (no appeal). They also filed a 100 million won civil suit in the aftermath of the decision, which resulted in Sojang being ordered to pay 30 million won plus interest and 70% of the legal costs. Both sides appealed and the case is currently in mediation.
Additionally, BTS members V and Jungkook filed a civil lawsuit seeking 90 million won in damages, and also filed a criminal complaint as well. Part of the damages they seek involves Sojang allegedly using their copyrighted work in videos.
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While a lot of this has gotten jumbled in the coverage, by my count she still has at least a civil suit from Starship, whatever appeals are made from this criminal case, the mediation with Kang Daniel over the civil case, and the civil and criminal cases from V and Jungkook. It’s also possible aespa and EXO’s Suho filed civil lawsuits, but I can’t find that anywhere.
Beyond just this particular cyberwrecker account, it could have a preventative effect on other accounts, at least for those who are Korean citizens since they can no longer effectively hide on sites with overseas servers.
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