Solidarity Against Contract Renewal
To the Fans of Actor Lee Jong Suk in Korea and Overseas
We, DCinside Lee Jong Suk Gallery were not pleased to see that Lee Jong Suk recently showed up at an event held by a Fashion brand. It was because this brand is notorious for its negative brand image in Korea and therefore, the celebrities who just join the events held by this brand can harshly be blamed through malicious comments on the internet and even suffer from rumors. As you all well acknowledge, it is very important for a star to build up a positive image towards the public. It was not the first time Lee Jong Suk attended the related event and we hoped that he would not get involved in any further related occasions after his first appearance at the event of that specific brand. In these circumstances, it is an obvious negligence as Lee Jong Suk’s management representative agency Wellmade Entertainment encouraged Lee Jong Suk, who is now in a position even more spotlighted than the past, to attend such an undesirable event.
Therefore, we DCinside Lee Jong Suk Gallery has informed Wellmade that we insist that the agency will never encourage or force Lee Jong Suk to attend that specific brand-related events and/or also to be sponsored in any case by that brand in the future. We have also made clear that if the agency does not reasonably respond to this request from us, we will campaign against renewing the management contract between Lee Jong Suk and Wellmade. However, Wellmade did not give any understandable response to us as of yet and time is already past the deadline for the response, so therefore, we are going to start to campaign against the upcoming renewal of the contract cooperating with overseas fans who agree with our opinion.
We did not decide to take this strong action against Wellmade only due to this single incident. Wellmade have made several management failures in the past which have caused harm on the image of Lee Jong Suk and in consequences made his Fans badly hurt. To mention a few exemplary incidents, one is a case of the mistranslation that happened during an interview at a launching event of a Fashion brand in Beijing in 2014 and the other is the recent fraud case related to management contract in Korea.
The case of Mistranslation
In March of 2014, Lee Jong Suk had an interview with local mass media in an launching event of a Fashion brand in Beijing. When he was asked a question “What are your special strengths which differentiate you from other Hallyu stars?“, he just responded “Other stars are so attractive so I can’t tell any special strength of myself. If I have to tell one though, I can say frankness”. However, the translator made an error that she translated the expression ‘frankness’ into something like ‘honesty’ and this interview was widely reported via local mass media towards the public without any correction on that translation error. In consequence, fans of mentioned other Hallyu stars were very upset about this interview questioning ‘So Lee Jong Suk tells only himself is honest and the other stars are hypocritical?’ Fans of Lee Jong Suk in China recognized this mistake and they had to make great efforts to correct this misunderstanding. When we Korean fans also came to know this incident and asked Wellmade if they noticed this and it turned out Wellmade failed to be aware of the related situation without the notice from the fans and did not take any reasonable action trying to rectify the situation even after they recognized it. This mistranslation and the following indifference of the agency on that issue resulted in making Lee Jong Suk’s very humble answer a very arrogant one and only Actor Lee himself and his fans had to take all the related criticism and blame.
The Case of Management Contract Fraud
The recent contract fraud case has obviously proved Wellmade’s carelessness even well beyond incompetence as a management agency. In fact, the agency itself as well as people in the related entertainment industry well recognized that there existed certain suspicions attempting to make illegal profit targeting Lee Jong Suk who is facing the expiry of his management contract with Wellmade in the near future. However, Wellmade did not pay much attention to this rumor and retained such an insensitive attitude towards that issue. As a consequence, that criminal dared to approach the person concerned with a TV drama production and obtained a considerable amount of down payment. Such a bold criminal attempt was eventually caught by the related production company, not by the Wellmade and it was revealed through police investigation that there already were several victims of this fraud case with the amount of the fraud reaching several hundreds of thousands of US dollars. If it was not for the cross-check by the TV drama production, the related damage could have possibly been much bigger. As a victim of this fraud case, Lee Jong Suk himself had to appear at the police station on July 21. We, fans of Lee Jong Suk were appalled at such preposterous management of Wellmade. Moreover, when Lee Jong Suk intransparently mentioned his feelings on this issue through his SNS after he attended the police investigation and the media reporters asked Wellmade about the meaning of the specific Lee Jong Suk’s SNS message, the agency replied that it was just related to Lee Jong Suk’s privacy and therefore, they did not have any idea about that intended meaning. This insensitive response of Wellmade immediately provoked number of news articles where Lee Jong Suk’s SNS mention was reported to be related to his previously speculated dating issue. Likewise, all those speculative articles and comments driven by Wellmade badly hurt both Lee Jong Suk and his fans. If Wellmade had replied that there would be an official statement regarding this case very soon and asked the reporters to wait for it, the unnecessary speculations could have been avoided. So, how can we stand the incompetence of the Wellmade anymore?!!
To Appeal for Solidarity among Actor Lee Jong Suk’s global Fandoms against Contract Renewal
The biggest victim of the inexperienced and incompetent management is, in the end, our Actor Lee Jong Suk himself. It is the most basic and fundamental responsibilities for a management agency to keep a sensitive lookout and proactively monitor the news and the malicious rumors related to the artists working under the agency so that all those groundless speculations or rumors can not be reproduced or spread furthermore. Nevertheless, Wellmade has only proved its incompetence on that basic level and even worse, the agency has not made any efforts to improve despite the continuous requests from the fandoms.
Now, therefore, we will oppose the renewal of the management contract between Actor Lee Jong Suk and the current agency Wellmade entertainment. This is to protect Actor Lee Jong Suk from becoming a target of malicious rumors and to prevent recurrence of such undesirable occasions mentioned above. Lee Jong Suk definitely deserves top-level management. He really deserves it!! To the least, it should be better than the worst.
To provide our Actor Lee Jong Suk with the best management, we really need an alliance among fandoms of Lee Jong Suk overseas as well as in Korea. So Please Do Join In this Campaign Against the Contract Renewal, if You Are With Us!!
**Ultimately, the finality of the decision to renew the contract or not lies with Lee Jong Suk only. The purpose of this campaign is not to put the pressure on Lee Jong Suk, but on Wellmade. What we fans are wishing to accomplish with this campaign is only that whatever agency Lee Jong Suk ends up in, he persevere and preserve as an actor in the best environment possible.