Starship Ent. To Take Legal Action Against People Spreading Manipulated Photos Of MONSTA X’s Shownu

[juhli.livejournal.com]

On November 3, an individual on Twitter posted three photos online and claimed that they were of MONSTA X’s Shownu. In the photos, a man can be seen sleeping on a bed in his underwear, and one of the photos is more explicit than the others as he appears to be fully unclothed. The photos in question seem to have been taken in secret while the man was asleep, and they began spreading quickly on social media and online communities.


Starship Entertainment has since released a statement regarding the photos. They stated:

"Photos that were illegally manipulated in relation to Shownu have been spread online and through social media. We will be filing a report with the police on the first person who posted the photos, as well as those who have helped spread the photos, and we will work with our legal representative to pursue strong legal action through civil suits for compensation of damages on the basis of violating the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes, circulating material deemed pornographic by the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc., and violating personal rights."



Starship Entertainment has released a statement regarding legal action.

The statement provides an update on legal action taken in July and also reiterates future plans, including the agency’s previous statement on action that will be taken for manipulated photos in relation to MONSTA X’s Shownu.

"Hello. This is Starship Entertainment.

We express deep gratitude to the fans who show lots of interest and love for the artists of Starship Entertainment.

We previously announced plans for legal action regarding the spread of false information, malicious comments, sexual harassment, and defamatory posts.
Afterwards, through active tips sent in by fans and our own monitoring, we collected posts with false information, sexual harassment, personal attacks, and defamation that are spreading online and on social media, and we signed delegation contracts with the law firms Ius&Lex and Sejong. We submitted legal complaints on some of these malicious commenters on July 4.

Suspects who wrote malicious posts were specified through investigation by the investigative agency, and some of them have been forwarded to the prosecution with recommendation for indictment.
All confirmed suspects will be punished through the due process, and we plan on carrying out civil action in addition to criminal punishment.

In addition, photos that were illegally manipulated in relation to Shownu have been spreading online and on social media recently. We plan on reporting the person who initially posted the photos and those who spread them to the police, and we will take immediate and strong action through our legal representative with a civil claim for damages on the basis of violating the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes, circulating material deemed pornographic by the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc., and violating personal rights.

Through continuous monitoring, we will continue to focus all of our efforts into protecting our agency’s artists to prevent additional harm, and we will continue to take strong legal action without settlement.

We thank all fans who love and support our artists, and we ask for fans to continuously show interest for the protection of the artists’ rights.

We once again express deep gratitude to the many people who support our agency’s artists."

source: @soompi, soompi 1 2, naver, @STARSHIPent

Comments

[aures.livejournal.com]

starship's lawyers must be busy these days, what a mess in just a couple of days

[juhli.livejournal.com]

seriously, does someone have it out for Monsta X? It's just punch after punch....

[aures.livejournal.com]

yeah not sure what's up with the shit storm suddenly? like they were doing pretty well, though they were not unproblematic they definitely weren't problematic so i don't really see why ppl are trying to destroy them all of a sudden it just keeps on going and going

edit; i'm not saying here i agree or disagree with anything shownu or wonho related, i'm just confused why they suddenly get attacked this much in a couple of days

[dongsaengkiller.livejournal.com]

It takes a special type of bastard to upload pictures like that. I hope they end up in jail

[thebloomroom.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the Cube mess last year, I bet there are disgruntled saesangs or company employers who start spilling tea or releasing the shit they have held on to once there is momentum. Except this is all one group

[babyjenkski.livejournal.com]

Yeah it does reminds me of what happened to CUBE last year. And it happened when Pentagon was starting to get recognition months after they released "Shine". In MonstaX case, they have been slowly going up and pushing efforts to go global.

Someone mentioned it last time that there's this conspiracy that every time something big is happening in Korea (government f*ck-ups mostly), they put out showbiz scandals to divert peoples attention. And the timing is almost always perfect.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

if non-mbbs still dont think this is a dog piling/strategic way to take down the group by all means necessary then idk what to tell them and obv people are buying into all the lies no matter the source they come from or how transparent they are. 🙃

bring back wonho [2] and everyone to JAIL

[juhli.livejournal.com]

yeah, i mean Wonho should definitely right his wrongs, but i see no reason why he needed to leave the group over this.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

define wrongs

[juhli.livejournal.com]

not paying back the money he owes the girl

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

where's the proof for the money he owes? in the entire time she's giddily posted about how much fun she's having attacking him there has not been ONE SINGLE PROOF (imo she would have totally posted if she had it because that would have sealed the deal for her) and she has taken down most of the posts as soon as starship proceeded with legal action so sorry to not believe a single word any of them are spewing and i can't believe everyone else does

[juhli.livejournal.com]

as far as i read, the stuff that was sold on the internet came from an account that was linked to his phone number. Also, the things she listed off were pretty specific (like the mortgage) and i don't see the reason why Starship wouldn't have posted a detailed rebuttal/explanation (the way they did for Shownu's rumor with the affair), if it wasn't true. Instead they went silent after that first standard "legal action"-statement companies like to give in reaction to everything.

[saemcrh.livejournal.com]

Without actual receipts these are still just words though.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

why do you think Starship hasn't given an explanation yet?

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

they said in the departure announcement they were still proceeding with the lawsuit against those two. would any of u have believed starship just denying the claims? no, let's not kid ourselves lol. he was gone already so they won in the eyes of non-fans. all this stuff will be handed to the attorneys anyway since shownu's still under starship and they involved him

[falling-cookie.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. From the "me too" lie until now, everything has been lies and take downs that make no sense. They need to bring him back to show that they won't stand by this bullying

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

Why do you think they're going after them? What would their reason be?

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

public humiliation? attention? this all started from that me too thing that no matter how each of us personally feels about, the poster admitted to being a comeback sabotage. their not amazing popularity in kr could be a weakness and if u can sway the public there with some well placed lies the whole group dies. and there were a lot of noise about mx's growing popularity in the us and there's no way more people aren't suspicious of the timing. 1st day of a comeback? mhm i have my tinhat theories but this just reeks and it breaks my heart cos mx never deserved any of this

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

But why Monsta X? Just because they're rising in popularity? What's their endgame? To just destroy a group, for fun?
Is it because they used to know each other (IF it's JDE & HSH)? If they lied about the debt then what's this all about? What the hell happened between them?
I'm not asking these questions because I disagree, just thinking out loud lol.
Because you're right, it does reek. It's just all so weird. I would love to hear your tinhat theories.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

i mean hsh is obv sociopathic so why not for fun?

jde was still posting about her r/s with 🐰 a couple years ago so maybe it was something personal and more recent. maybe hsh does have some real information about 🐻 more but since they're gal pals now or whatever they went for🐰 since he was already in a bad situation. both of them r rich bored trust fund babies afaik and they've been sickeningly gleeful about the scandal and the reaction they got out of fans. i dont believe for a second that anyone looking to cash in a debt would go straight to dispatch and stage a shoot with a villanesque moodboard in the back. this is blackmailing and defamation and nothing could change my mind tbh

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

Once jdh posted "fuck you monbebe, we're having so much fun" on insta it didn't really leave much doubt that this was all primarily if not solely for their amusement

[falling-cookie.livejournal.com]

the dispatch pictures with the moodboard was just such a giveaway to me that this is way more than money. If they don't get HSH and JDE for blackmailing and defamation then Korean laws are trash lol.

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

At this point it really does seem like it.
I'm just really disappointed about how this ended up for Wonho. I feel like Starship should've waited it out.
What do you think are the chances of him returning to Monsta X?

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

that's why i think it was his choice to leave so suddenly 😔 i hope he's ok. i don't share any of the optimism of other fans that he will return mostly because the korean gp is really tearing him to shreds. my guess is we'll hear he's enlisted at some point and if we're lucky we'll get ot7 if they leave ss and regroup. there's nothing more i want than to be wrong tho

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

the korean gp is really tearing him to shreds

Are they really? Aah man, this is honestly heartbreaking.

[suggestivepeach.livejournal.com]

It sucks that so much controversy has surrounded this group now. It’ll be really hard for them to bounce back from this.

[falling-cookie.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I think someone has it out for Monsta X and this BS with Wonho was staged and fill of lies. This is a lot of "scandals" to happen to a group with medium popularity in Korea in such a short period of time. I don't see anything showing why Wonho should've left. The whole group is suffering and it makes no sense.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

most of the lies have easily been disproven or at the very least cast doubt upon by fans online which makes it even more insane how far this went with ZERO proof of anything. i do believe wonho left out of his own idk stubborness/impulsiveness thinking he'll save the group because ss cannot be that stupid and yes nothing else makes sense

[falling-cookie.livejournal.com]

That's what makes me so upset about all of this - everything can be so easily disproven or traced to lies, yet the group and Wonho is still being attacked. Just the lack of proof is outstanding. If anyone was using some logic, it wouldn't be this bad.

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

people will eat up anything a regurgitated-trash-of-a-person says because it's "entertaining" and they enjoy some oppas being taken down

[falling-cookie.livejournal.com]

that has to be it, people enjoying the take down. I mean, a lot of men are trash, but Wonho and Shownu don't seem to be deserving of this hate.

[goshipgurl.livejournal.com]

It took me 2 minutes to find the source on Twitter. I know their fans want to protect them but linking to the account that uploaded these pics so fans can report them is not really a smart idea.

Apparently meme guy is the next one with a scandal (if the rumors that someone is out to get them true)

[dior-chic.livejournal.com]

Oh Starbucks guy is next?

[goshipgurl.livejournal.com]

That's what fans are saying if you want to believe the conspiracy theories.

[dior-chic.livejournal.com]

I’m not invested enough to look them up, but I’ll keep an eye out if he’s posted here lol

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

Wait what =o?
Damn, I wanna know who is doing this. And what their beef is with Monsta X.

[goshipgurl.livejournal.com]

That's what fans are saying if you want to believe the conspiracy theories. According to them this is all JDE's and HSH's fault, they believe that these two also posted the pics of shownu.

[luminous-wings.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't be to surprised if they did it tbh. Just doesn't make sense.
If they did it then it's definitely not about the money. Shownu has nothing to do with that.
This is all so weird.

[thebloomroom.livejournal.com]

Yikes, poor guy. No one deserves having their private photos leaked. I read he was sleeping in them though, people are fucking psychotic w no boundaries

[nekobot.livejournal.com]

People are disgusting. I don't know if the photos being manipulated is true or just a statement to save face but it's really scary to see how willing people are to use straight-up sexual abuse to humiliate other people and keep them in line, I dread to think how far this will go in the future.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

makes me think of how scary deepfakes are and how much scarier it will be in the future once they improve the technology behind them.

[nekobot.livejournal.com]

Yeah :( Same with the spycam epidemic - the fact that it only seems to take minutes for new technology to come out before it's used to commit sex crimes speaks volumes about both the people that are doing this and how laughably low or non-existent punishment for this type of violence is.