On the afternoon of January 27th, Sports Chosun reported that South Korean singer Lee Hi has just been involved in the most serious scandal of her career. According to the report, the star was found to have operated an illegal company for a long period. She established 808Hi Recordings in April 2020 and ran it for 5 years and 9 months without registering with the relevant authorities.

At the end of last year, South Korean authorities required illegally operating companies to voluntarily register for business licenses and gave them a certain deadline (grace period) to complete the registration in accordance with the law. However, it wasn’t until January 21st that Lee Hi’s company completed the registration for a license for public cultural and artistic services. It is known that this was more than 3 weeks past the aforementioned grace period.

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Lee Hi was found to have operated an illegal company for many years. Photo: Nate

According to current South Korean law, registering a business for public cultural and artistic services is mandatory if one wants to operate and manage an entertainment company. Individuals who violate this law can face a sentence of up to two years in prison or a fine of 20 million won (approximately 360 million VND).

Although Lee Hi had just completed the business registration for her own company, she had been operating the business illegally for 5 years and 9 months, and moreover, she registered after the grace period of 3 weeks. The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism also announced that it will take strict administrative measures, including criminal complaints, against companies that have not registered their licenses after the grace period. Therefore, the public is currently very curious about the official punishment Lee Hi will receive.

Currently, Korean media has offered a preliminary assessment of Lee Hi’s potential punishment: “Lee Hi only completed the registration procedures after the grace period ended. This makes it difficult for her to avoid administrative penalties.” The article also leaves open the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Lee Hi’s management company, Duover, has officially spoken out about the controversy surrounding the star: “Because Lee Hi is exclusively under our company, we were unaware that her own company also needs to register its arts and popular culture business separately. This incident occurred due to a lack of understanding and negligence on the part of both the company and the artist. We sincerely apologize for causing concern to fans and will be more careful in carrying out legal procedures to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again.”

Lee Hi’s side has just made its first response amidst the scandal. Photo: Nate

Lee Hi was born in 1996 and officially debuted at the age of 16 as a solo artist under the “giant” YG. In 2019, she left YG and found a new home for her career. The singer is famous throughout Asia with many hit songs that have topped major and minor music charts. In South Korea, her national hit “1, 2, 3, 4” propelled her career to stardom. In Vietnam, Lee Hi’s song “Only” was a huge hit that caused a widespread sensation and is familiar to most music lovers.