Dancer No:ze files lawsuit against her agency Starting House

연합뉴스 / 2023-03-09 11:25:31

▲ This photo, provided by Mnet, shows dancer No:ze. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

SEOUL, Mar. 9 (Yonhap) -- South Korean dancer and choreographer No:ze, whose real name is Noh Ji-hye and who made herself known by appearing in Mnet’s dance competition show “Street Women Fighter,” has been embroiled in a payment dispute with her agency.

The dancer previously filed a lawsuit against her agency, Starting House, last December to confirm the absence of debt. In addition, she also filed an injunction to the Seoul District Courts to suspend her exclusive contract with her agency until their dispute reaches conclusion.

No:ze’s legal representative told Yonhap News Agency that the artist “has not received payment from her agency for months since last April” and that she eventually notified the termination of her exclusive contract last November, adding that the dancer then filed a lawsuit to confirm that the contract was legally terminated.

The agency claimed that the artist was eventually paid an adjusted amount after notifying the termination of her exclusive contract. However, No:ze sent an official document to her then-agency, claiming that the agency arbitrarily calculated its payments to her.

“No:ze periodically requested to receive its payments but all it did was to dealy. The artist could not receive any payment until last August as her then-agency once again refused to pay her, saying that it will do the math once again and pay her after discussing her future activities,” the artist’s legal representative explained.

Meanwhile, Starting House claims that the termination of her contract is invalid, arguing that there was a justifiable reason behind the delay of its payments.

“The profit distribution ratio was not yet settled in the first half of last year, and when the related consultation was finally completed, the artist was mired with her brand deal controversy, and the agency was busy patching up the controversy,” Starting House’s legal representative said at the Seoul District Courts’ hearing on Wednesday.

Her then-agency claimed, “It is hard to say for the artist to be in a situation where she would end her hiatus and return to the industry at this point in time, and the cause attribute to No:ze is greater than any other factors for her contract with the agency to go awry.”

No:ze plucked to stardom in 2021 when she made her screen debut on Mnet’s dance survival show “Street Women Fighter.”

However, the dancer was then accused of discriminating against SMEs on her Instagram account due to a small brand claiming that the celebrity had failed to meet her advertisement deadlines, even after receiving up to 50 million KRW as payment. In a similar vein, many followers also pointed out that the dance would delete sponsored posts for relatively small brands shortly after, whereas her posts advertising bigger luxury fashion houses remained.

Days after the controversy, her agency released an official statement apologizing that it had failed to keep the contract period with the brands, admitting that some posts on the dancer’s account were not uploaded within the deadline or were deleted.

The dancer then took to Instagram to also apologize via a handwritten letter, which wrote “I truly apologize for causing such damage and disappointment to the officials without an excuse.”

(This article is translated from Korean to English by Ha eun Lee)

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