Yang Hyun Suk Shares Statement Regarding Seungri And His Relation To Burning Sun Club

Jan 31, 2019

Yang Hyun Suk has announced an official statement regarding the recent controversies with the club Burning Sun, which has been linked to BIGBANG’s Seungri.

On January 31, he released the following statement via YG Entertainment’s official blog:

Hello, this is Yang Hyun Suk.

My New Year’s greetings are very belated. Everyone, I sincerely hope you will receive a lot of luck in the new year, always be healthy, and have a happy year ahead.

Whenever there are unexpected negative rumors contrasting with my personal wish from my last post to only share good news, I feel most apologetic first of all to the fans who must have worried.

I think that sudden negative rumors are like an unexpected rain shower falling from clear skies.

YG manages control of all aspects regarding our artists’ activities through our exclusive contracts with them, and we have continuously revised our contracts and management systems in order to prevent recurrences of accidents and mistakes.

In addition, we always check by emphasizing, advising, and educating what our artists have to be careful about through lots of conversations with them, and we are putting in our full effort to prevent potential disgraceful incidents beforehand.

However, like the old saying “bad news travels fast,” I think it is very difficult to tell them to be careful in preparation for groundless negative rumors that spread through word of mouth.

Also regarding the negative rumors on Seungri’s club, I wanted to find out the truth and give a quick response since the beginning. However, our artists’ operations of their personal businesses are completely unrelated to YG, so it was an awkward situation for YG to speak out and give an official statement, and there was also a lot of difficulty in finding out the truth.

The difficulty was that I have never gone to this club and do not know any of the people related to the club, so I did not have a way to ask someone about the details of this incident.

The only person I could ask was Seungri, and I found out that on the day of the incident, Seungri was at the scene until 3 a.m. on November 24, and the incident occurred past 6 a.m.

The reason why Seungri recently resigned as an executive director of the club was in order to comply with laws regarding military service as his military enlistment is approaching in March or April.

According to Article 30 of the Framework Act on Military Status and Service, “A soldier shall not engage in any for-profit activity, other than military service, and shall not concurrently engage in other activity without permission from the Minister of National Defense.” It is specifically written, “A soldier is prohibited from becoming a director, financial manager, general partner that takes part in the business, manager, promoter, or any other executive of a business.”

I confirmed that due to this reason, Seungri is in the process of resigning from not only the club but all of the CEO and executive director positions for which his name is recorded.

Seungri himself is also feeling very apologetic to fans who must have worried due to this incident, and although he was going to share his position through a post of apology, I told him to hold off for the moment.

This is because I decided that it would be better for him to share his position after the whole story of the incident is revealed more clearly through the investigation.

Currently, the focus seems to be turning away from the assault incident towards a drug investigation. To share with fans in case they are worrying even a bit, Seungri recently received a strong investigation by the prosecution with a search and seizure warrant due to groundless reports, and it was revealed clearly that there were no issues with all his examinations including urine and hair testing.

I feel apologetic that I am not able to give positive New Year’s greetings, and I will soon greet you again with an announcement on BLACKPINK’s new music, the criteria for “YG Treasure Box” selection and debut plans, and happy news of new music from many YG artists including WINNER and iKON.

Thank you always.

2019.01.31

FROM YG