MLD challenges order to pay ex-Momoland singer Daisy her earnings of 79 million won
Momoland was a nine-member K-pop girl group that was formed through the survival show ‘Finding Momoland’. After debuting under MLD Entertainment in 2016, three of the members left. Daisy left in 2020 with fans wondering if it was due to mistreatment. Before she left the group she did a frank interview where she stated that their agency has been responsible for mistreating the girls. She claimed that MLD had cut $55K (66 million won) from the members’ earnings as cost for producing ‘Finding Momoland’.
Fans also think that Daisy left due to MLD not inviting her to group promotions. On January 7, 2020, Daisy was interviewed by KBS’ News 9. She said that survival show 'Finding Momoland' was rigged and she was said to debut despite being eliminated. Not only that, the cost of the show had been incurred by the girls which was deemed unfair as they had not signed a contract to produce a survival show in the first place. Daisy decided to expose this when MLD stopped her from promoting with Momoland.
READ MORE
Red Velvet's Joy and Crush are dating, fans happy it's not the next 'big scandal’
Is Cube trying to erase Soojin from (G)I-DLE? Fans shocked singer's posts not on UCube
Daisy sues Momoland's agency MLD Entertainment
The former member claims that since May 2019, she was put on a hiatus for fake reasons and had been prevented from joining Momoland’s activities. And as much as she loved the girls she could not stay if she wasn’t allowed to promote with them. When Daisy asked MLD Entertainment to terminate her contract, she claims that they asked for a lot of money to break it. MLD then denied everything said in the interview, said they would sue Daisy and demanded an apology from KBS. However, Daisy ended up taking the agency to court.
Daisy filed a lawsuit against MLD Entertainment and partially won it on October 10, 2021. The Seoul Central District Court went through the case which stated that MLD had cut the total production cost among the final 10 participants of ‘Finding Momoland’. By evenly splitting it, each girl had to pay $55K (66 million won). Daisy had been eliminated from the show and after it ended she was brought back. She signed the official contract with MLD in September 2016 long after the show ended.
Daisy sued the agency claiming that it was unfair to cut from her earnings the cost that was incurred before she signed with them. The court stated that this was not customary in the industry and that the contract would only be effective from the date Daisy signed it. It had been revealed that apart from the $55K (66 million won) MLD had not paid her $10.8K (13 million won) that she had earned from other activities. Hence the agency had to pay her a total of 79 million won (approximately $66K).
However, hours after the ruling was made public, on October 11, MLD Entertainment took action. They have filed an appeal against the case. The details of the appeal have not been revealed but it seems that they will not pay the money decided by the court by bringing up Daisy’s KBS exposé while still under MLD.