Chosun has named 3 of the 15 songs.

Eleven individuals — including the former CEO of an entertainment agency — have been charged without detention for allegedly manipulating music charts to inflate the rankings of 15 K-Pop songs, according to Chosun.

On May 21, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, led by Chief Prosecutor Jeong Ji Eun, announced the indictment of Mr. Kim — a former entertainment agency CEO — along with ten others. They are accused of interfering with business operations using computer systems.

Three entertainment agencies are said to have requested Kim’s services, and songs by artists from Kim’s own company were also manipulated. Among the affected songs were Young Tak’s “Why Are You Coming Out from There,” NATURE’s “Oopsie (My Bad),” and KCM’s “Between Love and Friendship.”

Kim and his team are believed to have assigned IP addresses to many virtual PCs and split access through various accounts to evade detection by the music sites’ anti-abuse systems.

The list of those indicted includes Mr. Lee — the former CEO of trot singer Young Tak’s agency — who is suspected of requesting the chart manipulation. Young Tak himself has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Kim and his associates are suspected of manipulating the rankings on major Korean music sites by employing numerous accounts to stream 15 songs over 1.72 million times. To execute this plan, they allegedly used more than 500 virtual PCs and illegally obtained 1,627 pieces of personal data.

Investigators discovered that Kim — who ran an entertainment and PR agency — received requests for chart manipulation through a business intermediary. It is reported that he charged between ₩30.0 million KRW (about $22,100 USD) and ₩160 million KRW (about $118,000 USD) per song for his services. If the manipulation had little effect, he reportedly refunded part of the money.

The prosecution began investigating the case in October 2022, describing it as complex, with numerous accounts involved in the manipulation and over 130,000 pages of crime records.

Initially, the police did not refer Young Tak’s case for prosecution, stating there was no evidence he was aware of the manipulation. However, a complaint was filed in November 2021, leading to further investigation, which confirmed the initial conclusion. Consequently, the prosecution dismissed the charges against Young Tak on the previous day.

The prosecution emphasized that this case uncovers the systematic nature of music chart manipulation, a long-standing issue in the industry. They vowed to ensure that appropriate sentences would be handed down for the crimes committed by the defendants.