31-year-old South Korean actress Jeon Jong Seo, who had previously received the Baeksang Arts Awards Best Actress honor for the film “The Call,” has, following Cha Eun Woo and Kim Seon Ho, become embroiled in the recent tax evasion controversies surrounding entertainers. According to South Korean media outlet Kyunghyang Sports on the 10th, Jeon Jong Seo established a personal production company and appointed her film director boyfriend, Lee Choong Hyun, as a board director. However, it wasn't until the 4th of this month that the company was properly registered, raising questions from the public. Her agency, ANDMARQ Entertainment, has since issued a statement to clarify the situation.
The report indicates that in June 2022, Jeon Jong Seo set up the joint-stock company 'Summer,' which handles the production of movies, TV dramas, talent management, and film production, with Lee Choong Hyun serving as a board director. According to current regulations, the company should have been registered as a popular culture and arts planning business, but for three years and eight months, this wasn’t done. The registration was finally completed on the 4th of this month. The public suspects that due to the recent controversies over artists establishing one-person planning companies to evade taxes, Jeon Jong Seo only became aware and addressed the registration now.
ANDMARQ Entertainment has since issued a clarification, denying any “intentional concealment” or “tax evasion.” Sources reveal that Jeon Jong Seo created ‘Summer’ so that her director and actress could collaborate as partners on projects, with Lee Choong Hyun’s directing and script contracts, as well as the 2024 music video projects, all managed by this company. The statement read, “During the establishment of the company as a legal entity, the business scope broadly included management-related affairs, but there had been no actual plan to operate as a management agency, so there was no awareness of the need for such registration. However, after the recent public concern over lack of registration, we reviewed the business scope and have made the necessary corrections.”
Source: Apple Daily News Network