Get to know [SECHSKIES]

Controversy

SECHSKIES' disbandment was suddenly announced without clear explanations at the height of their career, resulting into widespread rumor that DSP media was deeply involved in the disbandment procedure.

At SECHSKIES' last performance, SECHSKIES fans mistook the reporter Jo Young Goo's car as the car of Lee Ho-yeon, the CEO of DSP Entertainment, and destroyed it completely. Jo Young Goo wouldn't want them punished, so didn't file a complaint. Lee Ho-yeon paid him 11 million won as a compensation on their behalf.

Each member has talked about disbandment through various media channels several times.

Lee Jai-jin stated that what SECHSKIES members wanted was to change their agency and not the disbandment at a Korean variety show in 2005.

Eun Ji-won, on the other hand, said that the members had decided it would be best to disband at the peak of their career.

In 2015, Kang Sunghoon mentioned that the members had agreed to disband at the peak of their career. At the concert in 2015, Kang Sung-hoon stated that SECHSKIES seems to have left a strong impression for having disbanded at the top of their career. However, he also added that he had disliked the idea of disbandment as well.

Jang Su-won and Kim Jae-duck have also mentioned several reasons of disbandment. They had an occasion to talk about the disbandment all together at the interview on October 17, 2016.

Eun Ji-won stated that the disbandment was decided upon agreement by a majority of the members and Lee Jai-jin was one of the members that stood against the disbandment.

There are strong suspicions that sales of albums were underreported in purpose of tax evasion. SECHSKIES' first and second albums are estimated to have sold millions copies but the physical sales of for their third album shrunk down to 400,000-500,000 copies, which does not seem to match with their growing popularity at the time.

In August 2000, reporter Sangho Lee reported on several debatable issues of DSP Entertainment, including tax evasion, embezzlement, underpayment, and lack of written contracts, which was featured in the news series, "PD & Reporters' morning".

Reporter Sangho Lee also mentioned in his book, GObal News, that he was threatened by DSP before the news report was aired. DSP said that the report was unfair and based upon unjustified allegations.

Afterwards, DSP was investigated by the police for those allegations. The investigation ended after it was determined that the allegations were unfounded. The National Tax Service conducted a tax audit of the corporation, and collected an additional hundreds of millions of won from it.