hankyoreh

Singer Lee Hyori has once again found herself at the center of a plagiarism controversy. Central to this controversy are a total of five songs from her recently released fourth album “H-Logic.” The writer for the album has claimed that his music was appropriated from a leaked demo disk and foreign artists who sang the songs in question have claimed that their work was plagiarized, propelling the situation toward a contentious battle over the truth of the music’s provenance.

Claims of similarity between the Lee tracks and foreign songs, along with comparison videos, have spread in the Internet through YouTube and blogs. Among the tracks singled out, “Bring It Back” has been compared to the Canadian all-female group Cookie Couture’s “Boy, Bring It Back”, “Feel the Same” to a track with the same name by Canadian singer Melanie Durrant, “I’m Back” to Canadian singer Lil Precious‘ “So Insane”; “How Did We Get” to U.S. singer Jason Derulo’s “How Did We”, and “Memory” to the British group Second Person’s “The Alphabet Song.”

An actual comparison of the songs in question reveals similarities not only in melody but also in organization and arrangement, to the extent that they could be called virtual remakes. Some of the songs even have similar titles. The tracks were all written by Bahnus Vacuum, a composers’ group centering on writer Bahnus, whose real name is Lee Jae-yeong. Bahnus is a newcomer in South Korea who studied music overseas.

Netizens began making accusations in late April, not long after the release of Lee Hyori’s album. In response, her company, M.net Media, said, “We checked with Bahnus, and it appears that after he did a guide recording to sell songs he composed during his time studying abroad four or five years ago, the songs were leaked or appropriated in the process of sending them to various foreign agencies.” The company also said that Bahnus was preparing to take legal measures in response.

However, Cookie Couture wrote on their MySpace page, “the song ‘bring it back’ belongs to and is written by the members of Cookie Couture. It has been brought to our attention that Korean artist ‘LEE HYORI’ has stolen our material and is passing it off as her own. Our lawyers are hard at work with this.”

Accusations from netizens have further increased as this announcement has spread rapidly over the Internet in recent weeks. Lil Precious has also reportedly stated that she wrote “So Insane” herself.

Lee Hyori, who has halted her television activity after finishing promotional efforts for the leadoff song “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” has not stated her position on the controversy.

“I was worried there might be plagiarism charges, so I checked all of the tracks with an iPhone application that finds similar songs,” said Lee during an interview immediately after the album’s release.

“We went through a legal procedure in purchasing the songs,” said an M.net Media official. “We are currently discussing follow-up measures with Bahnus.”

Netizens have been split in their response, with a heated standoff between those who accept Bahnus’ argument and believe in his and Lee’s innocence, and those who strongly allege plagiarism and argue that Bahnus’ claims lack credibility.

In 2006, Lee was accused of plagiarizing Britney Spears’ “Do Something” for “Get Ya,” the leadoff single to her second album. Lee ultimately ended performance of the song and handed over the copyright to the original writer.

The music video for “U Go Girl,” the first track from her third album in 2008, was subject to comments about its similarity with the video for Christina Aguilera‘s “Candyman.”

“Since every one of the tracks is identical to an unbelievable degree, it is meaningless to dispute whether there was any musical plagiarism,” said popular music critic Kim Bong-hyeon. “Since the two sides’ claims are so extremely divided, we can only wait and see which turns out to be true,” Kim added.

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