SM Entertainment’s co-CEO Kim Young Min recently sat down with Hankyung Finance and discussed the company’s recent slump, and how their future plans would be able to take the company back out of their slump.

He first answered how the company will deal with deficits created by their more adventurous businesses such as restaurants, resorts, and even wineries.

Cultural business, dining out, travel, and tourism are all intertwined. But we cannot just sit back on the sidelines and watch these projects. We will finalize our plans to revitalize these projects and make improvements. We are working on measures to prevent further losses in these areas. If we fail to reach our target by the end of 2020, we will try to adjust it even further. — Kim Young Min

He then talked about SM Entertainment’s poor sales performance in the 2nd quarter of 2019, and how they would remedy that for the rest of the year and into 2020.

This year, the company focused more on the projects for the second half of 2019. SM Artists sold 1.4 million albums in the first half of the year (January to June). We have already surpassed that figure using sales from July and August alone. When EXO, NCT, and Red Velvet release their full albums in the second half of 2019, there will be no problems in the sales growth for the year. Also, next year, we will be debuting both a new boy group and a new girl group. — Kim Young Min

(Note, the previous edition of the article stated that EXO and TVXQ would release full albums, however it was later edited, with TVXQ being replaced with NCT and Red Velvet).

Kim Young Min also touched on how the current Japan-Korea political tensions are not really affecting their sales numbers right now, but could affect them very soon.

Our sales in Japan reflect about 15-20% of the total sales. The biggest portion of that comes from concerts, which are scheduled in Japan until the end of the year. So far, there have been no cancellation of concerts, but if the relations between Japan and Korea continue to deteriorate as they currently are, we will also have no choice but to suffer. — Kim Young Min