KONNECT Entertainment has released an official statement regarding the current status of their legal action against netizens who have written malicious and defamatory posts about Kang Daniel.

The statement reads as follows:

Hello. This is KONNECT Entertainment.

We would first like to thank fans who helped collect evidence after we posted a notice about malicious posts back in August.

Here is our notice on the progress of our legal action against malicious posts regarding our artist as of September 19.

We previously announced in August that strict legal action will be taken without any settlements or lenience on malicious posts containing the spread of false rumors, sexual harassment, defamation, privacy violations, and malicious rumors of our artist Kang Daniel.

After making our announcement, we screened habitual and malicious comments based on our own data collection and evidence we obtained from data sent to our e-mail address for information (protect@konnectent.com). We submitted a complaint and made a statement to the Gangnam Police Station based on charges of defamation (Article 311 of the Criminal Act), which can result in a sentence of up to a year in prison or 2 million won (approximately $1,700) in fines, for cases we’ve received legal advice for in early September. Within this week, these cases will be transferred to each jurisdiction and, as we’ve said before, will be dealt with in a firm manner without any settlements or lenience.

With legal proceedings for the complaint mentioned above taking priority, we will continue to take legal action against malicious posts. We will strengthen our self-monitoring [system] and strive to protect the rights of our artist and fans from malicious posts by gathering evidence through our e-mail address for information.

We will make sure to share updates in the future as well.

Thank you.