Joo Jin Mo’s agency, Huayi Brothers, has released a second statement on the actor’s phone being hacked.

Earlier this week, Joo Jin Mo’s agency revealed that the actor’s personal cellphone had been hacked and that the hacker was threatening to reveal personal information unless they were paid. The next day, Dispatch reported that other celebrities were being hacked and blackmailed as well.

When Joo Jin Mo did not pay the hacker, the hacker released the actor’s KakaoTalk messages to various media outlets. Although Huayi Brothers had asked that reporters and netizens refrain from spreading rumors and reports that violated Joo Jin Mo’s privacy, the hacked messages have been garnering a lot of attention on various online communities.

The following is Huayi Brothers’ new statement:

Hello, this is Huayi Brothers Korea. This is an official statement about our artist, Joo Jin Mo, whose information has been disseminated on various online, social media, and mobile messenger applications. We intend to take strong legal action and request a formal investigation into various situations, including the spread of information. Therefore, we request that you refrain from behavior such as spreading information. Uploading and spreading this information under the banner of ‘rumors’ are all behaviors that can be punished by the law. As such, we will take strong legal action through a legal agency and hold people accountable for redistribution, fabrication, and dissemination of content, regardless of the channel of expression, that is currently being spread carelessly. Thank you.

Dispatch claimed in their report that the hacking was done through Samsung Cloud, the cloud storage service associated with Samsung products. In response, Samsung Electronics released a statement on January 10 through their user community “Samsung Members.”

The statement reads, “Unlike what it says in a recent report, neither the Samsung Galaxy phone nor the Samsung Cloud service were hacked. We hypothesize that this incident occurred after the specific users’ account information was revealed through an external leak. As long as your user ID and password remain undisclosed, your personal information saved to Samsung Cloud will be protected according to the privacy agreement.”

The police have also begun investigating the case, with the Cyber Security department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency stating, “We are currently investigating the smartphone hacking and blackmail of various celebrities. In order to protect the privacy of the victims, we cannot give explicit details.”

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