Lee Hyori songwriter handed over to prosecutors for fraud

The songwriter who provided Korean singer Lee Hyori with plagiarized songs for her latest album "H-Logic" has been handed over to prosecutors on charges of fraud, according to SBS TV's eight o'clock news which aired Wednesday.

It was reported that early this year, a songwriter known by the last name Lee had heard that Lee Hyori was looking for songs to put on her fourth album.

Under the stage name Bahnus Vacuum, songwriter Lee had passed off songs that belonged to foreign artists as his original work, and delivered them to the singer, receiving around KRW 29 million won for the compositions.

Local police turned the songwriter over to prosecutors on July 21 on charges of fraud and obstruction of work.

The plagiarism controversy surrounding "H-Logic" has been making news for the past few months, with Lee Hyori and her agency Mnet Media filing criminal charges against record producer group Bahnus Vaccuum on July 1.

An official at Mnet explained that Bahnus had committed fraud by providing plagiarized songs and obstructed the activities relating to Lee's record production and sales.

On June 20, the singer herself posted a message on her official fan cafe, admitting that several songs on the record were plagiarized and announced a break from all musical activities until the issue gets solved.

According to the Wikipedia entry for Lee, the songs that are reportedly accused of being plagiarized are; "I'm Back" (plagiarized from Canadian indie-singer Lil Precious' track "So Insane"); "Memory" (from British Trip-Hop group Second Person's track "The Alphabet Song"); "Feel the Same" (from Canadian indie-singer Melanie Durrant's "Feel the Same"); "Swing" (of which the melody resembles Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis' "To treno fegi stis ohto"); "Bring it Back" (from aspiring Canadian girl-group Cookie Couture's "Boy Bring it Back"); and "How Did We Get" (from Jason Derulo's "How Did We", which also sampled Annie Lennox's "No More I Love You's", which on its turn is a cover from the song with the same name by The Lover Speaks).

Lee, 30, debuted in 1998 as a member of popular girl band Fin.K.L. and went solo after the group disbanded in 2002. She has released four studio albums as a solo artist, producing several hits including “10 Minutes”, “Hey Girl” and “U-Go-Girl”.

The singer was enjoying a comeback to the music scene with "H-Logic," which was released on April 15.

Reporter : Park Kun-ouc kun1112@
Editor : Lynn Kim lynn2878@