LOONA’s upcoming ‘The Origin Album: 0’ “postponed indefinitely”

Blockberry Creative has issued a brand-new statement addressing recent controversies as well as announcing changes to LOONA’s upcoming record ‘The Origin Album: 0’.

The South Korean music label published the new statement earlier today (December 22) via news outlet My Daily, announcing that ‘The Origin Album: 0’ will be indefinitely postponed. “First, we would like to apologise for worrying LOONA fans due to various events surrounding our company. We also sincerely apologise to the public for causing fatigue due to the situation,” the statement read, as translated by Koreaboo. 

“As a result of listening to the opinions of Orbit and many people, we have decided that comeback activities are meaningless as various concerns about the members’ situation are not resolved,” explained the company. “Therefore, the new album, ‘The Origin Album: 0’, which was scheduled to release on January 3, 2023, will be postponed indefinitely.”

Blockberry Creative then went on to explain its financial position with regards to LOONA’s debut and subsequent activities as a group. “LOONA is a project that took a lot of effort over a long period of time. Because it was a long-term and significant project that required a lot of investment and money compared to a typical idol group, the results that appeared on the surface were often less revealed than we tried.”

The label claimed that with LOONA, there was an “endless need for expenses that a small to medium-sized agency could not easily afford”. Blockberry Creative then wrote that it “felt sorry to the members who could not generate profit for a long time”, calling the process of achieving success for LOONA a “near-impossible task… without any promise of reaching a break-even point”. It then added that this year marked the first time in “six years after starting the first debut project” that it has “finally discovered the light of hope”.

In Blockberry Creative’s conclusion, it wrote that “regardless of the success or failure of the series of attempts we made as a small company, we are proud that the challenge alone marked a milestone in the history of K-pop”. “Of course, all the problems stemmed from our company’s inadequacies, and we should take responsibility for it, but we can’t stop working to protect LOONA and achieve our dreams together,” the closing sentences of the statement read.

While Blockberry Creative’s statement did not go into the specifics regarding the exact circumstances that led to the postponement of ‘The Origin Album: 0’, it comes after a string of controversy surrounding the company and LOONA, after it removed Chuu from the group due to alleged “violent language and misuse of power” towards company staff. Chuu has since broken her silence regarding her expulsion from the band, writing on Instagram that she “[hasn’t] done anything that would be shameful to [her] fans”.

Shortly after news of Chuu’s removal from LOONA went public, it was reported that 9 out of LOONA’s 11 remaining members – excluding ViVi and Hyunjin – had filed injunctions in order to suspend their contracts with the company. Blockberry Creative subsequently denied these reports, calling them “groundless”.