BTS member Jin and Baek Jong-won, CEO of Theborn Korea, have been cleared of allegations that their liquor distribution company violated origin labeling laws.
The legal community announced on the 23rd that the Hongseong branch of the Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office recently decided not to indict Baeksooldoga and a related party, citing insufficient evidence regarding alleged violations of origin labeling laws.
In 2022, Jin and Baek Jong-won jointly invested to establish the agricultural company JINI’s LAMP, and they launched the distilled liquor series IGIN in December 2024. JINI’s LAMP is responsible for production, while Baeksooldoga, a related company of Theborn Korea, handles distribution.
The issue originated last September following a complaint filed via the National Sinmungo. The complaint alleged that some products in the IGIN highball tonic series, which use imported concentrated ingredients, were misleading consumers by being listed as domestic on online sales sites.
While the origin labeling on the physical product labels was accurate, the discrepancy on online sales platforms, which uniformly listed the origin as domestic, was the point of contention.
JINI’s LAMP previously stated that “All products comply with the regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration,” and that “the origin is accurately labeled in the product details.” The company explained, “An error occurred during the online posting, with information from another flavor mistakenly displayed for a period, which was promptly corrected.”
The Hongseong branch ultimately concluded that it was difficult to consider this a violation of origin labeling laws, given that the product labels themselves were correctly marked.
