As sajaegi (chart manipulation) has become quite the hot topic in the music industry lately, one of the biggest distribution sites, MelOn, has stepped up with an official announcement that they will take legal measures regarding music sajaegi on their site.

Loen Entertainment is the company that owns and manages MelOn; it released an official statement entitled 'Requesting Cooperation for the Eradication of Music Sajaegi.'

It goes, "Our party expresses through this official statement our regret and concern in relation to the manipulated operation of ranked charts; as we worry about the unfair cases of external companies requesting money from each music company in return for manipulating the operation of music sites' ranked charts, we will lead the way by taking caution.  

"The party is letting you know that we are taking steps to forcibly block or limit the service of IDs we perceive to have weird patterns when purchasing the rights to access and memberships, as well as exclude anything we judge to be abnormal behavior from the chart aggregation through data filtering in order to stop any abnormal attempts from damaging the fairness and transparency of the ranked charts."

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It is hinted through this statement that if any company was suspected of attempting sajaegi, MelOn will take legal steps against that company.  The statement continues, "After consulting the general guideline regarding music sajaegi by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in order to establish healthy distribution as well as transparent and fair chart management, in the relevant cases of music sajaegi or other unusual fraudulent [methods], we have the right to exclude the related sales and number of usages from the calculations, and in the case we uncover illegal behavior, we are letting you know we plan to take action through legal means such as the unavoidable claim for damages and nullification of contracts."

Regarding this statement, a rep from Loen Entertainment stated, "You could call it an extremely strong warning.  Music sajaegi was possible because we could only lessen our losses through calculations at a later time, but now that we've blocked this, there will definitely be a decrease in the companies that will take part in music sajaegi so readily."