Some time last week, cafe franchise 'Mega MGC Coffee' revealed its latest advertisement starring NCT WISH.
Titled "Find My Wish", the advertisement film showed the members of NCT WISH searching for the missing, forgotten pieces of a wish.
But soon after the advertisement film's release, fans of TOMORROW x TOGETHER raised suspicions of plagiarism, claiming that the CF's format resembled the storytelling and designs used in the MV for "Nap of a Star".
While many netizens launched into a heated debate about whether or not the CF plagiarized TXT's MV, on April 9 KST, the director of the "Nap of a Star" MV, Seong Won Mo of the production studio Digipedi, personally spoke up on the accusations.
Agreeing with some fans that aspects of the 'Mega Coffee' advertisement film borrowed from the TXT MV, Seong Won Mo wrote,
"Our work at Digipedi gets plagiarized a lot. There were two cases just last year, but we let them slide. If I'm being honest, it doesn't actually make me that upset. They must have borrowed from our work because they liked what they saw, and the plagiarism doesn't affect me directly, so in a way, it actually made me feel kind of superior. However, when the work involves models whose images are copyrighted, commercial products sold by a business, and copyright holders who have registered their original work, it triggers a series of consequences, and that is a problem. Of course, I know exactly why these things happen. Sure, I can stop at criticizing the person or group who committed the plagiarism. But the problem is more fundamental than that. The advertisement industry is on the decline, the gaming industry is following suit, and now, they want to bring K-Pop down with it. I won't bore you with the finer details here in this shabby little space. Let's just not plagiarize. Let's start there. I am publicizing this here for all to see so that those responsible will actually feel ashamed."
Then, less than a day afterward, Seong Won Mo deleted the accusation post, instead writing,
"The post I wrote yesterday became a topic of tensions without y intention, and so I've decided to hide the post. I'm not angry, and I'm not on anyone's side. I only wanted to share my thoughts on the industry's ongoing practices with the people close to me."
Meanwhile, 'Mega Coffee' has yet to respond to the ongoing accusations.
What do you think about the plagiarism suspicions and the ongoing debate over the consequences of plagiarism?
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