Actor Goo Hye-sun, who lost a lawsuit over unpaid appearance fees, will appeal against her former agency, HB Entertainment, where her ex-husband Ahn Jae-hyun is based.

Goo Hye-sun filed a lawsuit in 2019 against her former agency, HB Entertainment, after her exclusive contract ended, demanding a payment of around 170 million won for her appearances on the agency's YouTube channel. However, she lost the lawsuit.

HB Entertainment stated, "On April 20, 2020, Goo Hye-sun paid damages to HB Entertainment according to the arbitration decision of the Korea Commercial Arbitration Board, which claimed that 'damages should be paid due to termination of the exclusive contract.' Later, she requested additional judgments to dispute the effect of the arbitration decision, but it was dismissed on July 1, 2020, and the arbitration decision was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court on April 16, 2021."

They further explained, "Regardless of this, on February 18, 2020, Goo Hye-sun filed a lawsuit at the Seoul Central District Court, demanding 'payment of profits from HB Entertainment's YouTube videos.' She claimed copyright to the videos published on HB Entertainment's channel, but the court dismissed all these baseless claims on June 15, 2023."

Goo Hye-sun will not accept this and plans to appeal. She stated, "I've had experiences of distress due to non-payment of some appearance fees for dramas broadcasted in the past. With the continuation of non-payment of fees for appearing on my former agency's YouTube channel, I've been contemplating whether it's right to bear losses exceeding 300 million won alone."

She mentioned her ex-husband Ahn Jae-hyun, saying, "I willingly appeared (more than 12 times) without pay on the YouTube channel run by the agency to which my ex-husband belonged, because I trusted him. I also provided services such as content planning, location, music, and editing. The content recorded over 10 million views, but my former agency not only failed to pay the appearance fee but also forcibly discarded videos containing my beloved pet that has now passed away. They've also harassed me for years, including criminally accusing witnesses who tried to help me."

She continued, "I can't accept the verdict that I lost to such people, so I decided to appeal, even if I have to suffer damage. This comes from my personal hope that future juniors will not go through what I did and the will to sound an alarm against the abusive practices of the production system such as post-appearance non-payment. These practices need to be eliminated and corrected, so I intend to rectify this through the appeal."

Goo Hye-sun and Ahn Jae-hyun got married in May 2016 but started the divorce process in 2019 and divorced in 2020. The two left only wounds through mutual revelations in the process leading up to the divorce. They became strangers through divorce, but the remaining seed of conflict over non-payment of appearance fees still binds the two. Three years after the divorce, Ku Hye-sun and Ahn Jae-hyun have become a bad match from a relationship.