Announcer Lee Eun Joo, the wife of Shinhwa member Andy, has partially won a wage claim lawsuit filed against KBS.
On March 24, the Seoul Southern District Court’s Civil Division 9 (Presiding Judge Kim Dong Hyun) ruled partially in favor of Lee, ordering KBS to pay approximately 289.4 million KRW (approx. 191,094 USD) in unpaid wages.
Lee Eun Joo first joined a regional KBS station in 2015 as a freelance weathercaster and began taking on announcer duties the following year. However, after new announcers were hired in 2019 and she was excluded from assignments, she filed a lawsuit seeking recognition of her status as an employee.
After winning that case, Lee Eun Joo returned to work in January 2024. She subsequently filed this lawsuit, seeking wages she would have earned during the roughly five-year period she was effectively dismissed. She also argued that her pay should be calculated based on that of a full-time announcer (Grade 4), rather than a contract-based position (Grade 7), as she had performed substantially the same duties.
The court determined that Lee had worked as a contract employee for over three years and had undergone a level of evaluation comparable to a formal hiring process. It also found that, even after her reinstatement, she hosted the same programs as full-time announcers, with no meaningful distinction in duties.
Additionally, the court noted that the new announcer hired to replace Lee had been appointed at Grade 4, concluding that treating Lee as a Grade 7 employee constituted unjustified discrimination without reasonable grounds.
The court further stated that KBS could not justify its decision solely based on past practices of assigning Grade 7 status when converting employees to indefinite contracts. It also cited a Supreme Court precedent stating that employees performing the same duties should be subject to the same employment rules as full-time staff.
Meanwhile, Lee publicly confirmed her relationship with Andy in February 2022 and married him in June of the same year after about one year of dating. Born in 1990, Lee is nine years younger than Andy, who was born in 1981.
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