Lotte Group's amusement park Lotte World was found that it hasn't paid any royalty for its music performance during the past six years.
Local broadcasting network YTN reported on Thursday that the company used as many as 210 songs amounting to 50 million won annually without paying any royalties for the last six years.
Under the national copyright law, a company should pay royalty to performers, singers or music producers when they use the commercial songs. This is to compensate the music-related people who may lose opportunities to perform or see sales decrease because of the song use.
Unlike Lotte World, other theme parks including Everland and Seoul Land have paid such royalties.
Local civic group Federation of Korean Music Performers is considering taking legal action against the company.
Lotte World, which recently started negotiating on the compensation, suddenly stopped the negotiation last week on the ground that it used digital songs and the legal definition of commercial songs is ambiguous.
The company will reportedly make a decision after reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision on the similar cases.
In 2013, the Supreme Court said if a company uses music for performance they should pay compensation although the music is not commercially sold.
