Do we like Baekhyun?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up, plus real giving, but the record on him is thin and there's a very messy business dispute.
Baekhyun is a Korean pop singer, a main vocalist in the boy band EXO and its trio subunit EXO-CBX, who has since built a solo career as well. This is the K-pop machine at full tilt: sold-out arenas, hit albums and a very large, very loyal fan base.
The drama these days is business, not behaviour. In 2023 he, Chen and Xiumin told SM Entertainment they were terminating their contracts, saying SM hadn't given enough settlement data. They reconciled and routed solo work through a separate company, and SM later sued the trio, claiming the agreed 10 per cent of that income went unpaid. The trio sued SM over unpaid settlements too.
That separate company, INB100, was founded by Baekhyun in 2023 and folded into a firm run by Cha Ga-won in 2024. Now the trio say INB100 has never paid what it owes them. On 15 September the Seoul Central District Court granted their injunction, finding the relationship of trust had broken down through INB100's fault. INB100 didn't turn up to the hearing.
Cha Ga-won, who fronted a 2024 press conference promising an all-out war with SM, was indicted in August on fraud charges involving about 30 billion won and is in detention. That's an accusation, not a verdict, and none of it is alleged against Baekhyun himself. The trio's side say Cha has been unreachable since the injunction application.
The small stains are small. His agency apologised in 2024 after he was filmed vaping indoors in Macau, and he admitted being careless. An agency also announced in December 2025 that someone who harassed him online was fined for defamation, so he's been on the receiving end of the online nastiness too.
The nice stuff: he gave 50 million won to the Friends of the National Museum of Korea in January 2024 to help bring Korean artefacts home, and didn't announce it until months later. That's a quiet gift, not a publicity stunt, though it's the only one we could confirm.