Jungkook’s big jump in 《GG EZ》 has no singer: South Korea bans AI royalties, but it can’t stop 91.6 million views

Japanese creator M. Sasuke’s AI-completed electronic pop song 《GG EZ》 was released on the platform at the end of May. By the end of June, BTS’s Jung Kook had tagged it on his Instagram. Now, it has accumulated more than 91.6 million views across his two social media accounts, becoming this year’s biggest K-pop dance challenge. Ironically, the song cannot receive copyright protection in South Korea, because the Korea Music Copyright Association already ruled back in March 2025 that as long as AI has touched the creation, it will not be charged.
(Background: Deezer warned that 44% of newly uploaded music is AI-generated, and humans’ hard-earned money is being collectively siphoned off)
(Additional context: The U.S. Supreme Court has set the position that pure AI works have no copyright and are not protected by copyright)

Table of contents

Toggle

• 3.25 million plays took just one month
• South Korea shut the door more than a year ago
• Shin Ji-yoon refuses to dance

On June, Jung Kook (전정국, Jungkook) posted a dance video on Instagram. The moves aren’t difficult—flip the wrists twice, shake the shoulders a bit, and pair them with a lively electronic rhythm. In less than half an hour, the video broke through 1 million likes and reached 4.7 million views.

View this post on Instagram

This is the most everyday thing in the K-pop world. An idol does a challenge, fans follow along, the audio climbs the charts, and agencies cheer. Over the past two decades, this entire routine has been running dozens of times every month.

Only this time, the person singing in the song does not exist.

The song is called 《GG EZ》, taken from the line “Good Game, Easy,” which mocks opponents after winning in a game. The creator is M. Sasuke, a Japanese person whose real name hasn’t been made public. His Instagram profile picture is an animation, and when he appears on camera, his face is covered. On the description section of his YouTube channel, he states clearly that he makes music with AI. The lyrics, arrangement, and prompts are written by him, while the vocals and the arrangement are generated by AI. He never says which model generator he uses.

3.25 million plays in one month

《GG EZ》 was released as a single on May 27, 2026. On June 26—the day Jung Kook danced—Korean media outlet 《이투데이》 estimated that its cumulative Spotify streams were 820k.

Now it is 7.91 million.

In the chart week from July 6 to 12, 《GG EZ》 debuted on the chart and immediately took first place on Billboard JAPAN’s Heatseekers Songs. On Instagram Reels, this audio was used 64k times; on TikTok, it was used 7.46 million times. In mid-July, Forbes recorded M. Sasuke’s Spotify monthly listeners at 741k; by late July, third-party tracking site kworb showed the number was already approaching 820k.

The list of follow-up idols is long enough to serve as a roster of Korean male and female groups for the first half of 2026. Yeji of ITZY, Yeonjun of TXT, Jeonghan of SEVENTEEN, Lee Know of Stray Kids, Sunoo of ENHYPEN, Iroha of ILLIT, Shotaro of RIIZE, Sion and Riku of NCT WISH, and Julie of Kiss of Life. Among these people, many entered trainee dorms from the age of 12, practiced ten hours a day, and only waited out a few years to reach the day they debuted.

And yet, they all promoted a song for someone who has no face.

South Korea shut the door more than a year ago

The Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA, 한국음악저작권협회) is often described as “acting only because of 《GG EZ》.” That is not true.

KOMCA changed to new application forms starting March 24, 2025, and the old forms were discontinued. Creators who want to log in a work must, in addition to the work registration application form and the registration appointment document, sign another file with the formal title “AI 미활용 확인 및 보증 동의서,” meaning “Confirmation and Guarantee Consent of No Use of AI,” using legal effect to guarantee that this song’s creative contribution comes entirely from humans. The association has the right to request supplementary materials, including records of the creative process, recording files, and work evidentiary documentation. If any untrue claims are found, the work is deleted and payments are stopped.

The standard is strict to the point of leaving virtually no room. For composing, lyric-writing, and melodic structure—if AI is involved even 1%, the registration will be kept. In the recording and mixing stage, AI is not included in this regulation, so HYBE’s approach of “using AI to generate multilingual vocal parts for existing songs” is temporarily safe.

Under this standard, 《GG EZ》 cannot even get past the first stage of copyright registration in South Korea. If it cannot be registered, it cannot enter the allocation list, and it cannot receive even a single won of copyright usage royalties in South Korea.

Then it became this year’s hottest dance challenge in South Korea.

Shin Ji-yoon refuses to dance

In a livestream, Shin Ji-yoon (신지윤) said she will not dance this challenge.

Her reason was widely paraphrased as “because many people can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake anymore.” That isn’t wrong, but it’s not the point she was really making.

What she actually said is that now even restaurants would rather play AI-generated songs, because they’re free—no need to pay licensing fees, and no need to pay anyone. The job of being a singer has recently become really hard.

Shin Ji-yoon debuted in 2020 as a member of the girl group Weeekly. In June 2022, she left the group due to treatment for anxiety disorder. In April 2024, she restarted with a solo single under her real name. On June 5, 2026, her agency WAY2 announced that she is the fourth member of the new EDM girl group XD:I, with the stage name Swan. She is also a DJ.

She left the entertainment industry once, came back, and was preparing for her second debut—when this happened in her restart year.

She didn’t curse M. Sasuke, didn’t demand take-downs, and didn’t ask fans to boycott. She only said she won’t dance.

The fact that Shin Ji-yoon refuses to dance likely won’t change any final statistics in the end. But she asked the right question. The argument was never about whether “songs made with AI are good or bad.” It’s about how artists’ room to survive will keep getting narrower.

When a flood of free, faceless, on-demand songs can fill every restaurant and every gap in every short video, what are people who spent ten years training to sing supposed to rely on to survive?

No one can stop 《GG EZ》—and all of this was destined to happen the moment it came out through Autotune.