After Aaespa debuted with their hit song, Black Mamba, the group faced a plagiarism controversy.

It was mentioned that some scenes in the music video resembled the art of the visual artist, Timo Helgurt as well as the League of Legends group, K/DA.

Then, SM Entertainment released an official statement regarding the matter.

“Through Sports Kyunghyang, SM Entertainment clarified that they spoke with the artist and their agency themselves to discuss details of their creative process. We contacted the artist and agency that were mentioned for a portion of the Black Mamba video and chatted about our planning process as well as the world behind the group.”

And as a result, the two parties agreed that there was no problem.

Ahead of this statement, netizens demanded that SM Entertainment address the similarities of some scenes of Black Mamba to the art of the visual artist after the issue was raised by the artist himself.