The director in charge of producing EXO’s 2015 comeback teaser published a lengthy explanation for the alleged plagiarism charges that confused both fans and EXO’s company, SM Entertainment.

Jo Beomjin, the director of VM Productions, which was in charge of producing a teaser video for widely popular Korean boy band EXO, explained what happened in regard to the art. The teaser video was initially removed from YouTube after reports from Swedish artist Erik Soderberg that his hard had been copied for the EXO teaser. However, after sorting out the dispute, the EXO teaser was returned to the Internet.

According to Jo, VM Productions contacted two foreign artists about using art for the “EXO 2015 COMING SOON” teaser video.

One of the artist’s responses caused miscommunication with VM, and after the video was released the artist asked for even more money than had already been decided on. Jo was planning to remove the image from the teaser entirely, but couldn’t due to the fact that the teaser had already been viewed by many fans of EXO. At this point, Jo still understood that the artists he had been dealing with were the originators of the art used in the teaser video.

However, Erik Soderberg, a Swedish artist, claimed that the artwork belonged to him and reported the video for plagiarism to YouTube. Jo then discovered that neither of the artists had ever claimed to be the creators of the artwork.

VM Production ended the issue by paying Soderberg for his artwork, which led to the video being accessible on YouTube once again. Soderberg shared the news on his official Twitter account, and thanked the graphic designer in charge of the whole project, Seo Dong Hyeok, with resolving the issue.

EXO fans - the video is back online and everything seems to be sorted out. Happy that Seo Dong Hyeok solved this fast and correctly. =)

— Erik Söderberg (@eriksoderberg) January 14, 2015

Jo Beomjin also took to Facebook to explain the situation at length. As if everything was a lie, YouTube returned back to normal, and judging from [Soerberg's] Twitter and blog, where he had left short and almost joyful messages, it looked like nothing had happened," he explained of the resolved matter. "Everything was coming to an end."

"I doubt anyone in their right mind would get voluntarily involved in a plagiarism case over graphics that have nothing to do with the overall flow of the video."

He ended, "I feel like this project, which was supposed to be produced with a pure and joyful mindset, has been tarnished due to some foreign businessmen."

EXO's 2015 comeback date has not yet been announced.