AKMU’s Lee Chan-hyuk has explained why he left YG Entertainment, saying he wanted to take full responsibility for his own work rather than continue within a company system.
The explanation came on the October 31 episode of MBC’s “Omniscient Interfering View,” featuring Lee Chan-hyuk and his sister and AKMU bandmate Lee Suhyun. TenAsia reported the remarks on November 1.
Lee Chan-hyuk said YG Entertainment had given him a great deal of support, but working as part of a company came with a built-in sense of limits. “Because it was something done with the company, I had the thought that ‘we should only go this far,’” he said, adding that he wanted to “let go of the reins.”
He framed independence as a deliberate trade: more freedom, but also direct accountability for every decision. “I wanted to take full responsibility, gather my own people, and take the lead myself. It’s really good right now,” he said, expressing satisfaction with the change.
That freedom, however, came with a physical cost during AKMU’s first concert after leaving YG. Lee Chan-hyuk said he felt no burden at first, only enormous ambition, but the weight of handling everything himself soon became a burden in its own right.
He said he lost about 5 kilograms in a month because he could not eat properly during preparations. In the week before the concert, he said, overwork left his body so unsettled that cramps kept him from sleeping when he lay down after returning home.
Lee Suhyun described how tense the preparation period was at home. She said she tiptoed around her brother, stayed out of sight, and even checked in the morning whether he was awake before making any noise, joking that he sometimes thought she was not home at all.
The move is significant because AKMU built its career inside YG Entertainment’s system, where planning and support were shared with the agency. Going independent shifted those decisions, and their consequences, directly to Lee Chan-hyuk, from assembling his own team to staging a concert.
No new album, concert, or agency announcement was made in the report. For now, the episode stands as his clearest public account of the choice: a decision to lead his own work, on his own terms, and accept the pressure that comes with it.
