Hangeng plagiarized Yunho’s Checkmate for his new single?

Hangeng’s (in Korean, Hankyung) very new Chinese single, Fire has recently fallen into plagiarism accusations to a K-pop song, written and sung and choreographed by his former SM-mate, Yunho of TVXQ.

Hangeng recently released the music video for Fire through Youtube, and the viewers couldn’t help but to notice strikingly similar features with Yunho’s self-written song, titled Checkmate. Some netizens emphasized the similarities by commenting, “Besides the fact that the lyrics are in different languages, the song is completely the same,” “Not only is the whole melody similar, but the songs’ introductions are entirely too identical,” etc.

Yunho’s Checkmate has never been performed on air, but was enlisted as one of tracks in TVXQ’s album MIROTIC. The song was revealed and performed publicly in February 20th, 2009 at TVXQ’s Asia Tour Councert MIROTIC, where all members of Super Junior attended to join the celebration. This clearly suggests that Hangeng was aware of the song’s existence. Check out the two songs below. 

Posted in: Han Geng,Mainland,Music