The Boyz INTER-ZECTION livestream dispute triggers refunds before Seoul concerts

THE BOYZ's April 24 to 26 INTER-ZECTION concerts at Seoul's KSPO Dome are still on the calendar, but the online stream around them has dropped into chaos after Knowmerce said it was forced to halt sales and issue full refunds to buyers. According to Korea JoongAng Daily, the tech company says it signed an exclusive streaming deal with ONE HUNDRED Label, paid for the rights, then got a unilateral refusal notice before another seller was brought in. That is already messy. What makes it worse is the timing. Fans were buying access less than two weeks before showtime, and this lands while the group's wider fight with the label is still unresolved, turning a standard concert rollout into another stress test for a fandom that has already been asked to absorb far too much.

The public split is blunt. Knowmerce says it is the legal rights holder for the livestream and shut sales down to reduce fan confusion, while ONE HUNDRED says the company could not guarantee a stable enough service for an event of this size. As reported by SBS Entertainment News, the label argued that putting a major THE BOYZ concert on an unproven system would have risked fans' viewing rights and the overall show quality, citing earlier service trouble tied to Fromm. That defense may matter if lawyers take over, but it does not erase the immediate consumer problem for paying viewers. Fans paid for access, got caught in the middle of a rights fight, and now have to wonder who actually controls the online version of one of the group's biggest Seoul dates of the year. In K-pop business terms, that is brand damage in real time.

Knowmerce says it held the contract and chose refunds to limit the fallout

Knowmerce's position is simple: it says it signed an exclusive contract for THE BOYZ's concert stream, paid ONE HUNDRED, then got pushed aside anyway. The company's statement, carried by StarNews Korea and mirrored in Korean reporting, said sales for the INTER-ZECTION livestream would be stopped immediately and all purchasers would receive full refunds. That is the kind of language companies use when they want to frame themselves as the adult in the room, and honestly, it is the only move that avoids making fans bankroll an unresolved dispute. The bigger issue is what it signals about process behind the scenes. If a rights holder can go public saying it already paid and still got frozen out days before a major event, the commercial controls around this concert were never as locked as they should have been.

ONE HUNDRED says service stability, not revenge, drove the switch

ONE HUNDRED Label is trying to reposition the dispute as a quality-control decision, not a broken-deal scandal. According to Korea JoongAng Daily, the agency said Knowmerce had previously experienced major service issues on Fromm during live broadcasts with roughly 1,000 concurrent users, and it argued that INTER-ZECTION demanded a more reliable partner. SBS's coverage adds the same core defense, with the label saying it moved to a provider using MBC's broadcast infrastructure to protect fans' viewing rights and ensure uninterrupted high-definition streaming. That explanation is not impossible to believe. A shaky platform on a high-demand K-pop stream is a nightmare. But even if the technical concern was real, the public outcome still looks sloppy. Fans do not experience this as infrastructure management. They experience it as another week where THE BOYZ's label ecosystem cannot keep basic promises clean.

The dispute hits harder because THE BOYZ were already operating inside label turmoil

This story would already be big on its own, but it lands with extra weight because THE BOYZ are not walking into a normal promo cycle. HITKULTR already covered the broader breakdown in our report on THE BOYZ and VIVIZ's agency exodus, where the business around CEO Cha Ga Won's label network was already under intense scrutiny. SBS also connected the livestream dispute to the group's ongoing exclusive-contract fight with ONE HUNDRED, noting the earlier claims around unpaid settlements and broken trust. That context matters because every new operational failure now reads less like a one-off mistake and more like evidence of a system under strain. Fans on Reddit have reacted the same way, with threads around the concert announcement and the label conflict treating the stream issue as part of a larger pattern rather than an isolated technical disagreement. We have been watching K-pop agency crises long enough to know when a detail story starts behaving like a warning flare.

What fans should watch before the KSPO Dome dates

The key question now is not whether the April 24 to 26 concerts are happening. All current reporting still points to the Seoul shows going ahead. The real issue is whether an online viewing plan can be stabilized quickly, clearly, and without another round of contradictory notices. Fans should watch for three things over the next few days: an official announcement naming the final streaming partner, confirmation that all affected refunds have actually processed, and any legal filing that changes who can sell access in the first place. According to Korea JoongAng Daily, ONE HUNDRED has already signaled it is prepared to pursue civil and criminal action, so this may keep moving after the concerts themselves. If the label wants to calm the room, it needs more than a hardline statement. It needs a clean, transparent buyer pathway that stops DEOBIs from paying first and decoding the business mess later.