Stray Kids member Felix (Lee Yongbok) has escalated his fight against online defamation to an international level. The singer recently secured approval from a U.S. federal court to obtain identifying information about an anonymous social media user accused of spreading damaging falsehoods against him.
On September 5 (local time), the Northern District Court of California granted Felix’s request to conduct discovery against platform X (formerly Twitter). The court allowed his legal team to subpoena the company for personally identifiable information (PII) tied to the account responsible for repeated defamatory posts.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman presided over the case, granting the request under U.S. statute 28 U.S.C. §1782, which permits international judicial cooperation in gathering evidence.
According to court documents, the unidentified user posted defamatory remarks about Felix on multiple occasions, including March 8, March 15, and May 24 of this year. The posts in question claimed Felix “treated staff like servants” and “behaved like a prince,” allegations that his legal team insists were completely untrue.
These allegations, his legal team noted, caused the artist both mental distress and physical strain while tarnishing his public reputation.
He had already filed a civil defamation lawsuit in the Seoul Eastern District Court, but the case stalled because the user’s real identity and address were unknown. To push forward, his lawyers turned to the U.S. legal system to obtain personally identifiable information (PII) that could confirm who was behind the account
Judge Freeman concluded that Felix’s request was reasonable and focused only on the information needed to continue the case in Korea. The court also emphasized the urgency of accessing “recent logs,” since platforms typically retain user data for only three to six months.
The judge further found that three statutory requirements for such cases had been satisfied and that the so-called Intel Four Factors—used in U.S. courts to evaluate discovery requests linked to foreign proceedings—favored Felix’s petition.
The decision now allows Felix’s legal team to serve a subpoena on X to release data such as the user’s name, birth date, phone number, and recent login records.
Felix’s lawyer in Seoul, Jeong Gyeong-seok of Lee Law Firm, explained that South Korea’s Civil Act clearly allows claims for damages in cases of defamation and insult. He explained that the challenge was not proving the case itself, but rather the difficulty of uncovering who the defendant actually is.
According to Jeong, combining identifiers such as name, date of birth, and phone numbers with access logs would allow authorities to establish the perpetrator’s real identity through telecom providers or local government records. The attorney stressed that recent login data is especially important because of how quickly platforms delete it.
The U.S. court moved swiftly, concluding the matter within two days of its filing on September 3. With this ruling, Felix can now return to the Seoul Eastern District Court with stronger grounds to pursue his civil defamation case.