Producer MC Mong attorney said Wednesday his client did say he wanted to work with members of boy band EXO, but only as an expression of admiration and respect for his fellow artists, not to snatch them away from their agency SM Entertainment.

A media outlet reported Tuesday that MC Mong openly expressed his wishes to "take Kai and Baekhyun" to "become No. 1" while talking to his acquaintances in January 2022.

The reporter said there is a recording of MC Mong making the comment.

MC Mong, the 43-year-old producer whose real name is Shin Dong-hyun, had been accused by SM Entertainment of trying to lure EXO members Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin — members of EXO's subunit EXO-CBX — out of their original agency to work with him when the three members filed for an injunction on their exclusive contracts last month. SM Entertainment withdrew and apologized for the accusation and settled with the three members.

"The voice file mentioned in the report has been slyly edited from a two-hour session to only leave the parts where EXO's Kai and Baekhyun were mentioned, which were merely one-minute long in total," MC Mong's attorney at Lawfirm Kohwoo said in a press release.

"The conversation had nothing to do with 'CBX' and SM Entertainment's conflict. The two-hour talk did contain unfiltered utterances shared among close acquaintances [...] What he said was done so in an exaggerated manner as a friendly expression of admiration among artists."

The person who distributed the recorded file has been making threats against MC Mong and related insiders, the attorney said.

"We will be taking firm measures against illegal behavior that is getting more aggressive by the day," read the statement.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]