Ruler’s 2024 Tax Case Revealed, Raising Questions Over Potential LCK Action

believed this matter to be long behind him. Yet on March 26, the National Tax Law Information System made public a court ruling originally issued nearly two years earlier, on August 31, 2024. In that decision, ’s star AD Carry was, on appeal, ordered by the South Korean tax authorities to pay additional sums following identified irregularities involving his father. The National Tax Service (NTS) had investigated Ruler’s personal finances covering the 2018 to 2021 tax years and issued in May 2023 two separate assessments:

First, during the early years of his career, the AD Carry paid his father a substantial amount in “labor costs” over four years, claiming that his father acted as his personal manager and deducting these payments as necessary business expenses. The tax authority rejected this argument, finding no objective evidence that his father had performed any genuine managerial duties. “A professional player who has been under an exclusive contract with his team since 2016 and has remained active within that structure has no reason to engage an external manager or incur additional costs, as the team exclusively manages all of his activities and bears the associated expenses,” the court stated in its ruling.

In their appeal, Ruler and his representatives argued that the team’s internal framework was, in their view, insufficient. The player “requires a manager to negotiate his salary, define the scope of his activities, and handle the terms of his television appearances and interviews with the team,” they contended, adding that “prior to signing with an agency in 2022, it was [Ruler’s] father who managed these matters.” This line of argument was dismissed by the court: “Even if a manager were deemed necessary, no evidence was provided to demonstrate that the claimant’s father received the disputed personnel payments or performed managerial duties; consequently, these payments cannot be regarded as justified expenses.”

The NTS also found that a significant portion of Ruler’s funds had been invested in publicly listed stocks registered under his father’s name — in a title trust arrangement, assets are registered under another person’s name. In his appeal, Ruler stated that this arrangement was intended to allow his father to manage his assets. The issue, however, lay in the fact that the profits, dividends, and capital gains generated from these investments were declared as the father’s income rather than Ruler’s. “It has been confirmed that, up to 2021, the amount of won [derived from dividends] was not returned to the claimant but was transferred to X’s account [Ruler’s father] and used to pay X’s comprehensive income tax or credit card bills,” the judge wrote in 2024.

This arrangement effectively enabled the family to avoid higher dividend tax brackets—given Ruler’s level of income—as well as potential gift taxes. In its statement on Instagram, the agency Supergent claimed that the matter amounted to nothing more than a “fine related to a title trust arrangement” and asserted that all taxes had been fully paid, framing the situation as effectively resolved.

While Ruler’s representatives maintain that the situation—“due to a name declaration error,” according to a statement released by Supergent on Monday—resulted only in a minor tax reduction, the South Korean courts did not share that assessment. “It cannot be established that the nominee-based trust arrangement concerning the shares [i.e., Ruler allowing his father to manage assets in his name] was not intended to evade taxation. The tax thus avoided cannot be regarded as a minor reduction,” the court concluded.

The South Korean judiciary therefore upheld in 2024 its decision to order Ruler to pay additional sums. The National Tax Law Information System does not, however, disclose the amount of these sums. The delay in publishing the ruling is notably linked to the anonymization process applied to the documents.

Since the release of the ruling, the South Korean community has begun to question the possibility of sanctions from the LCK. Article 9.2.8 of the league’s rulebook stipulates that team members must not commit acts prohibited under the laws of the Republic of Korea, explicitly including violations of tax regulations.

The LCK outlines potential penalties in its appendix: temporary or permanent suspension depending on the severity of the offense, or a fine of up to KRW 100,000,000 (approximately €70,000). This is not Ruler’s first encounter with LCK disciplinary measures. He was previously fined ₩800,000 (€460) in January 2026 for verbal misconduct in solo queue and had already been cited for a similar offense in March 2025. A suspension of the player would, in any case, be particularly damaging and detrimental for Gen.G, who begin their LCK Season this Wednesday, April 1st.