K-Pop

During the months-long feud between HYBE and NewJeans creative director and former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin, the Billboard 200-topping girl group has largely remained silent. But early Wednesday morning (Sept. 11), group members Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein made their voices heard.
In a since-deleted post on their Twitter account, the group shared a YouTube link that led to a livestream on a no-longer accessible YouTube account named “nwjeans.” During the livestream, the five members spoke for about 30 minutes in Korean and English about their situation, expressing anxiety over their professional futures, worries about continuing to work under HYBE and revealing previously unheard stories.

Apologizing for the “sudden meeting,” all five members of the K-pop girl group sat in a nondescript room with notebooks, papers and iPads during the livestream. The youngest NewJeans member, Hyein, 18, spoke first, explaining that staff members they trusted (presumably also under or previously under the HYBE/ADOR umbrella) helped set up the location and stream but that it was the quintet’s choice to speak out. 

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After that, Haerin noted that media coverage revolving around NewJeans’ situation became invasive when their private medical records and videos from their days as HYBE trainees leaked on the internet — four of the five NewJeans members were minors under the age of 18 when they debuted in July 2022 — but that when the group, alongside Min and their parents, raised concerns to ADOR parent company HYBE, the K-pop giant took no action.

One of the most talked about moments online among K-pop fans came early in the broadcast, when Hanni shared a story about a time when, while at the HYBE building to get her hair and makeup done, an unnamed HYBE LABELS group passed her with a manager. According to the Vietnamese-Australian singer, after initially greeting one another, the manager told the members of the other group to “ignore her.”

During the livestream, NewJeans members also expressed worries about the ADOR label’s inner workings following Min’s ouster as CEO.

In reference to ADOR’s new legal battle with Shin Woo-seok, the director of NewJeans’ “Ditto” and “ETA” music videos, Minji said it was “frightening” to see their work compromised. The director has alleged that ADOR targeted him for uploading “director cut” versions of NewJeans music videos and other content, which he claimed to have permission for, on his personal YouTube account.

Following ADOR’s removal of those videos, the label shared a statement on Sept. 4 that it would do its best to “ensure that the deleted NewJeans content can be uploaded to ADOR’s official channel in the future,” as reported by the Korea JoongAng Daily. That report also noted ADOR’s follow-up statement that only the “director cut” music videos were requested for removal — not behind-the-scenes clips starring the members that have racked up millions of views — while claiming it was advertisers who wanted the “director cut” videos removed.

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“Just like that, the content that we released solely for our fans, for our Bunnies, was instantly erased,” Danielle said in English about the incident. “I truly can’t understand why anyone would do this to a group or just anyone in general.”

Minji added that ADOR’s “new management” would keep production and management teams separate, like other HYBE LABELS. Under this arrangement, which saw Min being restricted only to production, and not being part of the discussions around the group’s overall management strategy, the group members said they were apprehensive over how they could continue as the NewJeans in its current form.

“Personally, the way that ADOR used to run was the business management and creative production was not separated…factors that played and worked in harmony with each other,” Hanni said in English. “It was our way of working and it was our CEO’s way of producing NewJeans’ content which a lot of you were able to enjoy and appreciate. But now that she’s no longer CEO, these factors that should have continued to work together in harmony are now being seen as two different areas of work.”

On Aug. 27, HYBE announced that Min would step down as ADOR CEO and shared in a statement to Billboard that ADOR “will restructure to separate its production from management — a multi-label practice that has been standard across all other HYBE labels but was previously not implemented at ADOR.”

Haerin also claimed that NewJeans learned of Min’s dismissal through the news instead of through their company, saying it “made it clear to us that they don’t respect us at all” and led them to feel that statements about HYBE’s plans for NewJeans were empty promises. (In April, HYBE shared a statement with Billboard claiming that the company “will continue to provide attententive [sic] mental and emotional care to the company’s artist NewJeans…the company will meet legal representatives of the respective members as soon as possible to discuss the plan to protect the act.”)

Beyond these specific incidents, the five NewJeans members also spoke at length of their worries about losing their team identity and wariness that HYBE has their best interests in mind while insisting that Min return to work with them.

“Even before debuting as NewJeans and through all of the time that we spent together with Min Hee-jin all of us felt that the music we wanted to make and the kind of world we wanted to build together, our vision, was similar in so many ways,” 19-year-old Danielle said. “Putting our sincere effort into something is only possible because of the people that we’re working with have trust in each other and have that same vision.

“Min Hee-jin is not only the person that produces our music, but someone who makes NewJeans who we are; she discusses even the smallest details with us and explains them in ways that we can understand clearly. NewJeans has a distinct color and tone, and this was created with Min Hee-jin. She is integral to NewJeans’ identity and we all feel that she is irreplaceable.”

Hanni later spoke to HYBE’s alleged directive that Min wrap up all her creative work in the next two months following her dismissal as CEO.

“Like how we have our own and individual thoughts and feelings, we have the choice to choose how we will react to each situation and we are not going to follow HYBE’s every order blindly,” Hanni said in English. “We are more than well aware that this is getting in the way of our work and that we should be treated much much better than how we are right now. And it’s very hard to believe that they are truly sincere about wanting to help us continue, to be able to continue to work with our Min Hee-jin.

“Despite her being in the midst of all this current legal conflict, she’s expected to plan and creatively produce our future endeavors in just only two months, which I personally think makes no sense at all. We don’t want to hear all the empty words of how they’re going to help us continue to work with Min Hee-jin. And all we want is this legal conflict to be resolved and have our working environment returned back to normal the way it was before.”

NewJeans’ eldest member, Minji, 20, ended the livestream with a direct message to HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk, saying, “We hope chairman Bang and HYBE make a wise decision to restore ADOR to its original state by the 25th.”

HYBE has not yet responded to Billboard‘s request for comment about the livestream.

The now five-month-long conflict began in April, when HYBE launched an audit of ADOR and asked Min to step down as CEO. The K-pop giant later reported Min to police, alleging the executive had committed a breach of trust. That led Min to respond by holding an emotionally charged press conference during which she denied claims that she had usurped NewJeans’ management and doubled down on claims that HYBE subsidiary BELIFT LAB had plagiarized NewJeans with its own girl group, ILLIT, and that another HYBE subsidiary, Source Music, had broken its promise to debut NewJeans as its first girl group, among other claims. Min was subsequently sued by both BELIFT and Source for defamation due to those comments, riling up several K-pop fanbases against her.

In May, a court ruled that Min could legally stay in her position. But in the past month, a former female ADOR employee accused Min of covering up her reportsof sexual harassment from a male superior. While HYBE’s own internal investigation reportedly concluded that the incidents didn’t constitute harassment, Min allegedly verbally abused the employee for speaking out — a claim that Min has denied, instead alleging that the issue arose from the former employee’s job performance and salary negotiations.

On Aug. 27, HYBE announced that it had appointed an ADOR director with human resources expertise, Ju Young Kim, as the label’s new CEO, and that Min would step down from her role but remain as an in-house director.