To put it mildly, HYBE’s relationship with Min Hee-jin, ex-CEO of the company’s label subsidiary ADOR, has been a rocky one this year — and the saga doesn’t appear to be over yet.
Months after the K-pop giant announced it had launched an investigation into ADOR — home to chart-topping girl group NewJeans — and its CEO Min, the dispute has devolved into an ongoing war of he-said-she-saids complete with teary press conferences, accusations of plagiarism, numerous additional lawsuits, and both Korean and international fans fiercely taking sides.
The crux of the dispute revolves HYBE’s claims that Min is trying to hijack control of ADOR and NewJeans, among other accusations. The feud has since grown to rope in the K-pop groups ILLIT and LE SSERAFIM, in the process becoming one of K-pop’s most public industry disputes to date — and it’s only gotten more tangled and complicated as the months have gone on. To outsiders, the pitched battle provides a peek into the increasingly competitive and high-stakes nature of the South Korean entertainment landscape.
As HYBE and Min fight it out in courtrooms and through press statements, the five members of NewJeans — Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein — have also been greatly affected. In the saga’s most recent development, the girl group’s members voiced their concern for NewJeans’ future during a since-deleted livestream and demanded that Min be reinstated as ADOR’s CEO. “Seeing the people who have poured their lives into creating our work being treated this way makes it hard to understand how this could be happening,” Minji said during the livestream. “These incidents naturally make us question whether HYBE really cares about NewJeans.”
Below, check out a full timeline of every development in the ongoing dispute so far.
