Former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin fired back at HYBE on November 6, rejecting its claim that she drove NewJeans’ exclusive contracts and urging the company to stop blaming her for “everything.”
Her statement came a day after The New York Times published parts of the contracts, signed in 2022 when the members were minors. The report questioned their youth protection provisions, the cost burden on the members, and HYBE’s right to use the artists’ faces and voices after the contracts end.
HYBE responded on November 6, saying the youth protection clauses were in a separate annex and the contracts followed about three months of talks. It said Min and the ADOR vice president she appointed led the negotiations, and its legal team offered ways to ease the members’ costs that the vice president rejected.
Min’s side admitted taking part in the talks but said drafting key clauses and final approval belonged to HYBE. ADOR had no independent legal team then, her side said, so HYBE’s legal team wrote and revised the drafts. A contract needed sign-off from HYBE’s legal team, chief financial officer and chief executive officer, plus board approval from two HYBE appointees and the ADOR CEO.
“Designing a structure in which a subsidiary CEO cannot approve anything without the HYBE CEO’s approval, then creating a scapegoat to blame and issuing a statement, is like spitting in your own face,” Min’s side said. It also asked: “HYBE claims there is nothing wrong with the NewJeans contracts, yet at the same time says Min Hee-jin was behind all of them. Did HYBE issue its lengthy explanatory statement because it wanted to praise Min Hee-jin?”
In January 2024, Min asked for authority to sign key contracts at a January 25 meeting with then-HYBE CEO Park Ji-won and sent a shareholder agreement amendment on February 16. HYBE rejected the request, her side said, proving ADOR never held independent decision-making power. The members were also not charged for trainee expenses from their Source Music days, her side said.
The dispute is the latest front in the Min-HYBE conflict. Min was referred to prosecutors in October, and the two sides face an appeals court hearing on December 17. Min’s side closed by calling on HYBE to “move beyond the absurd ‘everything is Min Hee-jin’ theory and show responsibility and a willingness to improve for the future of K-pop.” HYBE has not yet responded.
