Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After both sides of the HYBE/ADOR dispute have revealed their sides to the public recently, ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin gave an interview in which she denies seeking independence from HYBE, claims the audit and reports in the media are all retaliatory in nature, and questions the timing of the conflict leaking to the press.
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Speaking on wanting management rights of ADOR, she dismisses those claims, saying that it would be impractical anyway.
“I have never met with any investors to seize HYBE’s management rights (in ADOR). I have never tried to steal executive rights like HYBE claims. How can I do that with my 18% equity (in ADOR)? Because HYBE has 80% equity, it is impossible for me to seize the management rights. It is also impossible for ADOR to leave HYBE without their consent. It is hard to understand why HYBE is claiming the impossible.”
In fact, she says the only reason this is being brought out is that she raised the ILLIT/NewJeans plagiarism issue internally, and questioned the timing of this conflict coming out.
“It is because I brought up internal issues a month ago. Once I brought up several issues that came to light after ILLIT copied NewJeans, I suddenly received notice that HYBE was trying to terminate me.”
“I am surprised by HYBE for doing this during a very important time for NewJeans. All of this happened within 4 days of making a complaint. I also wonder has there ever been a case that a company publishes articles during an audit before it has even yielded results? What was the reason that they needed to make these false articles that nothing to do with what I was actually complaining about?”
While HYBE’s audit has a response date of today, she says it was only filed after her internal complaint, which has a response date from the company of tomorrow. Essentially, she’s saying the audit is like their response to it.
Min Hee Jin also explained that if money was the goal, she wouldn’t have gone through with the complaint to begin with, and says of the FIFTY FIFTY comparisons that she wouldn’t do foolish things like that since we know how that is going.
“If money had been my goal then I would have never complained to HYBE. I think HYBE is trying to frame me as someone who is trying to steal management rights. But FIFTY FIFTY’s situation has set a precedent. I would never do something so stupid.”
She goes on to state her concerns with being attacked as an individual by the company over this, framing her fight against HYBE as like David Vs. Goliath.
And so that is apparently Min Hee Jin’s response to the arguably more pertinent business side of the issues regarding the likely forthcoming legal action.
Though as you’ll soon see, it doesn’t address everything she’s being accused of.
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Prior to that interview, it was reported that HYBE’s audit was sent to Min Hee Jin and two “deputy” executives at ADOR, and that HYBE had found circumstantial evidence of plans to take over management rights of the subsidiary through outside investment.
Most notably, this plan would be executed in part by manipulating public opinion through getting people to believe HYBE were being unreasonably demanding with ADOR. Other than the previously mentioned allegation that they leaked information to outside sources, it’s alleged that they tried to create a negative impression of HYBE through media-playing about their other artists, and had already approached the parents of NewJeans to convince them of their direction. The report claims that the auditing process had revealed personal information about the artists were leaked, including pre-debut content and health information.
The report also alleges that ADOR hired staff on behest of outside influence, and the personal information of employees was leaked as well. As for how HYBE was made aware of this, it reportedly came from a whistleblower and the audit was a response to that.
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Shortly after that emerged, Dispatch released their own report, saying the Min Hee Jin has been seeking independence for a while now. Citing industry insiders, they say she had been coveting management rights of ADOR, confirm that she had obtained confidential information on HYBE, and say HYBE already has a significant amount of evidence against Min Hee Jin. Additionally, they report HYBE have evidence that she abused employees.
The inclusion of allegedly mistreating employees was interesting, because Min Hee Jin’s past reviews as a boss have resurfaced in light of this mess. BLIND is a career community site and verifies employee status so they can discuss their experiences with companies, and she got some scathing reviews there.
In response to a non-employee speculating that she was cool to work with, employees responded, “That’s what I thought too… until I joined the company, lol.” and “I don’t know about ADOR’s structure, but as someone working for the domain side, I was left speechless…“. People were surprised, but one response was absolute, “She’s the worst villain in the office… she’s really a crazy bitch. ADOR or people working for the domain side are probably stunned.” Workers from her former company, SM Entertainment, also chimed in, saying, “I’ll never ever ever work with her again even if I die.” and “Oh, you too? Me too. I don’t even want to see her face.“
These are all from 2022 and 2023, well before this controversy broke, though I will note that these could be cherrypicked examples by community sites. Regardless, at the very least, it’s clear that a good amount of people had issues with her.
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You know, I didn’t think this could get any uglier than all-out corporate warfare between the biggest K-pop company and its biggest subsidiary, but if the reports about planting negative stories and leaking personal info are true, that goes into an entirely different personal direction and there’s obvious issues with violation of privacy.
Additionally, if it’s true that the intent was for ADOR to separate themselves in the way described, then the outside investors they are talking about had to be powerful to have any chance of getting away from HYBE. So it could get even messier if they are revealed, depending on who they were.
