Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
It has really been a rather blessed month-plus without major news on the HYBE/ADOR front, and I really thank them for that. However, today it’s another lawsuit to be added to those that I reviewed a few weeks ago. Yes, now Source Music is suing Min Hee Jin for 500 million won in damages, alleging defamation, insult, and disruption of business.
The lawsuit reportedly revolves around three points of dispute: 1) Min Hee Jin claiming she personally casted NewJeans. 2) Her claim that HYBE promised her the debut of the company’s first girl group. 3) Her claim that Source Music neglected the NewJeans members.
Furthermore, they say that LE SSERAFIM became the target of malicious comments due to Min Hee Jin’s claims about their debut circumstances and impact on NewJeans. The report says Source gathered evidence and submitted it, specifically reiterating the HYBE’s stance that NewJeans’ debut was delayed due to Min Hee Jin preparing ADOR as a company and that Min Hee Jin acknowledged LE SSERAFIM would debut first.
Note: I believe all of these claims stem from her first press conference and the back-and-forth that followed (1/2/3), all of which were initiated by what was likely HYBE’s side of things coming out in a Dispatch report.
The report also says that the compensation could increase depending on the damage calculation against LE SSERAFIM (should Source win).
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Fans are predictably already arguing the merits of this lawsuit, but it strikes me as another one of those things (like the BELIFT LAB lawsuit) that is a bit of a sideshow to all the back-and-forth in the main event.
One part of this that’s interesting will be seeing if Source can prove damages, and should they be able to, how those are calculated by the court. Because unfortunately, I do remember posting about LE SSERAFIM’s hate train (twice) that was already ongoing for at least a couple weeks before all this started up, and I’m honestly unsure how they’d show what damage was caused by which scandal and all that. Saying that the hate increased due to Min Hee Jin in a observational sense is different than being able to show it in court, after all. Of course, that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves as I have no idea if Source will win. And on that front, I’ll take the seemingly now-controversial stance of waiting for the result, but until then there’s nothing we didn’t know that’s come out from this.
That said, Source could pique my interest by simply going the BELIFT route and releasing a 30-minute video about it. I wouldn’t recommend it from a PR standpoint, but from a providing-Asian-Junkie-with-content standpoint, I absolutely would.
