HYBE Responds To ADOR Min Hee Jin’s Claims That They Favored LE SSERAFIM’s Debut Over NewJeans’
This article is part of our coverage of HYBE vs. ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin. You can read more and view the entire timeline here.
ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin previously claimed in her press conference that HYBE had originally promised her that the group she creates would be the first girl group to debut under HYBE. This was meant to be NewJeans, for which she specifically recruited the members using this tagline of “Min Hee Jin’s group, the first girl group from HYBE.” She claims that the members and their families were drawn to this tagline and promise.
HYBE returned with an official response on April 26, 2024.
“Regarding the claim that we promised for her group to debut as the first girl group.
This is part of our response to her in detail, through an email on April 22, 2024. We think that the reason CEO Min claimed she never received an email from us is because she cannot make such untruthful and untrue claims, if she admits that she saw our response. This is the detailed response we sent her.
‘CEO Min, you are making a false claim that is based on your own unique and wrong interpretation of the process of how you separated from Source Music. The reason why NewJeans could not become the first girl group from HYBE was not because HYBE did not keep our promise. At that point in time, you requested to be able to have all the responsibilities in creating the group, and you strongly insisted that you would debut them under your own separate label. HYBE respected your opinion, so even though Source Music opposed this, we transferred the members to ADOR, and gave you a huge amount of ₩16.0 billion KRW (about $11.7 million USD) in support up to now, allowing you to debut NewJeans in the way that you wanted. In this process, because of contract transfers and creating the separate label, NewJEans’ debut was delayed, in no relation to HYBE’s intentions.
What’s more is that this process has also been admitted to by yourself. In your interview with one outlet on March 24, 2022, you claimed that you yourself oversaw the planning of the girl group project, and that you planned the launch in the third quarter of 2022. You mentioned ‘The young members would naturally feel the burden of a rushed debut. I did not want to make everyone feel rushed, so I decided to launch the group in the third quarter of 2022, as it is a reasonable time.’”
— HYBE
You can read more about her original claim below.
