Can HYBE keep NewJeans? Girl group serves up official list of demands to agency.

The five NewJeans members sent the official document to ADOR on Wednesday, notifying the company that the group’s members would seek to terminate their exclusive contracts with the agency should their requests be turned down. The company has now been given until Nov. 27 to decide whether or not to comply.

Eight major demands were made by NewJeans, mostly touching on the recent controversies surrounding the group, such as punishing the person who wrote internal documents reading, “Get rid of New[Jeans] and start a new road map,” and receiving an official apology from the manager who told other artists to ignore NewJeans member Hanni.

But it all comes back to the beginning of the whole fiasco — ordering the return of Min Hee-jin as CEO of ADOR.

“Please return ADOR to what it was from the moment when NewJeans signed its official contract until March 2024 when we were happy,” the members said in the document. “We miss the NewJeans that was so full of dreams about the music, stage and creativity, which we were going to show along with [former] CEO Min Hee-jin.”

NewJeans made the same demand on Sept. 11 through a YouTube livestream, with ADOR attempting to compromise by extending Min’s term as a board member for another three years until November 2027. But it did not give the CEO seat back to her. The girl group hadn’t reacted to the measure, until now.

In response, ADOR remained vague, without stating any specifics. “We have received the papers this morning and are currently studying the specific terms,” ADOR said in an official statement on Thursday. “We will get through this wisely and try our best to sustainably continue with the artists.”

A bleak future

Chances are, realistically, slim to none for HYBE bringing back Min as CEO — meaning that months of messy lawsuits are in order.

“HYBE’s whole purpose has been to take Min Hee-jin out of the picture, never mind giving back her control of ADOR,” an industry insider close to the matter told the Korea JoongAng Daily under the condition of anonymity. “It would be up to the HYBE executives’ minds, but as of now, it seems like a legal battle is inevitable. If they wanted to make up, they would have done so by now.”

HYBE CEO Lee Jae-sang already said that “calm and principled measures” would be taken after the livestream, reaffirming that the company would not go back on its decision to remove Min as CEO. Should the company continue its stance, then NewJeans could only resort to filing for an injunction on their exclusive contracts with ADOR.

A lose-lose situation

Whichever side the court takes, an injunction case would end up with both parties injured, as seen in previous situations.

Contrary to official criminal or civil suits, which can take up to years for a ruling, injunction results typically come out within months but with the same legally binding power. If the court sides with the agency, then the artist has to return to the company or pay the company to let them go. But if the court sides with the artists, they can sign with another agency without having to pay out their original company.

But, however quick the court decision, the muddy back-and-forth between the agency and artists leaves tainted names and angered fans, some of whom leave the fandom due to the fatigue.

Girl group Loona split into two new groups and two solo acts after the members won a battle against former agency BlockBerry Creative. Boy band Omega X became known more as “the group that fought its agency” instead of its actual music, ever since its battle with former agency Spire Entertainment began in 2022.

Having been through conflict with TVXQ back in 2009, SM Entertainment was quick to reconcile with the members of boy band EXO in June last year. Three members of EXO — Chen, Baekhyun and Xiumin — threatened legal action against SM Entertainment if it failed to meet their demands, and SM Entertainment responded in 18 days, changing the terms of their contracts to avoid a lawsuit from the three artists.

 

Back to basics

A legal outcome is always hard to predict, but more so for NewJeans’ case. The court took Min’s side once in May but turned her case down in October, and the court’s tendency to favor artists over agencies in injunction cases seemed to be overturned when it ruled against the former Fifty Fifty members last year.

Making things even more difficult is that NewJeans’ demands bring the court case into never-before-seen territory. Artists and agencies usually fight over profit shares or working conditions in court, never on who sits or doesn’t sit as the agency’s CEO or whether the company truly tried to neglect the group.

Rather than using the energy to wager which party will win, the industry can use the opportunity to think back on the “fundamentals of K-pop” as Min repeatedly emphasized since the brawl broke out, according to pop music critic Kim Zakka.

“The essence of the issue comes down to how the largest entertainment company in K-pop forgot the fundamentals of the genre — how it mixed up the creative side with business and ended up hurting the industry as a whole,” he said.

“This case is a chance to look back on how purely emotional decisions can alter the course of a company and the failure to remember that the industry is all about moving people’s hearts, not getting bigger numbers of higher achievements.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]