K-pop giants beg public not to villainize agencies, NewJeans fans accuse them of taking HYBE’s side

The country’s five largest pop music organizations — the Korea Management Federation (KMF), the Korea Entertainment Producers’ Association (KEPA), the Record Label Industry Association of Korea (LIAK), the Recording Industry Association of Korea (RIAK) and the Korea Music Content Association (KMCA) — held a rare joint press conference to address the growth of the so-called tampering issue in light of the conflict taking place between the members of NewJeans, ADOR and the agency’s parent company HYBE.

Tampering refers to the act of signing with a different agency while still under contract with another agency. The issue surfaced in 2023 when the former members of girl group Fifty Fifty tried to sue their own agency Attrakt so that they could break off their contracts and sign with a new company.

K-pop organizations had previously warned that should the NewJeans members walk away from ADOR and sign with a different agency, the action could be seen as the result of tampering. The members, who are now calling themselves NJZ, are reportedly in talks with BANA Entertainment. The company has refused to confirm the news.

“The issue of tampering is not something restricted to a few major agencies, but it is spreading across the industry like a plague, even to the indie music scene,” Steve Choi, secretary general of KMCA, said.

“This industry is built on the mutual trust between agencies and artists. The standard exclusive contracts bind us like a team in a sports game, not in the employer-employee relationship that people mistake us for. But that connection is being threatened by companies, producers, investors and even fans that convince artists it’s fine to break a contract.”

According to Choi Jae-woo, CEO of F&F Entertainment, it costs at least 1 billion won ($693,000) and up to 10 billion won to create one K-pop idol group. Agencies can only start paying their artists after they pay off the debt and the investors, but if artists break their contracts and sign with a different agency before turning a profit, the agency and its staff are left with no means of making income, the CEO says.

“An agency is the entity that takes all the risk when debuting a new idol group,” he said. “We start by insuring, feeding and training the artists and take care of marketing, promoting and producing their music. We are not in a boss-subordinate relationship. We are two equal partners that get through a business, but the prejudice against the agencies makes it difficult for us to continue our businesses.”

The conference came a week after a statement released last week by the five organizations, which accused the NewJeans members and their producer Min Hee-jin for overturning the very foundations of the K-pop industry.

Thursday’s speakers emphasized that the statement was not specifically directed at NewJeans, but at the growing trend in K-pop as a whole where artists opt to leave their agencies for other companies, discouraging the whole investor sentiment of the industry.

Bunnies, the official fan club of NewJeans, still criticized the organizations for “fighting on behalf of HYBE” ahead of the court hearing set to take place next month.

“The HYBE-ADOR incident is the result of a parent company’s nonsensical violation of contract with its subsidiary, not tampering,” the fan club said in a statement.

“HYBE abused its position as a major shareholder of its subsidiary, thereby interfering with the independence and diversity of its labels. It also violated the rights of producers, creators and artists and continues to disrupt the sustainability of K-pop. None of this would have happened if HYBE had not violated the contract.”

“If the five organizations, including the KMF, truly care about the sustainability of K-pop, then they should not be taking the side of HYBE and ADOR, even before a court ruling, but should start by addressing the real ails of the industry, including the power abuse of agencies and agencies colluding with entertainment media to attack artists,” added the statement.

The NewJeans members are set for two court hearings, one on March 7 regarding an injunction ADOR filed to prevent the five singers from signing independent commercial contracts, and one on April 3 regarding whether the contract between the two parties had been terminated legally.
 
The five singers are legally represented by Shin & Kim, the law firm that also represents Min. Details about the members’ new agency remain undisclosed, but the members said they were “also getting a new agent soon” in an Instagram livestream on Feb. 7.

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