Over a week ago, ADOR and Min Hee Jin hit back at Dispatch over them supposedly distorting her text messages, especially with regards to the sexual harassment/power harassment allegation by an employee of ADOR against one of the executives. Now though, the employee in question has allegedly spoken out and detailed her experience with Min Hee Jin in a long statement.
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The statement begins with them identifying themselves and talking about how they are scared to come forward, but feel like they must defend themselves due to the lies that Min Hee Jin was peddling.
As CEO Min Hee Jin mentioned in a KakaoTalk conversation with Executive A (To quote, ‘If this gets out, it will only make things worse for B. Does B even have the courage to do that?’), I am nothing but a regular employee, lacking in courage. She was right.
The thought of confronting the company CEO who is a star producer with decades of experience in the entertainment industry and who is a skilled veteran in media relations was unthinkable for a mere employee like me. Even now, as I’m writing this, I’m terrified.
However, I cannot tolerate CEO Min Hee Jin anymore for only having defended Executive A while having been abusive in her language and behavior towards the employees working for her. She also went public with the KakaoTalk messages of a former company employee without any consent, in the sole interest of revealing her own grievances. Moreover, CEO Min Hee Jin’s numerous lies, such as claiming that she maintained neutrality, or that the insults were not directed at me, and that the KakaoTalk messages were edited, are unacceptable.
The employee explains that she wanted to stay out of the spotlight despite the HYBE/ADOR feud, but because Dispatch outed the conversations and Min Hee Jin started outing more details to victimize herself, she decided she had to speak out.
Please note that after my resignation in April, when the two companies started clashing, I was investigated by HYBE under suspicion, simply because I was a former employee of CEO Min Hee Jin and Executive A. Several media outlets reached out to me, wanting to cover the issues I had raised, but I refused them all as I did not want to become further embroiled in legal disputes between CEO Min Hee Jin and HYBE. I have been living quietly since then.
However, when the details of my case were revealed through Dispatch’s exposé, I was profoundly shocked. The headline contained expressions that were deeply hurtful, and as the person directly involved in the incident, I was able to immediately grasp the context. Nonetheless, know that I double- and triple-checked to confirm the facts before writing this.
Before I get to the main point, I also want to address that right after I reported Executive A, CEO Min Hee Jin and Executive A directed all sorts of abusive language at me and interfered with the investigation. Even though their remarks were made behind the scenes, the level of personal insult was so severe that I thought they might end up feeling at least a little regretful.
I was once a fan of the CEO. I spent tens of thousands of KRW at the Weverse NewJeans Shop and sent polite, affectionate messages in hundreds of KakaoTalk exchanges after resigning for the sake of ADOR. But my feelings and efforts have been trampled and deceived.
Despite CEO Min Hee Jin’s claims that the truth should not be distorted or edited, she has not only distorted the truth herself, but also used private KakaoTalk conversations from after my resignation for her own benefit. Hence, I am writing something I thought I would never have to write my whole life.
I feel like just her testimony in this regard is plenty damning for everybody involved in this on its own, but Min Hee Jin in particular for using her as a shield despite the treatment detailed.
The employee then goes into details about the allegations, clarifying that it was both sexual harassment and power harassment that she suffered at the hands of the executive, and that she wasn’t the only one who suffered power harassment. She says he was constantly critical and badgered employees even outside of work hours, providing examples of being harassed and pressured unreasonably
She points out that she was disappointed by the HYBE ruling of just a reprimand, but endured it because she was leaving soon anyway. However, she found out that Min Hee Jin did not give the executive even a stern warning, but instead insulted her as seen in the texts that were leaked, calling her a pejoratives and framing her as a shitty worker.
The employee also accuses Min Hee Jin of doing what she accused Dispatch of doing.
What greatly disappointed me, to the point where I felt compelled to speak out, was CEO Min Hee Jin’s use of the very manipulation and distortion she had criticized: The public disclosure of KakaoTalk messages without consent, and her denial of the abuse directed at me in the Dispatch exposé, claiming it was aimed at someone else. Additionally, she used the reason of my resignation and its context to spread lies to the public. It is unforgivable that, despite having wronged someone she once worked with, she exploited the situation and never offered a single apology. Everyone makes mistakes, and when mistakes occur, acknowledging and apologizing swiftly is the right thing to do.
Astutely, she presumes what Min Hee Jin’s response might be — they were casual convos, her usual — and heads it off. The employee suspects Min Hee Jin had a role in the investigation and that she has never apologized for what happened. She also states that rather than separating the victim from the accused, she instead constantly tried to force them together and put her under duress.
When I was communicating with the HYBE HR team, CEO Min Hee Jin made every effort to frame the situation as if I had filed a retaliatory complaint due to incompetence. CEO Min Hee Jin used every form of abuse and insult, calling me derogatory names such as ‘a little f*cker,’ ‘psycho lunatic,’ ‘crazy b*tch,’ and ‘dummy to be taught a lesson.’ She encouraged Executive A to hire a lawyer and sue me for false accusations, and she used her position to nullify my complaint through various means.
Therefore, I would like to ask again whether CEO Min Hee Jin’s claim of maintaining a neutral stance as the head of the company and taking appropriate steps to mediate sounds accurate at all.
Concluding, the employee encourages Min Hee Jin to tell the truth lest she be exposed to further actions (likely legal) and that she just wants an apology.
Now, I wait for a sincere apology from CEO Min Hee Jin and Executive A. I hope there will be no further mistakes of misrepresentation as there were before. Please correct any misinformation with specific details. And should you continue to claim that my statement is manipulative and false, I will take additional steps to continue revealing the truth.
Just to cover all bases, it needs to be said that while this was posted seemingly anonymously on Instagram, the alleged victim did provide a KakaoTalk screenshot of an exchange as evidence it’s her. Not to say that there’s anything about this that is even remotely unbelievable.
Obviously, the HYBE/ADOR stuff has been polarized from the get go, but the key thing here should be the victim and her mistreatment by everybody involved. HYBE either didn’t do their due diligence on this or is fine to cover it up when they were on better terms with Min Hee Jin, while Dispatch (and HYBE) didn’t seem to care much about the victim as much as scoring points in a corporate dispute, thus ultimately forcing the victim to out her experience.
Yet it’s Min Hee Jin who continues to come off worst for obvious reasons. Quite frankly, her response to Dispatch never really did much for me anyway. While she aimed to downplay her role in a sexual harassment case, nothing refuted her other treatment of female workers or behavior in the workplace, so she still came off bad to anybody reasonable. However, now that there’s victim testimony confirming it was about both sexual harassment and power harassment, and that she effectively facilitated both against the victim just to protect her executive or herself or her company, it’s hard not to conclude that she
In a way it’s a bit of an ironic way for everybody to find out she sucks. She built a cult of personality around this narrative that she’s a humble female employee fighting back against the big corpo despite being in line for hundreds of millions of dollars and the CEO of a company herself. Now though, she’s (allegedly) been found doing worse to a woman employee who is actually in the powerless situation she has tried to cosplay as throughout this saga.
Hope the victim gets her apology, and hell, I hope she gets compensation too. I also wonder if this might embolden other creatives or employees to speak up against her, as the reaction from creatives in the industry has largely been supportive so far.