Because I’m an idiot, I assumed that the court decision on the new Min Hee Jin injunction would be coming today. No no, it’s just the start of the hearing, so we got a bunch of that news to cover as the latest in the HYBE/ADOR mess, plus a reply from NewJeans‘ mothers on the Hanni situation.
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Okay, starting with the Hanni issue again, the mothers responded directly as they said ADOR’s CEO refused to do so. They clarified that the greeting was never an issue, it was always the manager directing the group to ignore her.
A said, “Belift Lab’s claim that this is an ‘innocuous greeting issue between labels’ is completely missing the point. Hanni never complained about not being greeted. The problem is that another artist’s manager told them to ignore Hanni.”
They also say they had never seen the CCTV video before the August 14 meeting, so any allegation they changed their mind is false.
The mothers go on to claim the incident in the video was the incorrect one and the security guard said that video of the incident in question was deleted.
“When we first raised the issue, we clearly explained that the incident happened when Hanni was alone. However, the video HYBE showed Hanni on August 14 was of her with the ADOR manager and Danielle.”
“When Hanni viewed the footage, a security guard told her that footage showing the artist walking past without greeting had been deleted because they believed it wasn’t necessary to keep since the greeting occurred earlier. The guard couldn’t even make eye contact while explaining this to Hanni, visibly shaken.”
They clarify that it wasn’t some external security company but an internal HYBE department.
Okay, so yeah, I was confused as to why some are focused on an alleged greeting or not. Most would likely think it’s dumb if it was about a greeting, agreed. But the picture they’re basically trying to paint is one of management trying to isolate and ignore them (presumably on behalf of HYBE). Hence the focus on the “ignore her” instruction from the manager and not the greeting from the group. That much seemed obvious to me.
Meanwhile, a lot of sites are surprisingly framing that alleged security guard interaction as a smoking gun confession or something that HYBE deleted the video as a coverup. That would be closer to true if the security guard testified or something, but for now, it’s just a claim from the mothers. Do I completely believe a huge K-pop company could be vindictive towards any “troublesome” artist? Absolutely, but for now it’s not the gotcha moment it’s framed as.
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Alright, now onto the actual court stuff with Min Hee Jin trying to get back into power at ADOR via injunction. Again while I thought today would come with a decision, unfortunately it was just the start of the lawyers fighting.
Other than previously covered stuff, Min Hee Jin submitted new evidence that BELIFT LAB had plagiarized NewJeans for ILLIT, submitting evidence that a whistleblower came forward to say ILLIT’s creative director requested NewJeans’ planning stage project proposal and that ILLIT’s project proposal was identical, with the motive for coming forward being that they were upset BELIFT LAB continues to deny the plagiarism.
BELIFT continued to do that, explaining that ILLIT’s plans were finalized on July 21, while the informant shared the NewJeans plan on August 28. In a statement they say Min Hee Jin’s claim is false and they plan to submit evidence to the court showing such.
Meanwhile, HYBE explained that the sexual harassment case was the reason Min Hee Jin had to be replaced as CEO, though they did later state that their own investigation cleared the case.
HYBE stated “The investigation concluded that it could not be considered workplace bullying or sexual harassment” and Min Hee-jin’s side also stated that they “do not agree with B’s claims“.
But they say instead of preventing future incidents, she tried to get them to implement punishment for false accusations.
As far as the court itself goes, I was somewhat surprised by their comments, who seemed to dismiss a lot of the new information as irrelevant and a waste of time.
The court then pointed out, “It seems like (both sides) are making independent claims, so what problem does the legality and legitimacy of the dismissal, sexual harassment in the workplace, and taking New Jeans away have with this case?” and “What is regrettable about both sides is that there was an injunction on May 30, but they are repeating it again. It is a shame to waste precious argument time.”
They also said this could take until the end of October.
Okay, so as you should know by now, I typically don’t care about so-called plagiarism unless there’s like records of them trying to use the sound/concept/whatever or it’s literally identical. Well, Min Hee Jin’s evidence that they used NewJeans as the blueprint is an interesting wrinkle, and we’ll see if the court accepts that after BELIFT submit evidence of their own.
Regarding the handling of the sexual harassment allegation, I agree that it’s grounds for removal as CEO. Again though, the problem they run into is that HYBE themselves cleared the case when Min Hee Jin was in their good graces, so I’m not sure if that argument is going to work even if they do reverse course now (especially when the person who did that basically got a promotion to ADOR CEO). That doesn’t absolve Min Hee Jin, but legally it appears to be treated as a dubious argument.
Based on the court’s comments, things certainly seem to be trending towards a similar result as before barring new evidence, but we shall see. Also, even if she is reappointed, they could try to simply fire her again, I think.
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I hope we’ll be able to chill with the arguments in the media until the decision, but I know better than to expect that by now.
