After both sides of the HYBE/ADOR dispute have revealed their sides to the public recently, ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin gave an interview to Ilgan Sports, in which she denies seeking independence from HYBE, claims the audit and reports are all retaliatory in nature, and questions the timing of this leaking to the media.
Speaking on management rights, she dismisses those claims, saying that it would be impractical anyway.
I have never met with any investors to seize HYBE’s management rights (in ADOR). I have never tried to steal executive rights like HYBE claims. How can I do that with my 18% equity (in ADOR)? Because HYBE has 80% equity, it is impossible for me to seize the management rights. It is also impossible for ADOR to leave HYBE without their consent. It is hard to understand why HYBE is claiming the impossible.
In fact, she says the only reason this is being brought out is that she raised the issue internally, and questioned the timing of this coming out.
It is because I brought up internal issues a month ago. Once I brought up several issues that came to light after ILLIT copied NewJeans, I suddenly received notice that HYBE was trying to terminate me.
I am surprised by HYBE for doing this during a very important time for NewJeans. All of this happened within 4 days of making a complaint. I also wonder has there ever been a case that a company publishes articles during an audit before it has even yielded results? What was the reason that they needed to make these false articles that nothing to do with what I was actually complaining about?
While the audit has a response date of today, she claims that was done after her internal complaint had a response date of tomorrow. She explained that if money was the goal, she wouldn’t have gone through with the complaint to begin with, and says of the FIFTY FIFTY comparisons that she wouldn’t do foolish things like that. Min Hee Jin also states her concerns with being attacked as an individual by the company over this, framing her fight against HYBE as David Vs. Goliath.
So that is apparently her response to the arguably more pertinent issues about the likely forthcoming legal action.
Though as you’ll soon see it doesn’t really address everything she’s being accused of.
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Prior to this, it was reported in Seoul Economic Daily that the audit was sent to Min Hee Jin and two “deputy” executives, and that HYBE had found circumstantial evidence of planning to take over management rights through outside investment.
Most notably, this plan would be executed in part by manipulating public opinion insofar as getting people to believe they were unreasonably demanding with ADOR. Other than the allegation that they leaked information to outside sources, it’s alleged that they had tried to create a bad impression of HYBE through mediaplaying about their other artists, and had already approached the parents of NewJeans to convince them of the direction. The report claims that the auditing process had revealed the information about the artists were leaked, including pre-debut content and health information.
The report also alleges that ADOR hired staff on behest of outside influence, and personal information on employees and HR info was leaked. As for how HYBE was made aware of this, it reportedly came from a whistleblower and the audit was a response to that.
Shortly after, Dispatch released their own report, saying the Min Hee Jin has been seeking independence for a while now. Citing industry insiders, they say she had been coveting management rights, confirm that she had obtained confidential information, and say HYBE already has a significant amount of evidence against Min Hee Jin. Additionally, they have evidence that she abused employees.
The inclusion of mistreating employees was interesting, because Min Hee Jin’s past reviews as a boss have resurfaced in light of this. BLIND is a career community site and verifies employee status so they can discuss the company, and she got some scathing reviews.
In response to a non-employee speculating that she was cool to work with, employees responded, “That’s what I thought too… Until I joined the company LOL.” and “I don’t know about ADOR’s structure, but as someone working for the domain side, I was left speechless…”. People were surprised, but one response was absolute, “She’s the worst villain in the office… She’s really a crazy b*tch. ADOR or people working for the domain side are probably stunned.” Workers from her former company, SM Entertainment, also chimed in, saying “I’ll never ever ever work with her again even if I die.” and “Oh, you too? Me too. I don’t even want to see her face.”
These are all from 2022 and 2023, well before this controversy broke, though I will note that these could be cherry picked by community sites. Regardless, at the very least it’s clear that a good amount of people had issues with her.
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You know, I didn’t think this could get uglier than corporate warfare between two of the most high-profile people in K-pop right now, but if the reports about planting negative stories and leaking personal info are true, that goes into an entirely different seriously direction and violation of privacy.
Additionally, if the intent was for ADOR to separate themselves, then the investors they are talking about had to be powerful to get away from HYBE. So it could get even messier if they are revealed, depending on who they were.
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