Alright, back on the HYBE/ADOR mess grind, as more stuff has recently come out in advance of the October 11 hearing on Min Hee Jin’s injunction. This time it relates to the previously stated accusation of mistreatment by a manager of another group where they were instructed to ignore NewJeans member Hanni, one that was denied by new ADOR CEO Kim Joo Young as lacking proof.
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Alright, so the mothers of the NewJeans members gave an interview to Ilgan Sports about that incident of workplace harassment*, claiming that HYBE effectively covered up the alleged incident where Hanni was disrespected by a manager of another group.
*Emotional harassment is specifically what they would be claiming, I think.
They say that they requested an investigation into the incident in June, but claim they were given the runaround until ADOR came back to say the footage was deleted. They suggested a recovery attempt but were told it was difficult, but then later it turned out not all the footage was gone as CCTV of Hanni greeting the other group exists, but don’t show what happens after.
When questioned about where the rest of the footage went, they say theywere told somebody who resigned had deleted the footage and they didn’t know why. So they requested records of the complaint and investigation, and claim that they showed ADOR asking BELIFT LAB to find the CCTV. THey expressed skepticism in effectively the accused investigating themselves.
The mothers concluded by saying the CEO still hasn’t addressed issues like NewJeans’ unauthorized leaks of their trainee videos to the media. They claim the CEO basically warned them off suing as there could be a lack of evidence and to wait for the fan complaint results to show instead.
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BELIFT LAB then released an emphatic denial that the event ever occurred, saying that a review of CCTV footage and interviews with ILLIT members and staff confirmed this (they named them in the response, not me) after a complaint on June 13th. They say the only interaction happened on May 27, which showed ILLIT bowing and greeting them, then it was reviewed with Min Hee Jin‘s side on August 14, after which the claimed there must be more. However, there’s a 30-day storage of CCTV footage that had expired.
They emphasize that staff is instructed to use honorifics with artists, which is inconsistent with the workplace harassment complaint, and that CCTV doesn’t record audio anyway so the incident wouldn’t be able to be confirmed through those means regardless. They requested an apology from ADOR and the member but haven’t received a response.
They also provided a timeline:
- June 13 – Complaint received, in-person interviews, review of CCTV from May 14 to June 13
- June 19 – Results shared with ADOR’s board and NewJeans’ parents that incident did not occur
- August 14 – Joint review of footage held, at which point questions are brought up about the rest of the footage
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For those confused, I don’t blame you. Basically, I think the core dispute is that NewJeans/Min Hee Jin weren’t shown footage until August 14, by which point it was too late to get the full CCTV video from the incident. That led to their side claiming they intentionally delayed showing it to them and that footage was deleted, facilitated by the fact that they were investigating themselves. BELIFT simply deny this, saying it didn’t happen.
In terms of the dispute itself, I mean we’re basically never going to find out the truth as long as both sides hold their ground, though the fact that the last time an allegation like this was made the explanation was Bang Si Hyuk was face blind inherently makes you wonder. Perhaps a potential middle ground is that given the ongoing lawsuits, they were instructed to not make contact with each other for legal fears, and this was an unfortunate miscommunication byproduct or something to that effect.
Which leads into my main takeaway, which is actually that HYBE itself is a mess and needs to unfuck itself. Every story, no matter which side ends up looking worse out of it, seems to raise questions about how HYBE does business. Like even if BELIFT are correct, structuring the complaint process so the accused are effectively investigating themselves is only going to raise suspicion even if everything really is above board. The problems with former ADOR structure and Min Hee Jin have obviously come up as well, but those weren’t an issue as long as the money was rolling in until this mess. I dunno, the management of the multi-label thing seems to lead to a lot of people/fans being unhappy with it.
Either way, the legal resolutions to this honestly can’t get here fast enough.
English (US) · 