South Korean entertainment giant HYBE has claimed that it has found evidence that ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin is trying to “seize control” of the K-pop agency, while the latter has described such a move as “impossible”.
HYBE and Min Hee-jin have been in an increasingly public feud and power struggle over ADOR, the K-pop agency that’s best known as home to K-pop girl group NewJeans. The dispute was made public on Monday (April 22), after South Korean media reported that HYBE had launched an investigation against Min over alleged plans to take ownership of the label.
HYBE CEO Park Ji-won has since claimed that it has discovered evidence that Min and other ADOR execs had plans to “seize control of the company” in an email to employees, per Yonhap News Agency, adding that HYBE would “take appropriate actions after confirming more [of the truth] through this audit”.
Park added that HYBE’s current top priority is on “keeping its artists and other members safe”. The CEO also urged the management of NewJeans to “exercise extra caution to prevent the artists from being affected by this incident”.
In his email, Park also claimed that the alleged takeover plans were “set in motion long before [K-pop girl group] ILLIT made their debut”. Notably, Min Hee-jin had previously accused HYBE of copying the concepts and elements from NewJeans to create ILLIT, saying that her actions to “preserve” the achievements of NewJeans were being “twisted [into] attempts to usurp its management rights”.
In a separate interview with South Korean media, per CNA, Min also claimed that she has never “met with any investor to take over management rights of ADOR”. The music executive alleged that it is “impossible” for her to take control of the company so “without consent” from HYBE, which owns 80 per cent of the K-pop agency. Min owns 18 per cent of ADOR, with the remaining two per cent held by other executives of the company.
The ADOR CEO also alleged that she was “suddenly notified of my dismissal” after raising concerns over the similarities between ILLIT and NewJeans. “If money was the goal, we would not have raised these issues in the first place,” she claimed.
An unnamed deputy CEO of ADOR has also since claimed in an interview with Yonhap News Agency that the alleged evidence found by HYBE are nothing more than “personal reflections” about the “long-standing conflicts between Hybe and ADOR”. The deputy CEO also claimed the documents “have not been discussed with Min and other ADOR executives”.
“I deeply regret that mere personal reflections, which are no more than a ‘memo’ level of writing that has never been implemented, have been leaked to HYBE and portrayed in various news articles as if they were an internal document for a grand conspiracy, just because they were stored on a company laptop,” the music executive added.
Despite the current feud between HYBE and ADOR, NewJeans will reportedly still move ahead with their plans to release new music in May. Last month, the K-pop girl group announced the upcoming release of two single albums and a world tour in 2025.
Meanwhile, the stock price of HYBE has tumbled since the start of its dispute with ADOR. It first fell by nearly 9 per cent on Monday, after news of the feud first broke, before falling a further 1.18 per cent on Tuesday.