On July 23, ADOR, the agency for NewJeans, released a statement condemning Dispatch and HYBE as “immoral beyond pitiful”in response to a recent article by the two agencies that disparaged ADOR.
The official statement from ADOR stated, “Hello, this is ADOR.”It also included ADOR’s stance on the Dispatch report released today.
The report contains fabricated and unfounded claims, and we plan to pursue aggressive legal action against it.
The report could not have been completed without the cooperation of HYBE and Source Music, as well as the provision of false information, which includes internal meeting minutes, job assignments, and personal KakaoTalk messages.
Specifically, it is a serious offense and violation of confidentiality to disclose personal information of former trainees and artists, such as medical records and demo data, without their consent, even after their contracts have ended.
The contracts between Source Music and the NewJeans members, which governed the use of their likenesses and voices, have already expired. As a result, Source Music’s public release of trainee videos constitutes a serious infringement of the NewJeans members’ rights to their own images. We urge prompt action to safeguard the rights of our artists.
Moreover, we strongly denounce HYBE for sharing illegally obtained personal conversations and for Dispatch’s unethical actions of spreading fabricated and manipulated information to slander the subsidiary’s CEO. We will take decisive legal measures against these actions.
Despite the Dispatch report, Min Hee-jin’s negligence was not the cause of the delay in the debut of the ‘N Team’ (NewJeans).
To rectify the falsified information, we will be disclosing an email from 2021.
The email, which was created by Min Hee-jin, CEO of the CBO office, in 2020, referred to the group in the PT data as the “N team”/”21 team”. It was sent during a period of conflicting ideas surrounding the concept of the new girl group, which was a joint effort between three parties at the time.
The timeline is as follows: In March 2020, the Big Hit marketing team proposed a strategy for launching the ’21 Team’. However, CEO Min Hee-jin, who was the creative general manager at the time, disagreed with the direction of the content and decided to prepare her own launching strategy separately. In May 2020, Min Hee-jin announced her strategy, with Bang Si-hyuk, So Sung-jin, and the Source Music representative in attendance as it was a joint venture. Chairman Bang Si-hyuk commented that Min Hee-jin’s plan was unconventional and would be difficult to realize with Source Music’s infrastructure. He suggested proceeding with Min Hee-jin’s own label. However, in August
Just like in the email, Source Music copied NewJeans’ challenging launch strategy and discussed it once again. This resulted in difficulties in implementing the R&R discussions and production timeline for both companies.
At the time, the CBO office did not receive a response to this email.
Instead of relying on the inaccurate data provided by HYBE, who makes false claims, we are disclosing this official mail that was shared by everyone at the time. This will provide a more accurate understanding of the context and help resolve any disputes.
Although ADOR could potentially provide more comprehensive data by including Slack or KakaoTalk conversations between those involved, we believe it would be inappropriate to disclose personal conversations. As a result, we will only be disclosing emails initially.
Despite the existence of ample data and witnesses, it is perplexing that HYBE continues to make baseless and falsified accusations. Both parents and members, who have personally experienced the situation, can attest to this.
According to reports, CEO Min Hee-jin reset her laptop three years ago and returned it to HYBE. It is strongly suspected that HYBE has since forensically restored her personal conversations, which is a serious violation and illegal activity that falls under the category of content detection, such as electronic records.
Despite HYBE’s claim that her KakaoTalk conversations were stored on her cloud server and not subject to forensic investigation, this is a concerning issue. This means that personal conversations are being regularly collected and stored on her server, potentially being leaked. This is a serious offense and a violation of the Communications Secret Protection Act and the Information and Communication Network Act.
“In order to conduct a thorough investigation, CEO Min Hee-jin requested the police to retrieve the laptop belonging to HYBE and examine its contents. However, HYBE has not provided the data to the police, stating that it is stored on the company’s server or cloud, rather than on the laptop. This could be considered a more serious offense, as extracting data from a company’s server without proper authorization is a felony. If there is indeed data stored on the server, HYBE will need to fully cooperate with the police’s request for assistance.”
The legal representatives of ADOR and NewJeans are expressing serious anger and pursuing action against HYBE for their unconventional media strategies and responses.
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