Bang Si-hyuk Takes Photos with All HYBE Artists Except for NewJeans?

During the emergency press conference held on April 25th, CEO Min Hee-jin refuted the allegations that ADOR was trying to gain control over management rights. She emphasized that HYBE instructed her not to promote NewJeans until the debut of LE SSERAFIM.

HYBE follows a multi-label structure, with ADOR overseeing the operations of NewJeans, Source Music managing LE SSERAFIM, and Belift Lab responsible for ILLIT, the group that Min Hee-jin accused of plagiarizing NewJeans.

According to Min Hee-jin, HYBE had initially intended to debut NewJeans as their first girl group through a collaboration with her. This was used as a justification to recruit NewJeans members and convince their parents. However, HYBE ultimately debuted LE SSERAFIM before NewJeans and even prohibited their executives from promoting NewJeans prior to LE SSERAFIM’s debut.

During her speech, CEO Min highlighted that HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk did not offer any congratulations to NewJeans upon their debut. However, when the group entered the Billboard Main Single Chart ‘HOT 100’ for the first time, Bang Si-hyuk messaged her, asking if she was enjoying herself. She then proceeded to reveal the contents of her Kakaotalk conversation with him.

Following the press conference, there was a surge of netizens visiting Bang Si-hyuk’s Instagram account to browse through his feed once more.

Fans noticed that Bang Si-hyuk has been sharing photos with artists from all HYBE labels, except for NewJeans. Notably, the artists that have appeared on his SNS account include TXT, LE SSERAFIM, Enhypen, BTS, SEVENTEEN, fromis_9, Team, and Zico.

NewJeans and BOYNEXTDOOR, the boy group produced by Zico that made their debut in May of last year, are the only artists who have not been featured on Bang Si-hyuk’s account.

Some netizens responded by commenting, “Zico took a photo with him representing BOYNEXTDOOR, but there is no picture with NewJeans,””It’s possible that the NewJeans members were disappointed,””That’s quite disappointing. NewJeans has achieved great success but he didn’t even take a photo with them,”and so on.

Conversely, there were others who countered, “But there’s no BOYNEXTDOOR either. I believe that snapping pictures holds no significance,”and so on.

In the meantime, NewJeans unveiled teaser photos on their social media on the 26th for their upcoming comeback with the new double single “How Sweet”.