🔗 Min Hee-jin: “Public Execution for Offending Bang Si-hyuk… Reminded Me of the Movie JSA” [The Interview]

‘The Mother of NewJeans,’ Former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin

Is she the witch of K-pop, or a maverick? Min Hee-jin, the former CEO of ADOR, is currently the most controversial figure in K-pop. When NewJeans, produced by Min in 2022, rose to the top immediately upon debut, she instantly emerged as a star producer representing K-pop. Rising from a regular employee to a CEO, she was also praised as a “blue chip” of K-pop. However, she was dismissed from the position of CEO of ADOR, the company she nurtured, and is now at war with HYBE over the management rights of ADOR. There is also criticism that she is trying to seek her own profit by using NewJeans as a shield. What is her true intention?

The war began on April 22. It started when HYBE announced that, based on an internal audit, the ADOR management team, including former CEO Min Hee-jin, had attempted to break away from HYBE and seize management rights of ADOR. Min held two press conferences to refute this, and both sides entered a legal battle. This issue flared up again on the 11th through a YouTube live stream by NewJeans. NewJeans member Minji demanded, “HYBE must reinstate former CEO Min by the 25th.” ADOR held a board meeting on that day and proposed a compromise to extend Min’s term as an internal director, but Min rejected it, demanding “reinstatement as CEO.” Instead, suspicions of an intentional “Killing NewJeans” campaign by HYBE surfaced, further intensifying the battle lines. We met CEO Min twice, on the 14th and the 25th, at her studio in Mapo-gu, Seoul, to hear her stance. The following is the Q&A.

Q: The 25th, the deadline set by NewJeans, has arrived, but there is no answer from HYBE. Is the plan going forward independence?
“NewJeans, their parents, and I have all been suffering from continuous harassment, but we have never once said we would leave HYBE. We only consistently asked them to please stop paying attention to us, stop interfering, and leave us alone. Since the start of the illegal audit on April 22, HYBE has been making nonsensical claims based on false facts. Why would I be continuing this difficult fight and why would I have bothered to file for an injunction?”

Q: In August, ADOR held a board meeting to notify you of the termination of the shareholders’ agreement and replaced the CEO. ADOR stated, “It was a date former CEO Min Hee-jin hoped for, and there was sufficient discussion.”
“It was not an agreed agenda. I was notified just three days before the board meeting. I asked to reschedule the meeting because I had a business trip, but it was refused. I attended via video conference and pointed out the problems with the dismissal agenda, but they unilaterally notified me that they would assign me producing duties and forced the vote. The board consists of five members including myself, and since HYBE holds four seats, it could not be stopped.”

Q: What is the reason for the CEO dismissal?
“There was no distinct reason that was acceptable. They emphasized the point that there was a problem with the mutual trust relationship. HYBE’s initial investment was 16 billion KRW. After NewJeans debuted in 2022, ADOR turned a profit in the first quarter of 2023. The net profit at the end of 2023 was 26.5 billion KRW, exceeding the investment amount, and the brand ‘NewJeans’ left intangible value to the company. It showed the greatest growth among labels under HYBE. Nevertheless, HYBE has now appointed a figure with no industry experience as the new CEO and formed the board of directors. Above all, this is completely different from the guarantee of independence for the ‘Min Hee-jin Label’ that Chairman Bang Si-hyuk first proposed and promised when I joined HYBE (then Big Hit). This remains in the KakaoTalk chat records from that time.”

Under the shareholders’ agreement signed between HYBE and Min, her term as CEO is guaranteed until November 2026, and thereafter, Min has the right to a put option (right to sell shares) to sell 75% of her ADOR shares to HYBE. However, HYBE claimed that the shareholders’ agreement between the two parties no longer stands as they dismissed Min from the CEO position on the 27th of last month.

Q: HYBE claims that former CEO Min attempted to usurp management rights.
“You cannot find the word ‘usurpation’ in the complaint HYBE submitted to the court. It is an emotional term for misleading public opinion that they could not bear to submit to the court. I was the CEO of ADOR until August 27. The very phrase ‘seizing management rights’ is a contradiction. They started with a public opinion war using a fictional novel.”

Q: There is talk that the conflict with HYBE is due to the put option worth hundreds of billions of won.
“If money were the goal, there would be no reason to endure this painful and tedious fight. If I had not raised objections to HYBE’s behavior in the first place and kept my mouth shut, the amount I could have received was substantial. After I won the injunction against the temporary shareholders’ meeting that tried to dismiss me in May, a negotiation proposal came in through lawyers saying HYBE would give me money so I should take it and leave. However, I refused because money was not the objective.”

Former CEO Min reportedly raised issues several times that the girl group ILLIT, which debuted last year under another HYBE label, BELIFT LAB, copied NewJeans’ production formula, including concept, image, content, and promotion. Min claimed that this was the reason HYBE attacked her.

Q: What do you think is the reason this situation occurred?
“The essence of the situation is not a grand reason like company development or system improvement. It is nothing more or less than a public execution for a subsidiary president openly offending the parent company chairman’s feelings. While going through this black comedy-like incident, I was reminded of the movie Joint Security Area (JSA). On the surface, it was portrayed as a solemn and grand tragedy of division, but in reality, it was a farce caused by accidental emotions stemming from extremely human conflict. This situation is just like that.”

Q: They say you tried to make ADOR independent from HYBE. They also alleged breach of trust.
“HYBE holds 80% of ADOR shares, and I hold 17.8%. How can I attempt independence? HYBE’s interests and ADOR’s interests do not necessarily align. If a salaried CEO, in order to safely guarantee personal profit during the contract period, walks on eggshells around the parent company and does not protest or improve the disadvantages NewJeans faces, isn’t that actually a breach of trust against ADOR?”

Q: In the first press conference, your remarks and fashion became a hot topic. Some say it was a strategy.
“I am not the type who memorizes things to say. If it were a scripted scenario, I would have been an actor, not a producer. I decided to hold the press conference on the morning of that day. Even the lawyers opposed it at first.”

Amidst this, on the 25th, a media outlet raised suspicions that HYBE had requested a correction of album sales figures regarding an article about NewJeans’ activities in Japan last July.

Q: Controversy has grown as allegations emerged that HYBE requested the media to downplay NewJeans’ achievements.
“They distorted NewJeans’ Supernatural sales in Japan to that reporter, stating it was 50,000 copies. On July 18, the day after the article was written, we received the Gold Record certification awarded to artists who sell over 100,000 copies in Japan; how could it have been only 50,000 copies the day before? There are not just one or two cases like this. I cannot mention everything, but to give one example, I recently received contact from Billboard columnist Jeff Benjamin. He said that a company called TAG, which acts as HYBE’s PR agency, sent him materials full of slander against me, but the content was so biased and something felt strange, so he wanted to fact-check with me. Who could trust a company that publicly promotes that they proposed a 5-year term for the producer, while behind the scenes they are spreading slanderous materials even to foreign media?”

Q: HYBE refuted this, claiming they “actively supported NewJeans by dispatching personnel to the local site to allow close media coverage.”
“I am really sick of this wordplay. What HYBE did refers to the opening of press seating, which applies uniformly to all affiliated labels. It is a service that the label (ADOR) pays a fee to use, so why do they express it as if they supported us while acting like they did us a favor? Furthermore, the separate greeting session with reporters from Korea and Japan at that time was arranged at my request. And my initial request was for a greeting session with NewJeans and myself together. However, HYBE PR expressed disapproval, citing reasons such as lack of precedent and difficult movement logistics. So I went around the press seating alone to greet them. I wanted to express my gratitude to the reporters who came all the way to Japan to cover us.”

Q: In an interview with Japanese media, you said, “(NewJeans) has a big picture for 7 years. I am confident I can surprise people with every album every year.” Is there any disruption due to this conflict?
“There is a major disruption. I was dismissed while planning a surprise fan meeting for Korean fans. The vice CEOs were also excluded from work and blocked overnight. Work on the next album has also been halted. It is truly regrettable. This is also obstruction of business committed by HYBE against NewJeans.”

Q: The relationship seems special, as NewJeans members are strongly demanding your return.
“As a producer, I thought deeply about how to lead young artists in a way that would be good for their lives. NewJeans, born from such contemplation, are like children I bore with my head and heart. Beyond the desire to give them everything good, I also had a strong wish to present an alternative relationship for a new business model as a producer. I do not want to give up on this challenge and attempt easily.”

Min joined SM Entertainment as a graphic artist and was promoted to director, earning her the nickname “the legend of the ‘dirt spoon’ (self-made success from a humble background)” in the entertainment industry. She received acclaim for introducing world-building and kitschy, metaphorical symbols through music videos for Red Velvet, SHINee, and others. She is evaluated as having upgraded K-pop to the next level.

Q: NewJeans succeeded even though they went against the recent trend of ‘Girl Crush.’ They achieved success with easy-to-sing songs and an innocent girl image.
“It is difficult to define the concept of success simply, but it is hard to achieve extraordinary success using the methods others have used. As a planner and producer, I wanted to realize what I really wanted to do. In the team called NewJeans, I wanted to include everything I felt needed improvement and wanted to aim for while working in the industry for about 20 years. It was possible because management and producing were integrated.”

Q: Through what do you mainly get inspiration as a producer?
“When I was young, all the walls in my house were surrounded by bookshelves. My parents were busy as a dual-income couple, and as a reward, they bought new books every day for me, who liked books. Thanks to that, I was naturally exposed to Anton Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Kafka, which were on the bookshelves, from elementary school. Also, thanks to my father’s LPs, I got to know Giorgio Moroder and Francis Lai, and I lived immersed in the music of musicians like Antonio Carlos Jobim. My parents never nagged me to ‘study’ or anything, even when I watched movies until late at night.”

Q: Since you joined SM Entertainment, I thought you would have a lot of interest in idols or popular songs.
“Not at all. In fact, until I joined, I had never taken an interest in idols. For popular songs, I was interested in older songs, Light & Salt (Bitgwa Sogeum), Sanullim, Kim Hyun-chul, or indie music. The reason I joined SM Entertainment was that I wanted to unfold my ambitions with different ideas in a huge market.”

Having watched K-pop since 2002, what does she think about the sustainability of K-pop’s success? In the press conference in April, she also strongly criticized “commercial tactics relying only on fandoms or initial volume pushing (stockpiling).”

Q: K-pop has reached a golden age, but question marks about sustainability continue to follow.
“Culture is about ‘moving people’s hearts and being made by people.’ It is foolish to lose the inherent essence by being deluded by the word ‘industry.’ A system that is only good on the surface may sound plausible, but it can end up as mere wordplay that amounts to nothing. Everything people do is bound to eventually come down to ‘sincerity.’ Because intangible value is invisible, it is easy to be treated poorly, but looking back, every decisive blow that changed the world originated from it.”