🔗 2024-10-01 Team Bunnies Notice

Hello, this is Team Bunnies.

Regarding the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee audit announced yesterday, Representative An Ho-young, the proponent of the motion, once again explained in a video the background behind requesting the attendance of NewJeans member Hanni as a reference witness. There are many voices of concern regarding an artist appearing on the stage of a National Assembly audit to testify as both a victim and a reference witness. In response to this, several assembly members have explained that this is a strictly necessary procedure to publicize the severity and importance of the issue, and have encouraged support and interest from many people.

Although her attendance has not yet been confirmed, if she does indeed attend, we believe it is more appropriate for Bunnies and the general public to send warm encouragement and support rather than speculation and concern. Furthermore, what Bunnies and those interested in this matter should focus on is not whether Hanni attends, but whether ADOR CEO Kim Ju-young, who has been summoned as a witness, will stop evading the severity of the incident and engage faithfully in the audit. Additionally, as we have felt in previous statements, we must be wary of her characteristic evasiveness involving changing words, insincere answers, and a low level of questioning coordinated in advance; we believe we must continue to raise our voices regarding this part until right before the audit.

Starting about two weeks ago, while preparing for the adoption of the agenda regarding “HYBE’s misconduct” for the National Assembly audit, Team Bunnies conveyed our stance to various assembly members’ offices via mail, phone calls, and meeting requests. We received responses from many committees’ members and their secretariats that they would review the content, and we were waiting for answers with a somewhat positive mind after receiving confirmation from some members regarding various factors where “illegality” could be recognized. Among them, the place where we spent the most time was the audit of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), which is significantly related to this incident.

However, among the articles published after today’s resolution was concluded, there was news that Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, who was listed on the request list for the Political Affairs Committee audit, was excluded from the final list. Along with this, we received a response from an official of the Environment and Labor Committee stating that since the plenary resolution for the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee audit has ended, it is difficult to add additional agendas or summon witnesses other than CEO Kim Ju-young for the “workplace bullying” agenda announced today. Furthermore, according to a tip from an anonymous secretary’s office, we confirmed circumstances indicating that HYBE expressed strong protest regarding this audit and contacted several assembly members’ offices closely through their government relations (GR) team to downgrade the stature of the issue.

The National Assembly audit is an administrative procedure where state agencies address important issues requiring inspection. HYBE is a company that repeats numerous illegal acts, including not only workplace bullying but also improper solicitation, media buying and control, violations of fair trade, infringement of consumer rights, and harassment of whistleblowers. Attempts to downplay such grave issues can never be tolerated, and it leaves us with strong doubts about how influential HYBE’s protest must be for even assembly members’ offices to agree to downplay the matter. If influence was indeed exerted, we consider this a very serious matter where the possibility of collusion between politics and business cannot be ruled out.

Contrary to the claims of some assembly members’ offices, we received advice that since additional witnesses are being recruited until mid-October, witnesses can sufficiently be summoned if there is a consistent voice from the public. As the secretary who provided the tip advised us that there is sufficient possibility after seeing the data, Team Bunnies will not give up, and we believe that summoning additional witnesses can be achieved if we do our best until the end.

A member of Team Bunnies also attended the debate titled “Illuminating the Reality of Child and Youth Labor and Human Rights Hidden Behind the Success of K-POP,” held at the National Assembly yesterday. The current slogan of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is the globalization of K-Content, and the main agenda of this debate was labor and human rights issues in the K-POP industry, which has many child and youth workers. In particular, several assembly members deeply empathized with the “HYBE” and NewJeans-related issues and offered much advice.

We ask the members of the Standing Committee of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to deeply reconsider this issue, for which so much consensus has formed. HYBE-style globalization, which consists of the mass production of indiscriminate content ignoring the hard work of creators and the dehumanization of artists, is far from the success of K-POP and will bring about a slump and crisis in the entire industry in the long term. We hope you recognize that adopting this agenda for the National Assembly audit and making Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, the party responsible for causing the current problems over the past five months, stand in the audit venue is the last opportunity to stop this. We sincerely request the assembly members once again for the sake of all those who love culture.

It weighs heavily on our hearts to experience firsthand the frustration and helplessness that NewJeans and former CEO Min Hee-jin must have felt during their short period of activity. The fact that the power of a mere entertainment company is connected to the media and even the political sphere is tragic, but the reason we cannot back down is that if we give up, there is no future for the artists. We will do our best until the end of the additional witness adoption period to realize the day when Chairman Bang Si-hyuk attends the National Assembly audit to take responsibility for the various corruptions and illegal acts committed by himself and his close associates and promises correction. And we also ask for continued interest from Bunnies, many other fandoms, and the public who support us, and we always send our grateful hearts.

Thank you.