1. Distortion of the Essence of Hanni’s Claim

Hanni clearly stated in her remarks that she did not take issue with the ILLIT members themselves, but rather that “we exchanged greetings” when they first met. The essence of the problem Hanni raised was not the first meeting, but the “manager’s directive remark” that occurred during the second encounter.

🔗 NewJeans Emergency Live Stream Video 13:00~

I experienced something a while ago. The 4th floor of the HYBE building is where hair and makeup are done. So, it’s a space where many other artists and other staff members also come and go.

So one day, I was waiting alone in the corridor, and members of another team and their manager passed by me. So we exchanged greetings properly, but when they came out again a little later, that manager said ‘Ignore her.’ Right in front of me. I could hear and see everything, but they said ‘Ignore her.’

But even thinking about it now, I don’t understand why I have to go through something like that, and I think it’s truly absurd.

However, in its official statement, BELIFT LAB attempted to reduce Hanni’s complaint to the issue of ‘whether greetings were exchanged’ between artists and shift the focus to the frame of protecting rookie artists.

[BELIFT LAB Statement]
…We strongly demand an immediate halt to attempts to disparage our rookie artist with baseless controversies regarding greetings.
…The ILLIT members also never passed by NewJeans members without greeting them.
…The footage captured the ILLIT members getting off the elevator and bowing 90 degrees to NewJeans member Hanni, who was standing in front of them, as they entered.

Later, in an exclusive interview with NewJeans’ parents on October 9, 2024, they strongly pointed out BELIFT LAB’s attempt as described above.

[Interview with NewJeans Parent A(🔗 Link)]
“BELIFT LAB claimed in their statement that it is an ‘issue of greetings, which belongs to the realm of goodwill between labels,’ but this is misleading the essence of this issue,” she said. “Hanni never raised an issue about them not greeting her. The problem is that the manager of another artist told those artists to ignore Hanni.”

[Interview with NewJeans Parent B(🔗 Link)]
“CEO Kim Ju-young said she would announce notices about greeting culture and manners among HYBE members, including artists, throughout HYBE to prevent such incidents from happening again, but I don’t know how many times we have to say this: we did not raise an issue about ‘greetings.’ We raised an issue about HYBE’s unfair treatment of NewJeans.”

As such, BELIFT LAB’s move to emphasize ‘greetings’ between group members—which Hanni did not take issue with—can be seen as a clear attempt to blur the essence of the criticism by using rookie artists as a shield, diverting from the issue of ‘HYBE’s label management and BELIFT LAB’s responsibility for staff management,’ which should rightfully be raised.
This is fundamentally no different from the logic used by BELIFT LAB CEO Kim Tae-ho in 🔗 ‘BELIFT LAB’s Position on Plagiarism Claims on 2024-06-10, where he criticized CEO Min Hee-jin’s actions as ‘coordinate-targeting (directing attacks) to mobilize public opinion to attack the opponent.

2. The Subject Specifying the Opposing Group ‘ILLIT’

Hanni never once mentioned the real name of the opposing group in her live stream or National Assembly testimony. However, BELIFT LAB explained in its statement as if ILLIT was specified and mentioned by a third party (community), but it is confirmed that HYBE, BELIFT LAB’s parent company, was actually the first to mention the real name through the media.

2024-09-12 Hankyung [NewJeans Joins the Fray ‘Super Strong Measure’… Termination Dispute ‘Calm Before the Storm’]Article Excerpt

…The HYBE side stated that after checking the 7-8 minute CCTV footage capturing the situation at the time, scenes of Hanni and ILLIT members exchanging greetings were captured, and no grounds for problems, such as the manager making the remark in question, were found.

As such, despite the ‘HYBE side’ first specifying the opposing group as ‘ILLIT’ through media reports on September 12, the subsequent statement released by BELIFT LAB shows an attitude of seemingly shifting that responsibility to the community.

(※ Although the Ilgan Sports article did not mention BELIFT LAB and ILLIT, we explained using real names as our artists are being specified and mentioned in online communities.)

BELIFT LAB is a subsidiary label of HYBE. Nevertheless, they are shifting the responsibility to the community while hiding the fact that their parent company mentioned the real name to the media first. If they were uncomfortable with their artist being specified, it would be reasonable to protest to their parent company, HYBE, who mentioned the information to the media first. However, the expression in the statement leaves room for misinterpretation that the fandom community specified the opposing artist, and this can be interpreted as an attempt to intentionally distort facts and shift responsibility to the fandom.

3. Contradictions Regarding the Frequency and Time of Encounter

3-1. BELIFT LAB clearly defined through its official statement that the encounter on May 27 happened ‘only once.’

[BELIFT LAB Statement]
On the footage from May 27, we identified a single encounter between ILLIT and NewJeans… We obtained a copy of this footage.

However, testimonies from Hanni and her parents reveal that this ‘single’ video was merely a short greeting scene lasting only ‘8 seconds.’

[Hanni’s National Assembly Testimony (🔗 Link)]
“First, when I first told them about it, they said there was no evidence, but they said there was CCTV, but they said there was only the scene of greeting… But literally as they said, they only kept the video of about 8 seconds in the front, and they said there was no scene after that, even though it wasn’t like an hour later, but 5 or 10 minutes later.”

[Interview with NewJeans Parent A (🔗 Link)]
“But absurdly, it wasn’t that all the footage from the date of the incident was missing. They showed us only about 8 seconds of footage where Hanni and the other artist members were greeting each other, and then they said the absurd thing that the footage from the other time slot—where the artist and manager come out, which is the crucial part—was all deleted. Why would they keep only the scene that isn’t problematic? It was unpleasant, as if they were taking us for fools.”

3-2. Another Time Frame: ‘5 Minutes’ and ‘7~8 Minutes’

The problem is that BELIFT LAB and the HYBE side themselves mentioned other time frames that conflict with these ‘8 seconds.’ In that very statement, BELIFT LAB admitted that the two groups crossed paths for ‘about 5 minutes.’

[BELIFT LAB Statement]
It was verified that the two groups crossed paths for only about five minutes on May 27 at the HYBE building.

If the official video evidence is only 8 seconds, where did the time of ‘about 5 minutes’ come from? This unexplained gap in time paradoxically adds credibility to Hanni’s testimony that the problem occurred 5 to 10 minutes later.
The confusion about time does not stop here. Another time frame of ‘7~8 minutes’ appears in past media reports.

[2024-09-12 Hankyung Article (🔗 Link)]
“…The HYBE side stated that after checking the 7-8 minute CCTV footage capturing the situation at the time, scenes of Hanni and ILLIT members exchanging greetings were captured…”

‘8 seconds,’ ‘about 5 minutes,’ ‘7~8 minutes.’ These inconsistent pieces of time information, all coming from the HYBE side, are sufficient to raise suspicions that they either did not grasp the situation accurately or revealed flaws in the process of coordinating their stories to hide something.

3-3. Biased Investigation and Deceptive Explanations Appearing as Attempted Cover-up

Suspicions that these contradictions are not simple mistakes but intentional attempts at concealment become more concrete in the parents’ interviews.

First, the subject of the investigation was the party accused of being the perpetrator (BELIFT LAB).

[Interview with NewJeans Parent A (🔗 Link)]
“She showed us the Slack content with the instructions… Suspicions amplified as to why the ADOR board requested Belift Lab to find the CCTV…” she said. “Moreover, in the Slack content between Belift Lab and the security team, when the security guard said, ‘We found the scene where they greeted and passed by,’ there was a reply from Belift Lab saying, ‘That’s a relief.’ Saying ‘That’s a relief’—I couldn’t understand the intention behind showing us this content… This is, so to speak, the same as asking the perpetrator to find the evidence video.”

An attitude that seems to be looking for a scene that is ‘a relief’ rather than clarifying the truth makes one fundamentally doubt the fairness of the investigation itself.

Second, the explanation that the video does not exist is dubious.

[Interview with NewJeans Parent C (🔗 Link)]
“Hanni said that when she checked the CCTV initially, the security guard told her, ‘There was a scene where they passed by without greeting when they came out again after entering and greeting, but since they greeted when entering, we thought greeting was not necessary when coming out, so we did not keep that video.’ She said the security guard couldn’t make eye contact and was trembling while telling her that.”

Contrary to the official explanation of ‘expiration of the 30-day retention period,’ the security guard on-site offered a completely different explanation: ‘We did not keep it because we thought it was unnecessary.’ Coupled with the situation described by Hanni—”At the time, the security guards couldn’t make eye contact with me and their hands were shaking”—this makes it difficult to erase the suspicion that they are hiding something.

In conclusion, the explanations from BELIFT LAB and the HYBE side conflict with themselves starting from the core time information, and multiple testimonies reveal that the fairness and transparency of the investigation were also not guaranteed. Such selective presentation of evidence, contradictory narratives, and opaque investigation processes leave ample room for interpretation as an attempt to conceal something that happened during the second encounter, and this paradoxically strengthens the probability that Hanni’s claim is true.