🔗 2024-11-20 Min Hee-jin Official Statement (Full Text)

Hello. This is Min Hee-jin.

I am resigning as an internal director of ADOR today.

Additionally, I am terminating the shareholders’ agreement concluded with HYBE and intend to hold HYBE legally responsible for breaches of the shareholders’ agreement.

Furthermore, I plan to proceed with necessary legal actions one by one regarding the numerous illegal acts committed by HYBE and its related parties.

Amidst the hellish dispute with HYBE that has lasted for over seven months, starting with HYBE’s illegal audit last April, I have done everything in my power until now to uphold the shareholders’ agreement and return ADOR to its state before April. However, since HYBE still does not acknowledge its wrongdoings and shows no signs of changing, I have made this decision based on the judgment that further efforts would be a waste of time.

I hoped HYBE would admit its mistakes on its own, and I have worked tirelessly to protect NewJeans within the twisted HYBE. This is also the reason I sent internal whistleblowing emails twice last April.

However, far from reflecting, HYBE committed an unprecedentedly foolish act of fabricating absurd false facts and even publicly displaying their shameful illegal audit. They framed me, a minority shareholder and CEO, with the bizarre frame of “usurpation of management rights,” engaged in a witch hunt, and launched ignorant and nonsensical attacks that are hard to believe came from a large corporation.

After all sorts of twists and turns, and only after seven long months, it is being revealed that my internal whistleblowing was a legitimate complaint based on clear facts, while HYBE’s ugly lies and hypocrisy are being uncovered one after another.

In fact, HYBE likely knew from the beginning that the contents of the whistleblowing were all true and that it was a legitimate raising of issues.

However, for those to whom only their own interests and advancement matter, the essence of “problem-solving” must have been a homework assignment they wanted to ignore more than anything.

I did not even expect repentance from them, but I wonder if believing that they would have at least a minimum level of conscience as human beings was a naive misjudgment.

However, just as breathing doesn’t mean you are truly alive, I did not want to cling to money and settle for piggybacking on this twisted organization.

Until recently, HYBE has been trying to bury me through reckless lawsuits, nitpicking, and unfair media play using their subsidiary labels, while simultaneously continuing their hypocritical and contradictory behavior of thrusting a producing delegation contract filled with toxic clauses upon me as if they were doing me a huge favor.

While suggesting we discuss R&R (Roles and Responsibilities), which is the core of the delegation contract, they kept making incomprehensible claims that they could not provide the R&R document and insisted only on face-to-face meetings while mentioning a confidentiality agreement containing unreasonable demands such as consent to forensics before the discussion.

The lack of conscience of those who unilaterally dismissed me yet spread false information to the press that I stepped down as CEO to take on producing duties, while demanding “confidentiality” from others, is no longer even surprising.

The atrocities committed by HYBE in 2024 will be recorded as an unprecedented case in K-pop history.

For the past seven months, I have fought with all my might, pouring everything I have mentally, economically, and physically, to revive ADOR, which was ruined by HYBE’s serious violation of the shareholders’ agreement.

This means I have made painstaking efforts without backing down, even though it was a hellish fight that began with baseless violence by a group wearing the mask of a large corporation.

HYBE’s moral hazard has already reached its peak, so their dirty media play will likely continue, but I am not worried as I believe the public has reached a point where they can read through that pattern.

Nevertheless, if there are forces or media outlets that engage in forced slander, I inform you that I will never sit by and watch, but will punish them by law.

Although this unprecedented incident is not over yet, I express my gratitude with all my heart to Bunnies and many others who have sent me unflagging support and encouragement for nearly half a year.

Ironically, getting to know the best people through a fight with the worst company is a special stroke of luck.

Some may not understand why I have held on this far, but there must be a reason and meaning for the existence of someone like me in this world.

I hope you will show a lot of interest in the new K-pop journey I will unfold in the future.

I conclude this writing by delivering words to some people with a sense of relief.

“One person’s malicious actions should never damage the ‘essence of the profession.’ It was truly bad.”