What's going on between HYBE and NewJeans?

In the K-pop world, major drama is unfolding between two creative titans in the industry.

The key players in this very messy and public feud are Bang Si-hyuk, the founder of the entertainment giant HYBE (known for managing BTS), and Min Hee-jin, the CEO of HYBE's subsidiary label ADOR, who produces the massively popular girl group NewJeans.

Today on Commotion, East Asian Studies professor Michelle Cho and culture writer Jennifer Zhan join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to look at what this behind-the-scenes fight says about the high stakes of the K-pop economy and the future of NewJeans.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Michelle, this is ultimately a corporate battle, and corporate battles don't typically capture a lot of headlines. What do you think it is about this feud that has captured headlines?

Michelle: I think this feud has been really attention-grabbing because it kind of pits two creative titans in the industry against each other: Min Hee-jin, who's the creative director behind ADOR and NewJeans, and Bang Si-hyuk, who was the founder of HYBE and the person who was responsible for BTS. They were supposed to be partners in this new way of doing things in the K-pop industry, which is this multi-label system.

Min Hee-jin used to work for SM Entertainment, which is this older company; it's been around since the '90s. She was recruited very persuasively by HYBE to come be part of this new thing. So that's why it's weird that now they're at each other's throats trying to burn it down. The other thing is that NewJeans has been such a huge phenomenon — the biggest girl group debut, arguably the biggest K-pop group debut, in many years. So that's what makes the discord and all of this infighting really surprising for people.

Elamin: I'm interested in the philosophical divide. Jennifer, you wrote about this fight between Min Hee-jin and HYBE for Vulture, and you described it this way: "Depending on who you ask, this is either the story of an exec who got greedy and girlbossed too close to the sun, or of a brave creative who is being punished by a corporation for trying to protect her artistic vision." Can you briefly describe what the crux of this dispute is?

Jennifer: Basically, from Min Hee-jin's perspective, this all started because she tried to bring up concerns that the team behind another HYBE group, called ILLIT, was plagiarizing NewJeans and ripping off her work — and more broadly that the company also broke promises to her, and wasn't as supportive as they could have been when it came to her plans for NewJeans and her creative agency. On the other hand, HYBE has denied all of that and instead accused Min Hee-jin of business crimes like conspiring with staff, planning a takeover, illegal insider trading, letting a shaman be privy to sensitive company info —

Elamin: A shaman?

Jennifer: Yes…. The claim is that the shaman was consulted on the NewJeans lineup, like, "Eliminate these people because they're possessed by a ghost," that kind of thing. So, yeah.

Elamin: Michelle, I want people to understand what we mean when we say a messy fight, because it has been very public. Maybe you want to explain the mess that's been unfolding?

Michelle: Yes. So back in April, when news of this fight behind the scenes first broke, Min did an impromptu press conference to try and get ahead of the news stories and the press releases that HYBE was going to put out, and get the public on her side to try and understand where she was coming from. And so she did this two-hour rambling kind of thing, but it was so charged with emotion; she showed up and she was so upset.

A lot of women could sympathize with the affect that she was showing of being in a workplace where people steal your work, or these kind of indifferent men are trying to gaslight you and tell you that what you're upset by is something that is irrelevant. So that was the impact of Min being very upset in public. Since then, Min's side and HYBE's side have doubled down. They're filing charges against each other. The HYBE CEO has actually resigned, partly perhaps because of this feud, [and] it's definitely had a negative impact on HYBE's stock prices, too.

Elamin: There's something about the very public performance of this conflict. As you read about this, you hear about days where every camp would put out a press release once an hour, just kind of going back and forth — very willing to publicly air the dirty laundry. Jennifer, what do you think this story tells us about where we are with K-pop right now?

Jennifer: I think we're starting to see a lot more revealed about what happens behind the scenes — getting insight into screenshots of messages, or plans for how to debut the group. It's not the only recent case in K-pop that has pulled the curtain back for us to hear more about contracts or behind-the-scenes culture at companies. There's actually been several cases of that recently.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.