ADOR CEO Min Hee-Jin accused HYBE of ILLIT plagiarizing NewJeans

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As news of HYBE requesting for ADOR CEO Min Hee-Jin to step down and conducting an audit on the company, ADOR CEO Min Hee-Kin in an interview with Hankyung, “ILLIT copying NewJeans is not something that BeLift Lab did themselves, but HYBE was related to it as well. HYBE, who claims to be the leader of K-Pop, was blinded by profits, and they are copying successful culture contents without any hesitation at all. ADOR has never allowed anyone to copy NewJeans’ results”.

For those wondering why a HYBE subsidiary label is fighting back against its parent company, it is important for people to know that HYBE is a huge multinational entertainment company that has many various sublabels under them and their ownership is a huge stake in shares of the company.

For example, BTS and TOMORROW X TOGETHER are under Big Hit Music, Seventeen and fromis_9 are under Pledis Entertainment, LE SSERAFIM is under Source Music, NewJeans is under ADOR, Zico and BoyNextDoor are under KOZ Entertainment and Enhypen and ILLIT are under BeFit Lab.

For ADOR, HYBE owns 80% of the company, while CEO Min Hee-Jin owns 18% and other executives own 2%. According to various Korean media, an ADOR executive was using his position at HYBE to share with ADOR and ADOR was using the information to separate from HYBE. This led to the audit and HYBE asking its CEO to step down.

While NewJeans and ILLIT are both successful girl groups under HYBE under two different labels, NewJeans was attained by CEO Min Hee-Jin who was known for her success at SM Entertainment (prior to leaving to HYBE to head ADOR). While ILLIT’s success is through Bang Sihyuk (known for his success with BTS, LE SSERAFIM and more).

And CEO Min Hee-Jin is insisting that “ADOR does not want NewJeans and ILLIT to be associated in any way”, which is difficult as HYBE likes label mates to befriend and collaborate with each other. May it be for TikTok dances or HYBE entertainment events.