10/7 Hybe vs Ador Drama Updates

[RussianRoulette]

Yeehaw everybody
Buckle up your saddles because we're in for a long and wild ride on this week's Hybe VS Ador drama updates

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New Jean’s Parents Speak Out Again

New Jean’s parents have once again spoken out, this time on the Hanni being bullied by befit labs.

I will summarize everything into bullet points though this still ended up pretty long. I also apologize if this seems a bit unorganized? But the article was the different parents/mothers talking so it was a bit all over the place to begin with.

While I bullet pointed everything together, I just want to clarify two things which is that they bounce between two different dates/conversations in this. The first date is New Jeans and their parents meeting with the new Ador CEO on September 23rd, and the other is the new Ador CEO's response to the meeting via an email on September 25th.

I also have no idea if this helps at all, but I tried to divide things up with ● being the parent and the ○ being Hybe

Part 1
●To begin, the situation with Hanni and the manager happened sometime in May.
● Hanni’s mother brought up the bullying Hanni faced to the other mothers at the end of May.
●Between May and June, since MHJ’s situation was all over the place they went to Hybe’s HR person (aka the current Ador CEO) to talk about Hanni’s bullying.
○ Hybe’s HR did not respond immediately, and a said that due to the time passing, the CCTV footage of the incident has been deleted.
● They brought up the incident to Hybe in June, so they are confused why they are only looking into the CCTV now, 4 months later.
● They are also confused about whether or not the CCTV would have audio or not, and why they aren’t just having Hanni and the other party involved meet together to discuss this.
○ Hybe said It would be difficult to recover the footage after 30 days.
● The parents said in the end only 8 seconds of footage was recovered, which was of Hanni and the other artists greeting each other, and they are suspicious as to why the problematic scenes “suddenly disappeared”.
○ When asked why the scene was deleted they couldn’t get a straight answer. The security team, who were in charge of finding the tapes, blamed their manager but the manager blamed a former employee who has since quit. They also were apparently fidgeting and couldn’t look Hanni in the eyes while giving this answer.

Part 2
● On Sept 23rd the new Hybe CEO asked to meet with the NJ members and the parents went along as well because they didn’t trust their kids alone in the meeting. During this meeting they brought the bullying issue again.
○ New CEO claimed the footage has no sound so they can’t specify the scene in which it happened, and that they went through a month’s worth of footage and couldn't find it.
● The parents snapped back asking why can’t they just go to look at the footage specifically from the date it happened, and the body language and atmosphere of the video should imply bullying was taking place.
● Something around here they were talking about missing documentation and that the whole trail of this was very messy?
● The parents asked for a copy of the footage and they received it by email on the 25th.
●They then said Hybe was handling this sloppy and Hybe should have be handling this more neutrally since it’s an issue between their sub labels.
●The parents then found out Belift was in charge of looking for the footage/submitting the materials and criticized Hybe for this because they feel Hybe should have been handling the investigation to stay neutral. (I’m assuming the incident happened in Belift’s part of the building?)
●The parents felt:​

"This is essentially like asking the perpetrator to find the evidence footage.”​

●The parents then claimed Belfit most likely deleted the footage and asked why are the perpetrators in charge of finding the footage in the first place.
○ New CEO criticized Hanni for not bringing this up sooner (because then the footage wouldn’t have been deleted), and in response Hanni felt like she did something wrong (trying to guilt trip her)
●The mothers then said Hanni did bring the issue up quickly but this was not handled fast enough.

This next part i'm just going to put in another quote:​

"Previously, CEO Kim Joo-young also told Hanni, 'If this kind of incident occurs, you should have spoken up quickly; the video was already deleted a month later.' However, Hanni clearly spoke up early, and we raised the issue immediately. Yet, receiving such a response might have made Hanni think, 'Does that mean I did something wrong?' So, the mothers protested, 'How would Hanni know there were such rules? We raised the issue immediately after the incident, well before a month passed.'"​

● They then claimed the new CEO started tearing up/crying in front of the members, which they thought was low because they felt like the girls “did not have much social experience”.
● One of the members then started crying, asking why they were making them out to be the bad guys
●The mothers then felt guilty for making the members go through all of this when they should have just been in school.
● During this meeting they also brought up the pre debut videos being leaked.
○The new ceo respond that fans have already reported source music and the media outlet that leaked it to the police and they should wait for the results of that investigation.
○ The new ceo also said that they could file a lawsuit against source music, but they advised against it since it could be viewed negatively in the media and they most likely would loose. They also said Ador sent a letter to Source in august via the media about the incident but got no response.
● The parents were confused why they are being asked to wait for the fan’s lawsuit to end first and at the same time being told if they were to sue there could be no criminal repercussions to source.
○ Ador did say though if they still wanted to sue source music they would provide all the materials and such to do so.

The parents final words are:​

“These issues usually occur in blind spots that others are not aware of, so I worry that they will ultimately be concealed as time passes. We are genuinely concerned about our children’s lives at HYBE because of these fears and doubts. We have protested and discussed various issues with the newly changed management of ADOR, but nothing has been resolved over the past few months, and we are now almost in a state of giving up and resignation, which makes us more worried about the future. So, the only thing we can hope for now is to have faith that the truth will prevail. Since lies cannot last forever, we believe that the truth will eventually be revealed, even if not immediately.””​

Hybe’s only response was that they are still investigating.

Belifts’s Response To The Parents

After the parents went to the media a second time, Belift labs was quick to release a counter statement.​

“Following the outrageous plagiarism claims, we strongly demand that attempts to slander our rookie artist with groundless personnel controversies immediately stop.”​

To summarize what Belift said of their findings:
- Belift said no manager ever told Illit to ignore new jeans, and Illit has never not greeted New Jeans.
- Belift said the incident happened on May 27th and the parents brought up the incident on June 13th
- They said on the 14th after receiving the report Belift labs held a meeting with Illit and the manager to investigate the situation and all of them said the accusations were untrue.
- They requested Hybe to review all footage between May 14th - June 13th since the NJ members did not give them a specific date to look into.
- They said the only time the two groups ever met was on an elevator on the 27th for about 5 minutes.
- They said that in the situation Illit got off the elevator and greeted Hanni, who was waiting to get on the elevator. All the Illit members greeted Hanni with a 90 degree bow as they walked past her exiting the elevator.
- (Just to clarify, Illit was exiting the elevator to walk down the hall into the styling area, and Hanni was exiting the styling area to walk into the elevator).
- On June 19th they relayed all of these findings to the higher ups of Ador and Hybe.
- They then said they reviewed this video footage with New Jeans, Hybe, and relevant Belift and Ador higherups (including MHJ) on August 14th who then said there must be a second video because the bullying incident happened after this video, and there must be a second video where they were told not to greet Hanni.
- They said the security company said at this point they cannot recover the video because the 30 day period where it's saved has passed, but MHJ is claiming they deleted the video.

To Finish:
- They then went on to say that Illit's staff only uses honorifics with celebrities, so them telling Illit to ignore them would not match up to those standards.
- They then claimed that CCTV doesn't record audio so there is no support to the claim that a manager said to ignore them.
Here is a quote I would like to throw in:​

Since the issue was first raised, we have always requested that artists from other labels behave politely, so we have been conducting the investigation with sincerity. However, despite providing all the explanations requested, they are making new claims that cannot confirm the facts, and as a result, we suspect that there may be another intention, as the National Assembly is now investigating something that did not happen.​

- They said they have been refraining from making a public statement on this because their staff is in a weaker position to defend themselves compared to a celebrity, but since NJ's "untrue stories" have been causing the worker's injustice and mental distress they demanding an apology from the New Jeans members and Ador label.​

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Source for NJ's parents part of this article

An english translation of said article by Tokki's on twitter for Y'alls convenience

Source article for Belift's response

I don't know what's sadder, how long my "summary" is, or the fact that the original sources are even longer than this
I also meant to post this earlier, but I was feeling a bit under the weather but I guess that worked out because I was able to put the parent's and Belift's side of the story together.
I also usually add my two cents here, but theres so many words here that I think i'll just end this here and read y'alls thoughts on this.
Lets pray next week I have less words to sum up

​

 

[hatmixx]

Beginning to think hybe will not only fumble NJ but illit as well.

Hiding the evidence might just work out for them if they can prove the CCTV won't stay for that long :/

 

[RussianRoulette]

Beginning to think hybe will not only fumble NJ but illit as well.

Hiding the evidence might just work out for them if they can prove the CCTV won't stay for that long :/

So far Illit have been mostly fine because people are taking pity on them for getting dragged into this.

I feel like if there’s one thing proven it’s that Illit did at the very least bow towards Hanni? My best guess on this situation is that maybe the manager got off last and then yelled at the girls for bowing?

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I forgot to throw this in, but audio on private CCTV’s is very much illegal in South Korea. I know the parents (and MHJ apparently) are insisting they need to drop the audio tapes, and for all we know Hybe could be illegally recording audio, but from a legal standpoint Hybe’s not allowed to record audio with cctv in the building.

 

[hatmixx]

forgot to throw this in, but audio on private CCTV’s is very much illegal in South Korea. I know the parents (and MHJ apparently) are insisting they need to drop the audio tapes, and for all we know Hybe could be illegally recording audio, but from a legal standpoint Hybe’s not allowed to record audio with cctv in the building.

Didn't know that. Hmm

So far Illit have been mostly fine because people are taking pity on them for getting dragged into this.

So far yes. But as it gets messier. There could be unexpected results

 

[UMJI MOODS]

- Belift said the incident happened on May 27th and the parents brought up the incident on June 13th

That is 17 days. Well within the supposed 30 day deletion time. All they had to do was download the previous thirty days of material.

○ New CEO criticized Hanni for not bringing this up sooner (because then the footage wouldn’t have been deleted)

Again inside the 30 day deletion window. Also Hanni is an employee so all anyone in the company had to do was ask her what date the incident happened on. Not just review a month of random footage.

○ The new ceo also said that they could file a lawsuit against source music, but they advised against it since it could be viewed negatively in the media and they most likely would loose. They also said Ador sent a letter to Source in august via the media about the incident but got no response

Both companies are owned primarily by hybe. 80% until hybe recently put up a percentage of source stock(among several sub-companies) to Lotte as a guarantee against financial loans. Taking any grievances to the corporate head makes greater sense than a lawsuit which is basically suing itself otherwise. The head company is better served by the two sub-companies reaching an amicable agreement such as a payment for use and some settlement as regards future usage of the footage.

- They then claimed that CCTV doesn't record audio so there is no support to the claim that a manager said to ignore them.

There is such a thing as lipreadiing. This could easily verify in belift's favor if true that nothing was said incorrectly.

All the companies involved seem to be poorly managed and stumbling in the dark. No wonder this keeps going and going.

 

[yyShin]

Beginning to think hybe will not only fumble NJ but illit as well.

As long as they don't say their side like nj did with that live they should be fine

 

[RussianRoulette]

As long as they don't say their side like nj did with that live they should be fine

I think today was the first time so far that we’ve heard anything from illit about their side of this, which is that they said in the investigation that the manager didn’t tell them to ignore Hanni.

This could change anytime, but so far belift seems adamant about not letting anyone say a public statement about this.

I’m really interested to see the aftermath of all of this. I’m calling it now: court is probably going to rule in Hanni’s favor to make a statement. Though if Hanni looses this somehow I feel like this will look pretty bad for her.

Something I’m really surprised about is that on twitter/tiktok it seems overnight a massive hate train towards Hanni (from oversea Kpop fans at least) came out of nowhere. A ton of people are starting to call her entitled and think she has an attitude problem.

 

[RussianRoulette]

Since i've had a hot minute to think about this here is my two cents on some things:

- I feel like there is a really bad game of telephone going on. I don't think Hanni herself ever said Illit did not bow and greet her? She said the manager told illit not to greet her, but she didn't specifically report the incident her mom did on her behalf based on the story she heard from Hanni. The parents and MHJ seem to be the ones angrily insisting there must be additional footage of Illit not greeting Hanni. (I feel like this story would also explain some confusion I had about mhj/the parents insisting there must be more footage after the footage of illit greeting hanni where they didn't greet her. If they just greeted her why would they be greeting her again 8 seconds later? )

Hanni's now being blamed by oversea fans for her saying that Illit never greeted her, which I feel kind of bad about because the adults said this not her, though I also feel like if Hanni is seeing the adults spin her story wrong then that's on her to speak up and correct it.

- I also didn't know that legally in South Korea that CCTV footage must be destroyed after 30 days (the only exception is if an investigation is going on). If the parents/mhj are asking for additional footage now months later I guess that's why?