The widening rift between Korean entertainment agency HYBE, and NewJeans and former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin continued, this time about an issue involving rookie K-pop group ILLIT. During a YouTube live broadcast on Sept. 11, NewJeans demanded HYBE to reinstate Min Hee-jin as CEO of ADOR.
During the same broadcast, Hanni said she heard a manager telling a HYBE artist to ignore her greetings. She did not name the artist but netizens guessed that it was ILLIT. ILLIT and NewJeans' Hanni (X, Instagram) NewJeans failed to reinstate Min Hee-jin as ADOR CEO after the Sept.
25 deadline they set for HYBE lapsed. Hanni has been invited as one of the reference persons and witnesses by the South Korean National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee’s state audit on workplace bullying on Oct. 15.
On Oct. 9, Hanni revealed that she has decided to appear and go to the National Assembly state audit. The National Assembly is Korea’s legislature.
Belift Lab, the agency of ILLIT, issued an English version of a statement regarding an Ilgan Sports article about the ILLIT-Hanni greeting issue on Oct. 10. Here is the full statement of Belift Lab about the issue: Our Statement on the Oct 7 Article by Ilgan Sports Hello, This is BELIFT LAB.
We would like to address the article published by Ilgan Sports on October 7. We strongly urge an end to the unfounded controversies that seek to damage the reputation of our newly debuted artist, including the baseless claims surrounding the ‘greeting’ .