By Aiyah Usison
From ‘ETA’ being the party song to their choreography from the song ‘Attention’ trending with the audio ‘Rewind’ by Wonder Girls and with their song ‘Ditto’ being a perfect fit for the winter season. NewJeans, a Korean Pop (K-pop) band is well known across many countries. Even people who don’t regularly listen to K-pop know the name.
After debuting in 2022 with their title track ‘Hype Boy’ they brought a new and fresh concept into k-pop. Everything went so well, until it didn’t.
NewJeans had to go into a court case against their own label in protest of having their CEO, Min Hee-jin, taken away. They sought to terminate the contract with ADOR because they claimed to be ‘mistreated’ and ‘manipulated’ by the company. Let’s take a deeper dive into the exact details of the court case.
ADOR’s parent label is HYBE. Everything started in April of 2024 when Min Hee-jin allegedly tried to turn ADOR into an independent company due to conflict of creative control and mistreatment.
More problems started when HYBE stated that Min Hee-jin would no longer be a part of ADOR Labels and the NewJeans members, Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Hyein, and Haerin stated they would no longer be a group formed under ADOR because of the mistreatment.
On October 15th, 2024, NewJeans had a National Assembly to represent their case to the public. During one of the members, Hanni’s, testimony she began to shed tears.
Hanni Pham began her testimony with, “I was waiting in the hallway after getting my hair and makeup done, when members from a different group and their female manager walked past me, and the manager said to the members, ‘Ignore her’.”
Many of their fans connected the dots to K-pop girl group, ILLIT after seeing a video recording of the interaction.
ILLIT is another group under HYBE Labels, which is ADOR’s parent company. This shows that the mistreatment of NewJeans didn’t come directly from ADOR, but rather from HYBE as a whole.
Pham then added, “When I first debuted, I would run into a high-ranking person in the company and every time my members and I would see him I would greet him, but not once did he greet me back.”
Pham then added something to show her thoughtful personality, “I knew if I didn’t speak up today it would be pushed under a rug. I came here to speak up about this in hopes that no other idols, who debuted before myself or for those who debut later, will have to put up with this kind of bullying.”
Pham then continues on to say that on an app called “Blind” a person working under the company was bad-mouthing NewJeans. This made her confirm the fact that this was not just her feeling but she was indeed being mistreated by her company. She was even told to leave it alone since she had no real evidence.
As the whole dispute was going on, they were still performing and releasing music for a while. They attended the Korean Grand Music Awards (KGMA) on November 16th, 2024. While saying their acceptance speech one of the members, Danielle Marsh, ended with a powerful line, “NewJeans never die.”
After ending with that powerful line, NewJeans fans, also known as “Bunnies”, started to post videos on social media and changing their bios to “NewJeans never die” to show their support towards the band. To let NewJeans know that they will support them through this entire ordeal.
This then turned into a full on court case at the Seoul Central District Court in December 2024.
On February 6-7, 2025 NewJeans rebranded themselves as NJZ on social media, to represent their new era.
In March 2025 the court ruled in ADOR’s favor. But for months after that they continued to hold court meetings to finalize the decision. This gave Bunnies hope in their heart. It was shattered on October 30, 2025 when the Seoul Central District Court finalized their decisions in ADOR’s favor.
On November 12, 2025 ADOR made a public announcement that members Hyein and Haerin would return to their group activities. Later that same day ADOR announced that the rest of the members, Danielle, Minji, and Hanni would be returning as well after careful consideration.
Now the real questions fans want the answer to is; what will the future of NewJeans be like? What will it be like with former CEO Min Hee-jin gone? Will NewJeans music still hit the same way it did 2 years ago? Keep up with the information about NewJeans to figure out!
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