Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, two years of training with no holiday. This is the estimated life of the superstar K-Pop girl group NewJeans. Their hard work contributed to the majority of the 2.18 trillion dollars their parent music label HYBE made in 2023. NewJeans has sold 4.4 million copies of all their albums total. It goes
without saying they’ve had a significant impact on the industry. So, in the past months when the girl group came subject to several controversies related to workplace bullying, and a lack of rights, it confused and angered NewJeans stans who feel the group has been mistreated.
Their controversies began in April 2024 when HYBE, the parent company to NewJeans music label ADOR, launched an audit on the company. HYPE claimed that Min Hee-jin, the CEO at the time of ADOR, was planning to take the label independent. NewJeans is the only group the label Ador represents, so this irritated HYBE, and they asked Min to step down. Min denied the allegations and refused to step down, but later resigned in August. This sparked a conversation in the industry surrounding if NewJeans should stay with the company. Soon after, rumors arose that said NewJeans was considering leaving Ador and HYBE all together.
Five months later in September the rumors continued, and the group decided to address them on YouTube live. In the video, the five members- Mingi, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein, said they’ve been subject to workplace harassment. Member Hanni claims on several occasions they’ve been ignored by their management staff and on one occasion they pretended to not see her after bumping into her. This video went viral but was then deleted. Prior to the video, in October one of the members, Hanni, testified before the Labour Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly. Hanni claimed she was ignored and undermined at ADOR. She said she felt like, “the company hates us.” However, the committee decided there was not enough evidence, so the committee couldn’t reach a decision. The members discussed their frustrations surrounding the case in the live stream as well. When asking Millbrook High School student and NewJeans stan Mariah about the situation, she said, “They contribute so much to the K-Pop world. It really upset me when I heard about all the mistreatment they were dealing with.” After the livestream HYBE’s shares dropped by 5 percent.
The drama continued into October when documents from the HYBE containing plans to replace NewJeans with another girl group were published by “The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism”. This created a panic for their fans and they began pressuring NewJeans to make a statement. NewJean fans then filed a petition to gain the group justice under the claims of workplace bullying. But in a shocking decision, the South Korea labor ministry rejected the petition. They said the singers were not regarded as workers due to their contracts, so they couldn’t receive the same rights as other laborers. This decision sparked the hashtag “IdolsAreWorkers”. Millbrook High School student and avid K-Pop fan Araina Camacho says, “It takes a lot to be a K-Pop star. They put in so many hours, and there’s a lot of public pressure they deal with. So for them to not get basic labor rights is so messed up.” A week after the ministry’s statement, NewJeans announced in a press conference that they were leaving ADOR due to workplace harassment and failure to reinstate their former CEO Min Hee-jin. This has cost ADOR’s parent company HYBE 423 million dollars lost in value and a 6.97 decrease in their shares. The future of the group remains uncertain; however, their fans have shown an outpouring of support online, ensuring they will continue streaming their music no matter what label they are under.
