The members of K-pop group NewJeans have issued a lengthy statement after Ador, their HYBE-owned label, launched legal proceedings to enforce the terms of their contract with the company.
Ador filed court action earlier this week after NewJeans announced last week that they were terminating their contract with the label - or ‘agency’, to use the K-pop vernacular - because a long list of grievances had not been properly addressed.
The group’s members say that they only learned about the lawsuit via the media, and add that Ador’s press release announcing the litigation doesn’t actually include any information that proves that the label is not in breach of the terms of its contract with NewJeans.
Instead, say the group, Ador’s main point is that the contract can’t be terminated until the company has recouped on the investment it has made in NewJeans.
In its press release, Ador made the point that - if aggrieved artists were allowed to simply unilaterally terminate contracts with their agencies - that would result in damage to the entire business model of the K-pop industry, because agencies wouldn’t be able to make the often-risky upfront investments required to develop artists.
However, NewJeans say that Ador has already recouped their investment adding, “we have already returned profits exceeding the investment” to Ador and its parent company HYBE.
The group’s statement also quickly runs through some of their complaints about Ador - which include HYBE executives allegedly trash talking their achievements to media contacts.
“HYBE has attempted various forms of interference, including defamation and reverse viral marketing, to devalue us”, says the group’s statement, adding, that “this is akin to the company producing malicious comments against us, the very artists they are supposed to protect”.
However, the biggest grievance of all is Ador’s ousting of the label’s CEO, co-founder and NewJeans svengali Min Hee-jin. With Min gone and the general feeling HYBE is now working against them, there is no longer any trust between group and agency, they say.
“Considering this breakdown in trust", they go on, “we have concluded that we are likely to suffer even more harm in the future”. Ador and HYBE, they allege, “have repeatedly violated contract terms and failed to fulfill their duty to protect their artists”, and, “according to the terms of our exclusive contracts, there is no longer any reason for us to continue working” with the agency.
With all of that in mind, and despite Ador starting court action to enforce its contract with NewJeans, the group says that, as far as they are concerned, the relationship between them and Ador is over, and “as of 29 Nov 2024, we are no longer affiliated with Ador”.
Quite apart from the legal ins and outs of the dispute, there is also, say NewJeans, a moral dimension to all this: it would be “not only unreasonable but also inhumane” for Ador to “force” them to fulfil the remaining five years of their contract with the “breakdown in trust and contract violations” that they say have taken place.
That said, HYBE and Ador seem pretty confident that the law is on their side and that the court will confirm that their contract with NewJeans is still in place. However, the more this very public dispute drags on - in addition to the ongoing public feuding with Min - the more reputation damage it does for the wider HYBE business. Whether that will factor into the company’s decision making is not yet clear.