The Korea Popmusic Industry Association has criticised a New York Times report on the contracts signed back in 2022 between HYBE-owned agency Ador and K-pop group NewJeans.
Calling the report a “one-sided and biased assessment” of the K-pop business, the Korean music industry trade group says it “regrets” that the US newspaper has taken the “controversy surrounding an individual contract” and “interpreted it as a structural problem affecting the K-pop industry as a whole”.
The NYT article shines the spotlight on various aspects of the contracts between Ador and the members of NewJeans, who were aged fourteen to seventeen when the deals were negotiated.
It reviews the ways in which K-pop agencies have considerable control over the lives of the artists they work with, claiming that - among other things - the NewJeans contract prohibited “insincere attitudes”, “inappropriate romantic relationships” and public criticism of Ador.
The financial arrangements between Ador and NewJeans are also revealed by the NYT’s reporting, which states that the group’s members receive about half the money generated by their shows and brand partnerships, after the agency has deducted all its costs.
Meanwhile on streaming they get a minority share of the money, and they may be forced to pay punitive exit charges if the contract ends before its term, even if it’s the agency that ends the relationship.
The article also discusses how the K-pop sector has a reputation for encouraging artists to get cosmetic surgery, covering the upfront costs of such treatment but then charging those costs back to the artist once their music is generating income.
It then claims that “the Korean government has a K-pop contract template” that guarantees each artist’s “right to education and to physical and mental health”, but that the NewJeans contracts “stripped away that language”.
Concluding, the NYT says “K-pop has long been dogged by allegations of exploitation”, and “the NewJeans contracts show that despite years of promised overhauls and government intervention, little has changed, even for one of the most successful groups of its time”.
HYBE itself has defended its deals with NewJeans, which it says complied with South Korean legal standards and were finalised after extensive negotiations involving the group’s members, as well as their parents and legal representatives.
It also adds that, in subsequent legal wrangling between HYBE and members of NewJeans, a Korean court confirmed that “sufficient discussions” took place between the various parties before the contracts were signed.
The business relationship between HYBE’s Ador and NewJeans has been very much in the spotlight for some time, of course, because of the highly public falling out between HYBE and the founder and former CEO of Ador, Min Hee-jin.
After HYBE pushed Min out of the CEO role at Ador, the members of NewJeans tried to quit the agency, resulting in HYBE successfully enforcing its contracts with all five members through the Korean courts.
Although four members of NewJeans are now meant to be working on new material with Ador, HYBE is still suing the fifth member, Danielle. It’s also still embroiled in a legal battle with Min.
The group’s 2022 contract has been leaked to the New York Times as those legal battles continue to go through the motions. Its article has also resulted in more sparring between HYBE and Min over who actually led on the negotiations of the group’s contracts, including the more controversial clauses.
HYBE says it was Min and her then top team at Ador, while Min claims that lawyers at parent company HYBE actually led on the negotiations.
The deals that K-pop and J-pop artists sign with their agencies are very different to the deals artists in Europe and North America would sign with their managers, labels and agents.
Both K-pop and J-pop agencies have been criticised over the years for the control they exert over their artists, many of whom start working with those agencies in a ‘trainee’ role at a relatively young age.
As in the NYT piece on the NewJeans deals, specific criticism includes how K-pop agencies control the lives of their artists, how the money is shared once a group starts to have success, and the pressure artists may be under to alter their appearance through cosmetic surgery.
Responding to the specific allegations in the NYT, HYBE insists that it never requires or recommends cosmetic surgery “against an individual’s wishes”. The newspaper itself concedes that the financial arrangement between Ador and NewJeans is pretty much standard within K-pop, but then quotes one Korean lawyer as saying other aspects of the group’s deal are “unusually aggressive”.
HYBE says that when it comes to artist contracts, the template provided by the Korean government is a “non-binding guideline”, and again stresses that amendments made to the template for the NewJeans deal were accepted by the parents of each member of the group.
And when it comes to working with under eighteens on their ‘trainee’ programmes, all HYBE agencies use “government-standard” agreements, the K-pop giant stresses.
Meanwhile, in its statement, the Korea Popmusic Industry Association is keen to stress that K-pop contracts should not be viewed through a “Western lens”.
The “distinctive Korean industry ecosystem” has its own ways for protecting artists, the trade group argues, and therefore its approach should not be “belittled as ‘oppressive control’”.
It then explains, “Major K-pop companies operate comprehensive artist care programmes, in some cases employing in-house medical professionals, to carefully protect artists’ health, well-being and personal rights”.