The founder and former CEO of K-pop agency Ador, Min Hee-jin, has launched a new company called Ooak. That has prompted much speculation that she might be looking to re-sign the group she oversaw in her previous role - NewJeans - if a court ruling in South Korea this week relating to the girl group’s ongoing legal battle with Ador goes their way. That said, legal experts aren’t convinced it will.
That ruling depends on whether or not the court in Seoul accepts NewsJeans’ claims that Ador breached its contract with the group. South Korean lawyer Bae Jin-sung told The Korea Herald yesterday that “NewJeans’ claims include five alleged breaches”, but that in his opinion “several of them seem weak or do not legally qualify as contract violations”.
New company Ooak - which is apparently short for either ‘one of a kind’ and ‘only one always known’ - has been formally registered as a K-pop agency, listing its various areas of business as talent management, music and record production and distribution, and concert planning.
Min is presumably hoping to replicate the success she previously achieved with NewJeans, though it’s not clear if she plans to achieve that by working with new artists, or with NewJeans themselves.
Their relationship with Ador collapsed after Min was pushed out of the CEO role at the agency, she having fallen out with its parent company HYBE. The members of NewJeans remained loyal to Min as she battled with HYBE bosses during the first half of last year. After she ultimately quit the company entirely, they went public with their own grievances about both Ador and HYBE.
Then, in November last year, they announced that they were unilaterally ending their contract with the agency. As far as Ador and HYBE are concerned, the group can’t legally end their contract in that way. As a result, Ador first secured an injunction stopping NewJeans from working on new projects without its involvement, and then it filed a lawsuit looking to enforce its contract with the group.
In a court session earlier this year, legal reps for the group said that, after Min was “ousted” from her role running Ador and replaced by “someone under direct control of HYBE”, the “nature” of the agency was “fundamentally changed”. As a result, trust between the group and the agency “irreparably collapsed”, making it impossible for them to continue working together.
NewJeans unsuccessfully appealed the injunction stopping them from pursuing projects without the involvement of Ador. Two mediation sessions then took place in August and September seeking an out of court settlement to the wider legal battle, but without success.
The judge is now scheduled to rule on the dispute on Thursday. While that could, in theory, cut NewJeans free from Ador allowing them to sign with Ooak, it seems likely this week’s decision will be appealed.
Asked if NewJeans might ignore any possible ruling against them and sign with Ooak anyway, lawyer Bae said that scenario seems “very unrealistic”. Should the group “attempt to resume activities outside Ador despite the injunction”, he added, “they could be fined from several million to hundreds of millions of won, and it would constitute an unlawful act”.
The ongoing legal battle with NewJeans is causing reputation damage to HYBE, which is already dealing with the PR challenge caused by founder Bang Si-hyuk being accused of fraudulent trading under South Korea’s Capital Markets Act in relation to the K-pop powerhouse’s 2020 IPO.
Which might mean HYBE could be persuaded to allow NewJeans to buy out of their old contract if Min’s new company could raise the finance to do so, to mitigate the PR damage. Though, clearly, previous attempts to find a compromise between Ador and NewJeans have achieved very little.