.@NewJeans_ADOR loses contract dispute as court upholds validity of deal with @alldoorsoneroom. On Oct. 30, the Seoul Central District Court ruled that the dismissal of former CEO Min Hee-jin does not appear to violate @NewJeans_twt’s exclusive contracts, and that her public… pic.twitter.com/O4epUw9ph6
— KpopHerald (@Kpop_Herald) October 30, 2025
If you want a concise summary of the case and ruling, The Korea Herald article is a good resource.
But if you want my longwinded (ONTD Original?) attempt at explaining the entire mess, please [click the cut]click the cut.
AHEM.
So, potentially as early as late 2023 but definitely by early 2024, the CEO of ADOR, Min Hee Jin (heretofore will be referred to by me as MHJ) was exploring ways that she could either take NewJeans away from ADOR to start her own label outside of Hybe OR take the entire ADOR label from the Hybe conglomerate (Hybe is structured in a way that it is the overarching company, but labels under Hybe operate pretty independently) which owned 80% of ADOR. One of the investors she’d been talking to spilled the beans to Hybe so Hybe triggered an audit of ADOR.
This led to possibly my favorite moment of this entire mess aka the 3 hour long press conference/crash out that MHJ held where she aired her grievances such as “Illit plagiarized NewJeans” (because they are also a group of 5 girls who debuted with long, dark hair!) and “Le Sserafim debuted before NewJeans”. Why was she mad about this? Well, initially MHJ was recruited to be the creative director for SourceMusic (one of the labels under Hybe) with the understanding that she’d debut the first Hybe girl group. There was tension between MHJ and the CEO of SouMu because the CEO of SouMu wanted Sakura to be part of the debut group. But she was GROSS AND OLD (I think she would have been 22/23 at debut?) didn’t fit MHJ’s vision for her group. Bang PD was like “FINE. WHATEVER.” and create a new label (ADOR) under which she could take some of the SouMu trainees to form and debut her own group and even personally loaned her a few million dollars so MHJ could have a stake in the new label. MHJ was dragging her feet getting her new group ready and the group under SouMu, Le Sserafim, was ready to debut, so they debuted first. MHJ felt this was a MASSIVE BETRAYAL and apparently never got over it.
Ok, back to the main plot! The audit provided a bunch of evidence that yeah, MHJ was definitely trying to either gut ADOR or take it from Hybe, so she was, unsurprisingly, removed as CEO. She was still maintained as an internal director and she was offered to be able to stay on as the creative director/producer for NewJeans. But she declined because it’s CEO or nothing, babbbbbyyyy. So she resigned.
NewJeans then essentially pulled a Michael Scott from the Office “I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY” moment and said that their contract was invalid because ADOR did not address their concerns (main concern being MHJ’s removal as CEO) so there was a material breach of trust.
ADOR was like “well, that’s not how any of this works!” and filed with the court to confirm that the contract was, in fact, still valid. This is what the court case in this post was about. Meanwhile, NewJeans declared their new name was NJZ and they would be performing at ComplexCon under that new name. ADOR was like “uh no?” and filed an injunction request with the court to prevent this. Literally the day before the performance was supposed to happen, the court ruled on that request and put an injunction in place, instructing the NewJeans members that they have to go through ADOR to perform. And because this whole thing is like a Kdrama, ADOR sent staff to Hong Kong so they could support NewJeans and show they were holding up their end of the contract, but NewJeans avoided them and then on stage that day announced that they were going on a self-imposed hiatus for the foreseeable future. This was in March 2025.
Since then there’s been various hearings and despite NewJeans’s promises that definitely had really good evidence that would come out in court, their case was super weak. The verdict was handed down Oct 30th and the court rejected each and every one of NewJeans claims and put a lot of blame on MHJ. So the contract is valid and if NewJeans wants to work in the industry, they have to do so via ADOR. At this point there were 3 options for NewJeans: 1. Go back to working with ADOR. 2. File for contract termination, go through all proper legal channels and pay the termination fee (which will be massive and which is why they tried to go the “our contract is invalid route” because they don’t want to pay) or 3. Appeal this decision. NewJeans lawyers immediately announced they will be going for option #3. No word yet on if the court will accept the appeal or just outright deny hearing it.
So that is the main storyline of this mess, but there are many other side quests including:
1. One of the NewJeans members, Hanni, went in front of the National Assembly to cry about workplace bullying at a hearing that also included companies where people literally died due to corporate negligence. It later come out in one of the court hearings that the CCTV of the event Hanni described at the National Assembly did not line up with Hanni’s version of events, and even the texts she sent to MHJ afterward was basically “lol that was an awkward interaction” and wasn’t something she felt strongly about.
2. MHJ is being sued by a former employee for workplace bullying. MHJ has already been fined by the government for her actions. The employee was sexually harassed by a VP at ADOR (who MHJ is besties with) and MHJ mocked her.
3. Belift Music (Illit’s label) and Source Music (Le Sserafim’s label) both have on going court cases for defamation against MHJ for stuff she said about their groups in her crash outs.
4. MHJ has started a new agency. If NewJeans continues to appeal or is tied up with terminating the contract and ends up potentially $250 million in debt due to the early t, will MHJ wait for them and take on that massive debt so she can redebut the members under a new name? Or will she cut them loose and find some new teens to manipulate?
Ok that concludes my novel. And despite how long this post was, I still skipped over some less important stuff, including a family court hearing!!
