On July 23, 2024, ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin hit back at recent allegations made against her by HYBE via Dispatch. She revealed an email that she had sent to HYBE CEO Park Ji Won back before NewJeans had debuted. In the email, she detailed her plans for her girl group, and explained that her creative decisions seemed to split with that of Source Music.
While Source Music was planning for a group that delves into the “growth of beautiful people of power,” targeting male fans, Min Hee Jin wanted her group to go into “an adventure of finding the real me.” Min Hee Jin presented her plans as such, creating a PowerPoint presentation that explored the real selves of teens. In her email, Min Hee Jin accused Source Music and HYBE of recalibrating their plans and direction for their girl group to mimic hers. Back then, she emailed Park Ji Won, claiming that while Source Music’s original direction was for the male audience, they changed their direction to mimic hers.
Min Hee Jin’s email. | theqoo
Even by looking at the respective companies’ directions, in March, Source explained their direction as “the growth of beautiful people of power,” and they recaliberated that in August as “an adventure to set off and find the real me, the story of the growth of young girls,” but it was difficult for me to agree that this recaliberation was a development of the plans set in March. I think it is much closer to the suggested plans of the CBO Office in May.
In the CBO’s materials in May regarding “Teen Influencer,” it was reflected that the group would be “friends of global teens, global influencers with an honest and free vibe.” The contents of the materials from the CBO’s May plans were about relating to and sympathizing with teens. The materials from Source Music in August were also targetting females in their teens, appealing with visuals that they want to copy. This is very different from the plans presented in March by BigHit (and Source Music) where the target audience was male fans.”
— Min Hee Jin
Later on, HYBE launched ILLIT after LE SSERAFIM. Netizens on Daum Cafe pointed out that while ILLIT’s theme is “Super Real Me,” LE SSERAIM received much criticism for being “for the male gaze” during their early debut days.
As such, netizens agree that Min Hee Jin had reasonable excuse to feel sensitive about ILLIT’s alleged plagiarism of her plans for NewJeans, given that she had already pointed this out to the company before NewJeans had even debuted. Her email was dated in 2021.
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