This time, it’s not about NewJeans.

ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin has come under suspicion of plagiarism once again.

In her ongoing legal feud with HYBE, CEO Min made damning allegations, claiming that the conglomerate “copied” the concepts and visual direction of NewJeans for the girl group ILLIT under its other subsidiary, BELIFT LAB. But the allegations backfired when many pointed out that her concepts for NewJeans were also plagiarized from a Mexican girl group called Jeans and a Japanese group named SPEED.

Now, another allegation of plagiarism has found its way to Min Hee Jin, and this time for her work before she joined HYBE. In a viral post on the Korean online community, Nate Pann, a netizen recently pointed out that Min Hee Jin’s creative direction for F(x)’s Pink Tape looked eerily similar to an EP called Anomaly by an artist named Pink Tape.

Min was a creative director at SM Entertainment before joining HYBE, and Pink Tape is still one of her most revered works under the label. However, as the post pointed out, the album cover, showing a pink cassette tape, is visually very close to the Anomaly cover art, which was released in 2012, a year before Pink Tape.

Netizens were taken aback to see the extent of the similarities. Though they acknowledged that a pink cassette tape is not a very visually unique item, using it as the cover art to sum up the essence of the album did not seem to be a random choice on Min’s part. Many also felt that this matter wouldn’t have been blown out of proportion if Min herself hadn’t started the plagiarism blame game involving ILLIT.

• “Ms. Min always works by referencing things. She digs around, finds something useful that’s not well-known to the public, changes it a bit, and uses it. That’s always been her way.”
• “I can’t defend her anymore… This is Pink Tape, Min Hee Jin’s representative work.”
• “Using materials like pink cassette tapes and videotapes is, of course, common. However, using those materials as an album cover and as the title to the extent that they lead the overall concept of the album is a completely different story. Moreover, given that Min Hee Jin has previously claimed that ILLIT copied NewJeans (saying things like ‘if coincidences repeat, then they become intentions’ and claiming ‘formula copying’), it’s a fact that she can’t be free from the same accusations. Sure, there’s a saying that creation begins with imitation. And naturally, we know that there are terms like reference and homage at play. But Min Hee Jin can’t be defended because she officially raised issues about copying and similarity with another K-Pop group. Everyone knows that K-Pop initially started by copying J-Pop. So what I’m saying is that as someone working in K-Pop, which stemmed from imitation and has now established itself as a representative culture of Korea, she should have been more careful. In conclusion, publicizing ILLIT’s copying of NewJeans was Min Hee Jin’s blunder.”

• “If you saw my Pinterest, you’d pass out.”

• “These HYBE lackeys… Their intelligence is truly pathetic.”

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