A member of chart-topping K-pop group NewJeans yesterday tearfully testified to South Korean lawmakers as part of an inquiry into workplace harassment, amid a boardroom drama over her super producer.
In recent years, South Korea’s K-pop industry has become a global juggernaut powered by the success of groups like BTS, but domestically it is known for imposing strict standards and controls on fledgling stars.
Rising K-pop idols are expected to adhere to their powerful agency’s behavior and appearance guidelines, with many stars describing receiving extreme backlash from fans over perceived mistakes in their personal lives, for example dating.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Hanni, 20, who is Vietnamese-Australian, testified that she overheard a manager of another idol group linked to her parent agency instructing members of another girl group to spurn her.
“I saw a manager along with three members from another group and said hello... When the manager saw me, she told the members to ‘ignore her as if you didn’t see her,’” she told lawmakers.
“I could not understand why I had to go through this,” she said.
The alleged incident took place amid a dispute between NewJeans’ producer and mastermind, Min Hee-jin, and HYBE, the South Korean agency that manages BTS, after HYBE filed a legal complaint against Min for breach of trust in business.
Min, who headed the HYBE subsidiary ADOR, which manages NewJeans, was replaced as ADOR’s president in August amid the boardroom conflict.
During the livestream in which Hanni had raised the harassment claim, all NewJeans’ members demanded that Min be reinstated as ADOR’s CEO.
Multiple court cases on the issue are ongoing.
Hanni acknowledged that the ongoing dispute between the parent company and Min was related to the bullying she had experienced.
“It couldn’t have been unrelated. But they didn’t need to bring that issue into the workplace,” she said.
“I felt I couldn’t just sit idly by while such behavior continued to repeat,” she said, adding that NewJeans members had been subjected to other unfair treatment by HYBE, such as discrediting their performance in Japan.
ADOR CEO Kim Ju-young, who succeeded Min, told lawmakers that while she personally believed Hanni’s account, no CCTV evidence was available to support it.
Hanni’s testimony was given to South Korean lawmakers who serve on the parliamentary committee overseeing workplace conditions and safety, which is not an investigative body.
ADOR’s Min, who joined the industry in the early 2000s, is widely regarded as one of the most successful producers in the K-pop scene, having worked with stars such as Girls’ Generation, EXO and SHINee, among others.
NewJeans, produced by Min, is among HYBE’s most successful K-pop groups, alongside BTS, which is on a hiatus as some members perform South Korea’s mandatory military service.
BTS member J Hope is to finish his military service tomorrow.
“I am grateful for the attention people have shown to this issue. I hope my fellow colleagues and [K-pop] trainees won’t have to experience such concerns,” Hanni said tearfully in her closing remarks.
Additional reporting by Reuters
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS