SOURCE: (1) 어도어 "민희진, 뉴진스 라이브 방송 지시했다" (2) "민희진, 뉴진스 라이브 방송·'전속계약 해지선언'까지 지시"
The ongoing legal battle between ADOR, NewJeans, and former ADOR CEO Min Heejin (who is now the CEO of OOAK Records) just took an absolutely wild turn.
On the 2nd, the Seoul Central District Court’s Civil Agreement Division 31 held the third hearing for ADOR’s damages lawsuit against Danielle, her family, and former ADOR CEO Min Heejin.
ADOR is suing them for alleged breaches of exclusive contract, and while they originally demanded 43.1 billion KRW, they’ve trimmed it down to 33.09 billion KRW. To back up the case, ADOR just dumped a mountain of evidence claiming that Min Heejin orchestrated a scheme to lure the girls away from the label. According to ADOR, Min Heejin was actively encouraging the members to terminate their contracts while she was an internal director and kept doing it even after she stepped down.
ADOR submitted a transcript from September 2, 2024 to the court. In it, Min Heejin allegedly persuaded the NewJeans’ members’ parents to push forward with that sudden emergency livestream they did. Her exact words were apparently:
“We need to create evidence for the contract termination lawsuit.”
It turns out that Min Heejin originally wanted to be in the livestream herself, but she explicitly stated that she had to remain completely separate from it because of tampering risks, which ADOR argues proves she knew exactly how legally dangerous her involvement was. About ten days later, the girls held the livestream demanding Min Heejin to be reinstated as CEO. This completely contradicts everything Min Heejin said before about trying to stop the members from doing the livestream.
ADOR also claims that around October 20, 2024, Min Heejin was aggressively pushing the parents to terminate the contracts. She promised them that even in the worst-case scenario, they wouldn’t suffer from any financial disadvantages and promised that if they left HYBE, she would personally prepare compensation to cover any potential lawsuit costs. ADOR slammed her for this, calling it ‘unthinkable behavior’ for someone who was serving as an internal director at the time
ADOR also submitted chat logs between Min Heejin and the parents from March 2025, where she allegedly told them:
“Let’s demand things ADOR can’t possibly accept and record the conversation.”
She followed them up by saying, “We need to get them to reject requests they were never going to agree to anyway. It’s not that we actually want to negotiate, we just need to build a justification or not going back.”
ADOR claims that even after losing their initial injunction case, Min Heejin was telling the parents of Minji and Danielle to use these exact tactics to create circumstances that would justify the girls not returning to ADOR.
The court also shed light on how deep Min Heejin’s hands were in the legal paperwork. During an injunction hearing on March 7, 2025, Min Heejin allegedly instructed NewJeans’ legal team to write:
“Please add that the debtor mocked us through their words and actions.”
This specific note was tied to the infamous ‘ignore her’ incident, where NewJeans’ attorney argued a BELIFT Lab manager told other artists to ‘ignore her and walk past’ Hanni, leading to a massive online hate toward ILLIT.
However, the court actually looked at CCTV footage and KakaoTalk messages and concluded that the phrase ‘ignore her’ didn’t even come from Hanni, but it was first introduced by Min Heejin.
When Hanni told Min Heejin that she thought she heard the manager say to ‘just pretend not to know her and walk past,’ Hanni literally added, “I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like that.” Min Heejin replied, “‘Ignore her’? Is that what they said?” The court noted that Hanni even admitted that one of the ILLIT members avoided eye contact but another actually greeted her, meaning the group did greet her, and the whole narrative was spun by Min Heejin.
Even after losing the injunction case, ADOR claims Min Heejin completely went rogue and led NewJeans’ into independent entertainment activities. She allegedly produced their performance at ComplexCon Hong Kong, created new music, set up NJZ profile photoshoots, and arranged a solo pictorial for Danielle.
Regarding ComplexCon, ADOR noted that Min Heejin directed the choreography, styling, and merch. They also revealed that she was set to receive US$500,000 as the event’s producer, which is significantly more than the $US350,000 all five NewJeans members were going to make combined. ADOR explained:
“It appears they considered to write this up as a separate consulting service contract, but abandoned the idea because it could be disadvantageous in future lawsuits, so they rolled it into the members’ contracts instead.”
To top it off, ADOR also submitted evidence that showed Min Heejin personally editing an email to the organizers asking them to block ADOR staff from entering the venue. This happened just two days before the concert, right after the court had legally ruled that ADOR’s contract with NewJeans was still 100% valid, leading ADOR to send staff over to support the girls’ performance.
Previously, Min Heejin’s side has consistently denied all allegations of ‘NewJeans tampering.’ In press conferences and other public statements, they’ve repeatedly maintained that ‘CEO Min Heejin bears zero responsibility for any alleged tampering regarding NewJeans.’
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