흥미돋 외국인한테 영어로 민희진 하이브 사건 설명하려고 쓴 정리글

[Hyein Star]

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출처: 여성시대 Hyein Star

난 ... 그냥 ... 백수 재미교포야 방금 졸업해서 쉬는중인데

그냥 내가 좋아하는거 설명하면서 제일 기쁨 얻는거같아...

내 주변에 kpop 좋아하는 친구들이 그렇게 많은편도 아니야

근데 한국 친구들도 대부분 한국어를 못해서 kpop 뉴스는 reddit이나 뉴스로 보는데

많이 와전이 된 상태로 보니깐 제대로 모르더라고 ^^

그리고 하이브 엄청 옹호하고 외국 커뮤 가면 그런 분위기가 대다수라서 제대로 정리해서 쓴글이없어서

사실 내가 막 이것저것 레퍼런스로 보고 한게 아니라 그냥 기억나는대로 쓰는거니깐 날짜나 작은 디테일은 틀릴수도 있음

내가 영어로 친구한테 설명해주려고 와다다 씀 친구도 당연히 납득하고 내 의견에 동의함

근데 빡 쓰다보니깐 막상 좀 허무하기도 하고... 나랑 그 친구만 읽는건 좀 아깝더라고

밀겟에 올려봤는데 쩌리 가라고 그래서... 관종인 나는 여기다가도 올릴려고

나중에 kpop 좋아하는 외국인이 설명해달라고 할때 써~! (그럴일이 있으려나)

 
그리고 난 사실 트위터나 외국 커뮤 눈팅만 해서 복붙해서 나대신 가져갈려면 넘 땡큐임

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실제 외국 커뮤에다가 올리니깐 나오는 반응 시발

ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ아 진짜 말이 안통한다 느낌....

누가 민희진이 피해자다운 피해자랬냐고요 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 성깔 알자나...하이브가 존나 나쁜놈이라는거지;

그걸 민희진이 까발리는거고요...................??? 그리고 기본적으로 기승전 아이돌이라서 그 밑에 일하는 스태프들은 아예 안보이나봐....

한달에 100-200정도 벌면서 같이 밤샘 작업하는 스태프들 생각을 그래도 민희진이 조금이라도 더 하지않을까요 일단 기본적으로

지 할일 다 남한테 떠넘기면서 골프치는 아재들보다는......?

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MAIN ACTORS

• Main Agency
  HYBE 
  
  Independent labels under HYBE
  Ador 
  Source Music
  
  
• Revelant Individuals
  MINHEEJIN - CEO of Ador (New Jeans)
  BANG - CEO of HYBE (Major agency of BTS, ILLIT, LESSERAFIM) 
  PARK JIWON (Short for "PJW" cause not that relevant of a person) - Former Vice-president of a multi-billionaire gaming company called NEXON (Maplestory); now functioning as one of the monkey man or enabler for HYBE (on the executive team)

TIMELINE

April 22nd -> HYBE floods the media with allegations against Min trying to embezzle HYBE. This happens publically. 

Their claim: she had the means to steal the artists (New Jeans) and all of Hybe’s funding, and HYBE will soon be conducting a forensic investigation on ADOR

A couple of days later, there's more news that MHJ refused to submit her work laptop

MINHEEJIN hit back with the fact that Hybe have been plagiarizing her work. HYBE makes her claims public

The general public criticizes her for having a big head, and that she's accusing everyone of copying her artwork

For two or three days, she's generally ridiculed and hated on and framed as the next perpetrator (like the FIFTY FIFTY incident)

April 24th -> MINHEEJIN -> claims she’s not dumb will hold a press conference to present her evidence. 

The general public were still cold towards her

HYBE's claims->

1. they find memo files on her worktop under the labelled “Project 1945” and “Hybe’s SINS”  - HYBE claims that she plans on gaining independence, or she will soon sue HYBE and manipulate the general public to gain sympathy so that she can steal New Jeans away from HYBE
2. She has met with a 무당 (witchcraft) to curse hybe

April 25th -> MINHEEJIN’s conference

SIGNIFICANCE

- She's able to reverse all the negative press attacking her for three days and garner support from most of the journalists there, but in real-time, even I saw the netizens gain sympathy for her through her story telling skills

- She came in as her authentic self and managed to convince people that she cares about the artists, the status of KPOP and convince GP of a good narrative for New Jeans (prior criticism of NJ; that they gained popularity so quickly so they don't have a sob-story/ some kind of heroic narrative that could gain core fans) but now we know that they truly pushed through the trials and tribulations and still come out on top

- She PROMOTED their new Album by wearing Minjee's outfit because she foresaw that HYBE does not actually effectively promote New Jeans

THINGS THAT WERE DISCUSSED AT THE CONFERENCE

• That Hybe copied THE FORMULA for success of New Jean’s in their new girl group Illit -> she also put in additional comments to avoid pointing the fault towards ILLIT’s. Rather, it's the management who's at fault, profiting off of young girls' dreams, it’s the company that has no respect towards creativity and love for the arts, and if one or two big labels start to copy all the successful formulas, no one is going to want to come up with original and creative kpop (which I believe is also true)
• Bang and Minheejin were cordial in the beginning, he kept hyping her up saying she can do whatever she wants, and they could make a really good idol group. He started to interfere with her plans, they clashed but Min already had a vision for what she wanted to do.
  
  Minji (New Jeans) was from Source music, and out of the entire trainee pool, Minji was the only one that minheejin thought fit with her vision, so she brought her in 
  
  She needed to do an audition
  She made the selling point as MHJ's new group x collaboration with HYBE and it will be their FIRST girl group that they will launch together. She made promotion materials and it was generally a success. She hand-picked the rest of the members after the audition
  
  
• COVID hit, plans were getting delayed
• PJW PARK JIWON (the middle man) is cordial with MINHEEJIN cause they’re similar in age, but he sends her the message that they will be debuting Lesserafim first
• MINHEEJIN is pissed and is worried about what she’s gonna tell NewJeans’ parents
• PJW is just like lol they’ll deal with it (So they initially don’t really care about the debut of NewJeans) because if they debut lesserafim New jeans won’t be able to debut in a couple of years
• MINHEEJIN plans on making an independent label
• Hybe threatened MINHEEJIN to give up all of her Stocks when she took Newjeans out to make an independent label (verses Source music that has 80% of stock options) there’s no way that she can actually embezzle or take over the company 
  
  She now has only 18% of the stock options and that’s AFTER Newjean’s success, and that’s still almost impossible to be at a position where you can embezzle (2% she gave to the rest of her team)
  
  She explains she’s not motivated by money but REPUTATION (which is why it’s so fucked up that hybe used the press to turn people against her) and wanted to work with HYBE because (a) Bang kept on sucking up to her in the beginning telling her that she can do ‘whatever she wants’ (b) she was burnt out from SM (c) she just wanted an environment where she can pay people on time without having to be swayed by investor’s decisions, which at the time HYBE seemed like a perfect option
  
  She gave up 100% initially -> and planned for New Jean’s debut
• Throughout the time, PJW keeps sending her messages saying that she needed to POLICE her keywords to advertise Newjeans before their debut because HYBES intention was to confuse netizens which one was Minheejin’s group (people were really eager for 민희진그룹  because she has an eye for aesthetic) so they wanted to trick people into assuming it was lesserafim and not New jeans by avoiding the usage of words such as “전원신인’ (everyone is a rookie) because sakura and 채원 were already famous and had debuted before
• HYBE kept on preventing Newjeans from being promoted so Minheejin went to independent colleagues to market her girls + found PR (advertised) herself to promote Newjeans
• When OMG became top 200 of billboard (first in history) Bang sends her text messages such as “좋으시겠어요?” “ are you happy?” she says “lol” he asks again “are you happy?” and she says “what do you want to hear, of course I am happy”
• The press release of her refusing to submit her laptop for forensic investigation -> HYBE first releases the press and then a couple days later she got an email asking to submit her laptop (so hybe lied and made this up to make her look bad, and only followed through AFTER her reputation was already ruined)
• Minheejin cries everytime she mentions New Jeans cause she truly loves them while as soon as she moves on to talk about Hybe she stops crying and starts to swear and says there’s so many 씨발새끼들 (pigs) and that she’s worked her ass off while the rest of the HYBE male executive uses 법인카드 (company card) to go golfing, valet parking, drink etc etc (reflective of the patriarchy against women in workplaces in south korea)

HER RESPONSES TO HYBE'S ALLEGATIONS AGAINST HER

• PJW has a negative return on investment and gets paid out 1 million dollars, she makes 110 million for the company and gets 2 million dollars -> Idk, hints of Patriarchy? Maybe. The audacity of these men claiming that she's a fraudster, I feel like SHE got scammed by HYBE
•  PJW also is the one who ratted her out through all of this even though he was the one suggesting to MINHEEJIN that she should “succeed and plan her revenge later” (despite MINHEEJIN not having any intentions to revenge against HYBE)
• While they released a shit ton of negative press against her, they weren’t able to find any evidence of embezzlement (obviously because she can’t, she’s tied to a slave contract AND she has no intentions to, she’s just frustrated with all the internal politics that goes on) they just find traces of her using (배민)(Equivalent to Uber Eats in S.Korea) to feed her team’s while they work overtime
• She mentions in passing that actually HYBE is obsessed with witchcraft so they project their acts onto her (which is what led to netizens investigating the relationship between HYBE and this cult called Dahn's world; still unaddressed but sus af)
• Says all she wants from HYBE is for them to leave her alone
• She was on an interview later with CBS (one of the more legit/ respected media outlets but it is also a Christian one, which is also part of the reason why some believe that she's actually trying to protect herself from hidden cult members in external outlets) ; she mentioned that despite all this noise, she doesn't care about what label she's under; She'd rather just talk it out and come to some kind of mutual compromise with the HYBE executive team because all she wants to do is just to continue making music with New Jeans (also, Korean netizen's aren't dumb. We agree with her sentiment not just because she played some kind of 'pity party' at the press conference but because she's been consistent in her words and actions when she says she cares about New Jeans. FYI she's still close with Krystal despite working for her album like over a decade ago).
  
  AKA; literally she has no benefits to gain from getting sympathy from the press; she's literally just defending herself from all these false allegations
  
  
• She can’t go into ALL the details of the Slave contract that PJW tricked her into signing because of the NDA(Non-disclosure agreement) but she did mention that Hybe is forever going to hold 5% of her stocks, (i’m not too sure on this) and if she decides to sell it and start a new idol group then she would either have to pay HYBE out a fortune (like something that’s completely unattainable) or can’t work in the industry ever again. PJW kept pushing her to sign this contract saying shit like "Oh I always keep my promises, just TrUsT Me" which she apparently regrets because after she found out what it entailed he denied any accountability on his end; basically he scammed her and betrayed her trust by tying her down to this stupid ass contract when she's proven to be successful wherever she goes
  
  Realistically, she says there's no way for her to get out of this contract and did not seem like she had any intentions to leave. The fact that HYBE went all out and raided the news about all these claims about her without actually attemtping to directly communicate with her is also super sus. Her documents about leaving or embezzling were actually just done in parantheses or in times of desperation when she felt like she was being pushed to the edge; she would complain to her friends about it and they used all of those private conversation as "evidence for embezzlement" which is really fkin sketchy
  
• She also comments on the fact that HYBE is responsible for the ecological destruction in KPOP and toxic practices as they try to promote the usage of random photo cards in the album, luring fans to spend millions of dollars that are unneccessary. Just to collect cards/ get invitations to fan meetups she sees all these minors fork out a fortune and she wanted to show that idols can earn revenue and be successful without having to do all these gimmicky things; just sell high quality music and albums. 
  
• Another criticism is that the photo cards is just another way to make this invisible hierarchy within an idol group and destroys self esteem of the artists (what I can infer from her statements)
  
  Hybe is unresponsive to any of her attempts to amend the relationship, they're just trying to exhile her from the industry all together, which is completely unnecessary. It's just coward behaviour

WHAT WE CAN TAKE AWAY FROM THE CONTROVERSY 

1. That she really cares about the protection of her artists, and their family
   This obviously shows not just from the press conference itself, but she's stayed consistent throughout New Jean's career (I saw multiple headlines of New Jeans still being able to have 8-9 hours of sleep everyday even during their peak performance periods, like twice I saw on different occasions of headlines saying that Minji sleeps 10 hours or more even during peak seasons) and actually treating New Jeans in a HuMAnE way- obviously this is unheard of in kpop and if you stan the artists you would want this to be a standard practice (She's built personal relationships with NJ's family and cares for their well-being)
   
2. *DISCLAIMER* I'M NOT SAYING SHE'S A PERFECT HUMAN BEING. I UNDERSTAND THAT THERE ARE OTHER ALLEGATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH HER, BUT SO FAR CONSIDERING HOW SHE'S BEEN TREATING NEWJEANS + OVERALL HER DIRECTING SKILLS, WE THINK THAT NEW JEANS WOULD BE IN BETTER CARE OF MINHEEJIN FROM ADOR THAN HYBE. If she was to step down, because she still has quite a solid blue print for Newjeans and so they won't be affected right away. But you need to acknowledge MHJ's contribution in NJ's major success.
3. She raised a valid point about the kpop industry becoming a money grab for greedy adults who just want quick cash and do not actually spend enough time or effort making high-quality and distinct concepts for their idol groups
4. Not only does she actually not have the means to embezzle HYBE (she has 18% of the stocks of her OWN company. Compared to Source Music owning 80% of their stock and 20% to HYBE... you can do the math lol) she's not interested. The reason why she held the press conference is because she wants HYBE to deal with these misunderstandings QUIETLY amongst the executive team, but they started releasing all this press RUINING her reputation BECAUSE they know that she's moved by reputation and not money. (She's said this herself) ; Also, we highly regard minheejin because she was at the forefront of the kpop industry since the beginning. Her eye for design in unmatchable, she's literally worked and created some of the most influential designs of kpop history, of course she would have other sponsors forking out millions of dollars for her if she wanted to. She literally just wanted to pay her workers regularly and not be touched by the opinions of sponsors and create art.
5. HYBE was the one who started the battle, they don't want to have a 'cordial discussion' with her, they just want to ruin her career and push her out of the industry. We think that it's either motivated by jealousy, or her refusal to conform to their Dahn's cult. (I don't really want to talk about the CULT right now because this also deserve's its own posting with the historical and political landscape of S.Korea)
6. That the big-agencies should be setting ethical boundaries ; avoid manipulating fans to hoard-buy albums just for the sake of pushing their idols on top of the charts and all that BS and still manages to set through example that these toxic practices are not the ONLY way to flourish and become popular
7. NETIZENS started to wonder the motivations of Bang actively preventing her success when her success is bringing HIM million dollar revenue-> It doesn’t make sense -> He's also motivated by prestige? So is it jealousy? -> The fact that she’s hinted at the OMG mv success text (that bang threatened her for the music video) and the fact that they’re culty now we see a bigger problem 
   
   (If you want to second-handedly experience the severity of K-cults, watch In the Name of God; A holy betrayal on Netflix) like obviously nothing is fully confirmed yet but there's quite compelling evidence that HYBE 's cult inferences are not just conspiracy but if it is, it would be a really big problem because they're using their artists to manipulate young listeners into their cult ideals
   
   It may be difficult to accept that HYBE has a relationship with cults, because that wasn't really the focus of the story however, what we can take away from all of this controversy are these things: 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONTROVERSY

1. For those who think that HYBE is the reason why New Jeans is famous, I feel like they're kind of missing the entire context of kpop. SM, JYP and YG are the big three entertainments that have stood throughout the kpop history. HYBE is a new player, and they got their fame from BTS (which is fair, I'm happy for them). But one of the key differences on why everyone wants to play in the big 3 is because the system is different. The big 3 are known to invest a lot of money into their artists, and have a support in place as a system. I doubt that HYBE has that kind of experience because HYBE's only artist that Bang actually succeeded is BTS.

We currently doubt, (as Bang mentioned himself he's unsure how to succeed a girlgroup as he has failed in the previous attempts prior to lesserafim) his ability to train and upkeep his artists. Min hee jin on the other hand, many of you guys might just know her as the CEO of New Jeans, but she's actually got quite an extensive portfolio. Even her audition was set up as "MINHEEJIN'S IDOLS" and most of the people in Korea really were looking forward to her because she is already THAT influential. So she's not actually piggybacking off of HYBE's success.

In reality from the press conference, we find out that BANG was trying to ride off her success, and when that didn't work because they had clashing ideals, BANG actively tried to manipulate the press into THINKING THAT lesserafim was MINHEEJIN's group and prevent New Jeans from gaining popularity. The first pre-release teasers lesserafim actually gained a lot of criticism from K-netizens for the overly sexualized and objectified girls, which is very different from the vision that we thought minheejin would go for. (I remember this actually being mentioned in online communities real time, and people being confused whether lesserafim was Minheejin's group). 

2. She's not actually just appealing to K-netizen's emotions and being manipulative (contrary to what the intn’l fans are suggesting) I think she's mentioning real and pressing issues about power and society and challenging the status quo
- Such as the culture in asian countries where victims are silenced and encouraged to fawn against their perpetrators

- Pointing out valid concerns about the K-pop industry's direction as a professional who's made major changes int the industry for over two decades

- It's also difficult to suggest that SHE's the one being manipulative considering the power dynamic difference between her as an individual vs a large multi-billion corporation owned and running off of MEN

3. Not only that, she's a symbol representing feminist issues within the workplace and speaking against workplace harrassment and patriarchy that dominates the industry

- Her case is revealing that the capitalist society where we believe it's a meritocracy is a facade, working hard and talent is not enough to climb up the corporate ladder let alone break the glass ceiling

- She's speaking against that and refusing the participate in the toxic industry practices

4.  Kay but not only does her case appeal towards feminist issues I'm assuming majority of the workers in S.Korea or globally have experienced this power struggle and instead of upholding the status quo she's decided to use her influence to speak out against it and walk away from it which is the core reason of why she's gaining support from people all over Korea.

5. It's difficult to understand all of the nuances just from news, you kind of have to watch the entire 2 hour interview and understand these contextual issues that are in play in S.Korea to get the reason why us S.Koreans are supporting MINHEEJIN.

OTHER RESPONSES

FYI- I'm literally writing this entire thing based off of memory/ the press conference/ the CBS interview and other news that I saw in real time during the entire controversy and I'm not referencing anything in particular so I may have gotten minor details  wrong so if there's an inaccuracy that you find feel free to communicate that with me

But for those who are coming @ me that I'm biased, I do agree. I'm disapproving HYBE as a company and BANG. But also at the same time, HYBE is no saint and I feel that the international community lacks the cultural, political and historical context of kpop along with other nuances that could only be understood if you were to speak the language + understand the working environments of S.Korea.
Obviously, she's a top player in the industry so I understand that she's getting a good pay out. However, if you consider her contributions, it's pretty much low-balled and this is because (a) she's a woman (b) she's not aligned with Bang's ideals 

She's a whistleblower in this case.

And for those who claim that patriarchy is the same everywhere... y'all have no fkin clue. Wake up. 

[행운아입니다]

와 진자 개멋지다

[말투완전도깨비같아]

영어공부 북맠!!! 고마워여샤♡

[springcream]

와 진짜 멋있어

[해린아이모다]

개멋지다..

[질병관리청장]

감사합니다ㅠ

[겹벚꽃 좋아]

멋지다

[KISS OF LIFE]

개스마트

[140427~ing♥♡]

와 ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

[보기만하는 토끼]

진짜 너무 멋있다 최고여!!