According to Ilgan Sports, on October 11, the 50th Civil Division of the Central Seoul Court convened a hearing at the request of producer Min Hee Jin to clarify whether HYBE Group's dismissal of her as CEO of ADOR Company (managing group NewJeans) violated the shareholder contract.
At the hearing, Min Hee Jin presented new evidence to prove that ILLIT stole NewJeans' ideas right from the planning stage.
Min Hee Jin's legal representative stated: "We have just received shocking information. The person who provided this information gave us a document containing project proposal files of NewJeans and ILLIT, asking us to compare the two plans."
Min Hee Jin detailed: “An internal HYBE employee reported that ILLIT’s creative director requested NewJeans’ plan right from the planning stage of ILLIT’s creation. ILLIT’s plan was identical to NewJeans’ plan.”
Additionally, there is evidence including text messages and audio recordings, showing the Creative Director of the ILLIT group asking to share NewJeans' documents.
In the recording, when asked if ILLIT's creative director requested to share NewJeans' documents, the employee replied, "Yes, that's right."
The staff also expressed their dissatisfaction when Belif Lab (ILLIT's management company) denied plagiarism: "I never imagined they would do exactly the same. All the documents showing the similarity were submitted to the court. They have seen all these documents and consulted them, so why do they keep denying it?"
Min Hee Jin's side continued to say, "Despite such obvious facts, Belif Lab has continued to deny the plagiarism suspicions, and HYBE has ignored the matter.
On April 3, former CEO Min Hee Jin raised an internal issue regarding “ILLIT copying NewJeans”. Objective evidence has proven that this issue was raised legitimately.
But this once again confirms that HYBE's audit of ADOR (in April) was an illegal and illegitimate audit.
In addition to ignoring the Belif Lab copying NewJeans case, HYBE also committed numerous acts of betrayal and harassment, such as pushing the media trend against NewJeans, covering up workplace bullying, using media tricks, and ignoring the court's judgment and unilaterally declaring that the contract between shareholders has been canceled.
