According to Koreaboo, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea has just released audited internal documents of HYBE Group.
In an excerpt about the group's plans for girl groups, it was revealed that HYBE staff planned to eliminate NewJeans.
When ILLIT debuted and joined the ranks of HYBE's girl groups including NewJeans and LE SSERAFIM, many media outlets dubbed the trio “New-I-LE” to praise the groups as HYBE's new generation of idols.
The report includes plans to remove “New” (NewJeans) from the acronym and create a category of girl groups that achieved million-unit sales in their first week, to promote LE SSERAFIM.
The document states: “With NewJeans, ILLIT and LE SSERAFIM, the phrase “New-I-LE” from HYBE has started to appear on community pages and there has been a slight increase in mentions of ILLIT…
Now, we can put Blackpink - LE SSERAFIM - aespa - IVE into a group of girl groups that sold millions in the first week, instead of dividing them into 4th generation. We have been obsessed with the phrase "New-I-LE" for too long, now just remove "New" and create a new cluster".
In addition, the document also has plans for LE SSERAFIM, wanting to turn the group into a top group, combining the strengths of Blackpink and TWICE.
The document includes an analysis of HYBE's reasons for bringing LE SSERAFIM to Coachella, stating: "Above all, LE SSERAFIM has now built up a significant amount of confidence in their performance, so they have the ability to scale up their tour and compete with boy groups.
Blackpink has been aiming for Coachella and has had many interactions with foreign stars, but there is a problem of not being able to run the group as a whole.
TWICE strengthened their team spirit and held a concert at the stadium, but the situation was too loose to attract attention.
If LE SSERAFIM can combine the strengths of both groups, I believe they can completely fill the void left by the big girl groups."
Theqoo post about HYBE's document, related to LE SSERAFIM and NewJeans currently attracts over 40k reads this morning, with over 500 comments.
