NewJeans vs ADOR 1st hearing: NJZ claims media play over ILLIT plagiarism caused fame decline, accuses HYBE of THIS

The factual dispute between NJZ (formerly identified as NewJeans) and their agency, ADOR, below HYBE Labels, has reached a valuable stage with the first court hearing on March 7, 2025, on the fiftieth Civil Division of the Seoul Central District Court. NJZ alleges that HYBE manipulated during the Jeju Air Memorial Tribute and claims mental property infringement by the ILLIT community.

NJZ contributors Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein detailed their grievances, claiming that the community suffered from several incidents of unfair treatment by HYBE. The K-Pop girl community alleged that HYBE engaged in biased media play, deprioritized the community in resolve on of newer acts esteem ILLIT, and even undermined NJZ’s promotional opportunities.

As per Naver, NJZ shares, “HYBE’s astronomical-scale media play, ILLIT plagiarism controversy, restructuring of New Berry and the destruction of cooperation with the ‘Dolphin Kidnapping’ community are all things that occurred from 2023 to 2024. Except for for debtors (NewJeans), no longer one of many artists belonging to HYBE receive skilled this.”

NJZ accused HYBE of making an strive to change them with ILLIT, citing that HYBE plagiarized NewJeans’ debut conception and branding for the original community. They claimed that every ingredient of ILLIT’s concept, from crew construction to styling and even choreography, has a equivalent sample, which NJZ followed.

Furthermore, they alleged that when Min Hee Jin, the CEO of ADOR, requested an clarification, she used to be met with an aggressive audit and factual action as a alternative.

NJZ continues to half HYBE attempted to cease them from wearing sunless ribbons to honor the Jeju airplane accident victims. As per Edaily, NJZ says, “On the time, the contributors desired to wear the ribbon on stage in Japan, however HYBE steer clear off them from doing so, asserting that ‘the Eastern location will receive a mission with it,’ however after checking, they had been knowledgeable by the Eastern location they’d no anxiousness with it.”

The community later stumbled on that each one quite a few HYBE artists on stage had been wearing weird and wonderful memorial ribbons. They talked about that within the occasion they’d followed HYBE’s directive and no longer extinct the ribbon, they would receive confronted criticism. NJZ continues to half, Later we stumbled on out that HYBE artists had been standing on stage wearing a wierd memorial ribbon.”

These had been equipped as evidence of HYBE strategically making an strive to smash their reputation on stage.

For folks which might perchance well be unaware, ILLIT confronted controversy over claims that the all-girl K-pop community used to be modeled after NewJeans, produced by damaged-down ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin.

ILLIT’s Lucky Girl Syndrome choreography previously sparked controversy as a end result of comparisons with the choreography featured in NJZ’s commercial.