Recently, the internet has been ablaze with the recent escalations surrounding NewJeans and HYBE following the removal of Min Hee-jin from NewJeans’ agency, ADOR.
In particular, it garnered a lot of attention when NewJeans held a livestream calling on HYBE to reinstate Min Hee-jin as CEO and expressing concern that they might be sidelined, followed by BTS’s Jungkook posting allegedly showing support for NewJeans.
Amid this series of events, now-deleted comments from a former SM Entertainment CEO suddenly resurface.
Notably, in 2023, after founder Lee Soo-man left SM, HYBE attempted to take over SM by purchasing Lee Soo-man’s shares.
In an attempt to stop this takeover, then-CEO Lee Sung-soo made videos exposing Lee Soo-man’s wrongdoing and mentioned HYBE in a now-deleted video titled “Reasons Why SM Is Against the Hostile Takeover of HYBE.”
maturing means realizing they were right all along https://t.co/XpcOH06pPV photo.twitter.com/4L25SutUhX
— zero 𝜗𝜚 (@newjiram) September 12, 2024
The video states that HYBE will likely prioritize its own artists over SM’s, giving more resources to idols from labels where HYBE has greater ownership.
These statements were then reconsidered in relation to the NewJeans situation and posts from Internet users reflecting on Lee Sung-soo’s words went viral.
The fate of groups from labels acquired by HYBE, including GFRIEND and fromis_9, has also become a topic of discussion.
Source: X, Krb
