Star K-pop Producer Causes Online Stir After Lashing Out At Industry Bosses

Seoul, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Apr, 2024) The creative director behind the girl band NewJeans has found online fame after a tearful, profanity-laced news conference in which she slammed some of K-pop's most powerful executives as "middle-aged jerks".

HYBE, the South Korean agency behind K-pop sensation BTS, filed a legal complaint on Thursday against Min Hee-jin, the head of its powerhouse subsidiary label ADOR, for breach of trust in business.

That followed an announcement three days earlier that it had launched an audit of ADOR and demanded that Min resign. HYBE's share price fell close to 10 percent after the audit was announced and closed on Friday down 4.95 percent.

Min, 44, hit back in a news conference on Thursday that drew empathy online from young working men and women who compared her story with their own experiences with unreasonable and jealous bosses who either took credit for their work or failed to acknowledge it fairly.

Others, however, said she had acted inappropriately and unprofessionally by occasionally lapsing into profanity.

She denied HYBE's accusations and claimed it was trying to dismiss her unfairly after she accused another of its subsidiaries, BELIFT LAB, of imitating NewJeans with a girl group of its own called ILLIT.

Min, speaking off the cuff and often breaking down in tears, candidly shared her frustrations for more than two hours.

She referred to HYBE's leaders, including chairman Bang Si-hyuk, the man behind BTS, as "gaejeossi", which translates roughly to a "middle-aged or old male jerk".

"I feel betrayed by HYBE... they used me until I was no longer of use to them," she said.