boulevarddouble (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boulevarddouble) wrote2025-12-29 09:20 am
boulevarddouble) wrote2025-12-29 09:20 am
Min Heejin, Hybe, and New Jeans: The Dumpster Before the Fire
Annnnnnnd we're back with more corporate scandal posting.
This is a copy & paste of a doc I wrote intended for non-kpop fans (read: my D&D group) and as such has some explanations that will feel "dumbed down" for those in the know. You'll survive. Also, this is very specifically the origin of the fight, written on April 28th, 2024 so it does not include any information after that date.
I'm posting it because some jpop friends saw the news about Danielle's contract being canceled today, and the suit against her parents, and were very confused by how this all broke down the way it did.
I'll do my best to get my thoughts together for a part 2 summarizing what has happened since April of 2024.
Your main players:
Min Heejin (aka MHJ)
Bang Sihyuk (aka Bang PD)
Hybe (The conglomerate where Bang PD is CEO. Also the largest entertainment company in South Korea, the owners of BTS)
ADOR (Hybe's subsidiary record label where MHJ is CEO)
Other relevant people/names:
Newjeans (a girl group created and managed by MHJ)
LE SSERAFIM (a girl group created and managed by Source Music, another Hybe subsidiary)
Illit (a girl group created and managed by Belift Labs, another Hybe subsidiary)
SM Entertainment (the second largest KEnt company, MHJ's former employer)
Aespa (a girl group created and managed by SM)
This scandal starts on April 22, when Hybe put out a press release announcing they were doing an audit of ADOR's CEO, Min Heejin, as well as one of the VPs at ADOR, saying they had received information indicating that MHJ was attempting to take over the company behind Hybe's back. MHJ is given until April 24th to fill out the audit questionnaire and return all company laptops, etc.
But actually, this starts well before this.
On May 17, 2021, SM's new girl group Aespa dropped their smash hit "Next Level". They go on to win Rookie of the Year at multiple award shows, and the choreo for that song goes so incredibly viral it has a grip on the entire industry for ~6 months.
Hybe Corporation, newly rebranded as a music and technology company, begins buying various record labels to serve as their "independent subsidiaries". These labels include Pledis, which own the second largest boy group Seventeen in Korea and relatively unknown girl group fromis_9, and Source music, which owned the beloved sweet-concept girl group GFRIEND as well as beloved Grown Men-concept boy group Nu'Est.
Within months of being acquired by Hybe, Source Music announces that GFRIEND and Nu'Est will disband.
Now, when discussing any corporate drama, it is important to remember that a company is only as well managed as its CEO's ego allows.
While BTS is now the most popular boy band in the world, when they first appeared on the scene they were nothings with no money. Bang PD was their producer and CEO, and had a large hand in creating some of the trends we see today, which helped propel them to stardom. His main rivals for BTS? A boy group from, you guessed it, SM Entertainment, called EXO.
So at the end of 2021, we have a new conglomerate flush with cash (Hybe) and their main rival (SM) winning the popularity battle, as Hybe does not have a single girl group that can compete with Aespa's virality.
But actually this started even before that.
In 2018, Min Heejin quit her position as Creative Director at SM Entertainment. She had been in charge of some of SM's most successful groups from a creative standpoint, including the aforementioned EXO, as well as the legendary group SHINee. Her cited reason for quitting: burn out.
However in 2019, she accepted a job with Hybe as Chief Branding Officer. The reason, per her words, is that she is promised she'll be able to create Hybe's "first girl group", and be in charge of all the concepts and branding for that group. Per her statements, she was given a pick of Source Music trainees (as well as the members of GFRIEND who were still under contract), with which to create this group, however most of them were "too old or not skilled enough" to suit the concept she wanted. We will return to this quote.
So at the end of 2021, Hybe creates ADOR, granting MHJ 15% stock options, and pays all the associated fees with transferring the trainees she does want into her company from Source and other owned labels. They also give her a minimum of 16B won (~$11 Million) specifically to fund the debut of her girl group.
And on July 21, 2022, Newjeans debuted with "Attention".
I've only been a kpop fan since 2020 but if I'm being honest, I have never seen a debut like this. It was a fresh concept, a new sound, marked a turning point in the industry, and was, from a pure marketing standpoint, fucking brilliant.
Their next single "Hype Boy", dropped one month later, went incredibly viral and became, much like Aespa, the only dance anyone knew how to do. Newjeans were the industry It Girls.
However, I don't fuck with Newjeans and this is why — one of the members was barely 14 years old at the time of debut.
I personally won't follow any groups with members younger than 16 because I don't think teenagers should have a full time job, and younger than 16 are incredibly easy to exploit (not that 16yos aren't but it's at least slightly better usually), especially in an industry where you cannot protect them from creeps.
Like, potentially, their boss. Min Heejin.
But that's not entirely relevant yet, even though their debut wasn't without controversy: many people complained about the sexual overtones of their music and styling, even as they were being presented as the group of high school girlfriends you never had.
Now it isn't that Newjeans had no competition in the girl group space. Aespa still had hit-making power, as did another girl group IVE. However, their biggest competition? LE SSERAFIM, Source Music's new girl group that debuted in May of 2022 with "Fearless".
That's right. MHJ did not debut Hybe's first girl group.
She debuted their second.
In plain money terms, everything seemed to be working out okay for MHJ. At the end of 2022, Ador had a not-unexpected net loss of 3.2B won, but by the end of 2023, they were one of Hybe's most profitable subsidiaries. Newjeans was an industry juggernaut, selling out all their merch and concerts, and even had their own app for artist-to-fan interaction (rather than using the Hybe-owned weverse, like most groups — even non-Hybe groups — did). MHJ was sold even more shares of Ador at a low (non-market) price as a reward for her efforts, bumping her stake up to 18%.
At the end of 2023, she also acquired some additional staff in the form of a new VP, who left the Hybe Finance department to join Ador.
For any normal person, this would be a Great Success!!
But remember what I said about CEO egos?
On March 25, Belift Labs debuted their new girl group, ILLIT with the song "Magnetic".
Immediately the new group garnered comparisons to Newjeans. Not just for their sound, which has some of the same dreamy qualities, but for their styling, the method of debut (first public appearance being at a fashion show, even before their music dropped), and in my opinion, the deliberate attempt to make all the members look to be around 13/14, even though some of them are 19/20 and the youngest is 16.
And this is where we have finally reached a tipping point in our scandal.
According to MHJ, the parents of Newjeans were the ones to reach out to her about this concept "plagiarism". However, she agreed with them and wrote a professional email to Bang PD and the CEO of Belift with the parents CC'd, hoping to get an official response.
This is apparently what kicked off all the drama.
Or was it?
According to Hybe statements, they had been informed in early 2024 that the former finance guy/new Ador VP had taken confidential Hybe financial information over to Ador and was working with MHJ to find ways to force Hybe to divest from Ador so she could run it herself.
Hybe further revealed that the VP and MHJ had met with investors about buying Ador while keeping Newjeans' contracts (i.e. stealing Newjeans from Hybe). They also revealed that the VP had prepared a memo about how to make Ador "untouchable" and other ways they could "escape" from Hybe's grasp. This included a note from the VP written on March 23 (two days before Illit's debut, and several weeks before MHJ's plagiarism email) about selling Ador to sovereign wealth funds, many of which have invested in KEntertainment.
How did Hybe find all of this out?
These memos were all researched and written on Hybe-issued PCs.
It's like they slept through their annual cybersecurity training.
So now it's April 22nd and Hybe has sent their first public volley announcing the audit.
As you can imagine, MHJ responds quickly (Apr 23), releasing an interview denying that she is attempting a takeover of Ador ("I only own 18% of the stock! How would this be possible!") and that this is a hostile response to her being a whistleblower about plagiarism.
April 24th, Hybe makes another announcement, dropping the memo bombs, as well as disclosing that MHJ has repeatedly complained of other groups copying her, such as new Pledis boy group TWS, new SM boy group Riize, and even saying that Bang PD copied her work at SM when he launched BTS. Hybe also filed a criminal complaint with the local police department and announced the interim audit results, which showed very clearly that the Ador management dispute began before the Illit debut.
Here is a brief description of the following hours:
Hybe: And that's on that. We have no more to say.
MHJ: They are snakes. Bang PD lied to me. I will be holding a press conference.
Hybe: AND ALSO, SHE WAS USING A SHAMAN TO MAKE MANAGEMENT DECISIONS
On April 25th Min Heejin held one of the silliest press conferences known to man. You can read the transcript, which is very good, but here are some of the best quotes.
"I keep thinking, 'Do they want me to die? Will people be happy if I die?' I don't check the comments because that would kill me. I don't think anyone would have been bombarded with such press releases in such a short amount of time. I believe I'm innocent. I don't know what you think, but I wanted to focus on NewJeans.”"
“But even when NewJeans told me they loved me and thanked me like their parent, I have never agreed with people suspecting me or thinking that I love NewJeans like a fan. I never liked the idol culture. My goal has always been to make my work in a clean, confident way. That's been my focus and it's been difficult for me to talk about the things that interfered with my work. I just can't agree with HYBE saying that I did all this because of money. Everything that HYBE is saying is a lie. I've never said BTS copied me.”
“It's not me that turned my back on HYBE, it's HYBE that betrayed me. It used me to the fullest and now wants to take me down because I don't listen to them. No one has done what I have done during the 30 years in K-pop. But HYBE is trying to kill someone who's done what I have as the head of a subsidiary."
"It didn't make sense, but everything had begun, so I had no choice but to say yes and just prove it in the ways that I could,” Min continues, openly weeping. “Bang Si-hyuk asked me, 'You can beat aespa in December, right?' But that was never my goal.”
I strongly recommend looking up Min Heejin memes from this press conference.
Now to anyone who cares about logic and wrongdoing, this press conference actually did literally nothing to prove she is not guilty. Please also know that at one point the VP attempted to fall on his sword and say all the documentation was his "personal speculation", a point that was quickly and easily disproved.
"I was joking about taking over Ador" is not the defense you think it is, honey.
However, it did work out in her favor in a few ways with the Korean public. First, she garnered some support from the various corporate wage slaves who identified with her frustration and desire to do something new and creative while being plagiarized and vilified by the big, bad Hybe machine.
Second, Newjeans fans rallied around her "sincerity" of wanting to support the group, who had announced in early April that they were dropping new music soon, because the sweater she is wearing mimics one that a member wears in the MV dropped just days after the press conference.
This sweater sold out of stores, btw.
Initially, Hybe said it was not going to respond to the press conference, however with the public opinion tide starting to shift, Hybe announced they will convene a special meeting of Ador shareholders on April 30th to have a vote of confidence in the leadership (i.e. as the 82% shareholder they will be kicking MHJ out of the CEO position).
They also revealed that much of this dispute began in December 2023, stemming from the contract that MHJ signed in March of that year. Now, if you'll remember, MHJ owns ~18% of Ador's shares. Starting in 2024, MHJ can sell back 13.5% of her shares to Hybe at any time, however she cannot sell back the remaining 4.5% without Hybe's consent.
This means that unless Hybe wants those shares, she is required to hold onto them — they cannot be sold on the open market (they are stock options). This is important because MHJ also has a critical non-compete clause in her contract which states she cannot do business (in the entertainment industry outside of Hybe) as long as she is Ador CEO or while she holds shares.
She has also made several complaints about her salary structure compared to the other CEOs of Hybe subsidiaries, basically alluding to gender discrimination, which Hybe has attempted to refute.
So the long and short of it:
Hybe absolutely trapped MHJ into an exploitative contract and is absolutely copying her ideas to brand their new groups.
MHJ absolutely did conspire to get out of her contract and potentially divorce Ador and Newjeans from the Hybe subsidiary system.
Remember all those things that I said would be relevant?
There are two other factors complicating things, but they are just rumors and cannot (as of now) be proven. However, they are definitely influencing how the public feels about all of this.
1) Min Heejin is very likely a pedophile.
She has a long history of using teenage sexuality as marketing campaigns, including SHINee's "Sherlock" release, where Taemin had just turned 18 — which is not an adult in Korea — and is the only photoshoot SHINee have ever mentioned being uncomfortable with.
Even in the press conference mentioned above, she says that one of her members, who was 17 at Newjeans' debut and is 20 now, "was prettier when she was younger, so much more than now".
Here is a really good thread on the matter.
Regardless of her personal sexual predilections, it is fact that MHJ has no compunctions about putting very young teenagers in sexual situations.
2) And this was brand new, dug up by the scandal itself: Bang Sihyuk may be part of a cult.
This one is a little more far-fetched, and the evidence far more circumstantial, however, much like Scientology in the US, there are many, many, many entrenched religious cults in South Korea. In fact, not-well-known boy group E'Last is caught up in a boycott because it was revealed their CEO is undeniably a member of a cult.
That said, there are some kernels of truth to this rumor, enough to make people concerned.
The twitter thread about this has been locked, but it is being reported as a rumor in the press.
And that's how all this mess started. A lot has happened since April 2024, but it's good to ground yourself in the facts, especially since there was a massive PR campaign against MHJ/Newjeans that was very explicitly funded by Hybe which was revealed only weeks ago, well after they lost all their court cases.
This is a copy & paste of a doc I wrote intended for non-kpop fans (read: my D&D group) and as such has some explanations that will feel "dumbed down" for those in the know. You'll survive. Also, this is very specifically the origin of the fight, written on April 28th, 2024 so it does not include any information after that date.
I'm posting it because some jpop friends saw the news about Danielle's contract being canceled today, and the suit against her parents, and were very confused by how this all broke down the way it did.
I'll do my best to get my thoughts together for a part 2 summarizing what has happened since April of 2024.
Your main players:
Min Heejin (aka MHJ)
Bang Sihyuk (aka Bang PD)
Hybe (The conglomerate where Bang PD is CEO. Also the largest entertainment company in South Korea, the owners of BTS)
ADOR (Hybe's subsidiary record label where MHJ is CEO)
Other relevant people/names:
Newjeans (a girl group created and managed by MHJ)
LE SSERAFIM (a girl group created and managed by Source Music, another Hybe subsidiary)
Illit (a girl group created and managed by Belift Labs, another Hybe subsidiary)
SM Entertainment (the second largest KEnt company, MHJ's former employer)
Aespa (a girl group created and managed by SM)
This scandal starts on April 22, when Hybe put out a press release announcing they were doing an audit of ADOR's CEO, Min Heejin, as well as one of the VPs at ADOR, saying they had received information indicating that MHJ was attempting to take over the company behind Hybe's back. MHJ is given until April 24th to fill out the audit questionnaire and return all company laptops, etc.
But actually, this starts well before this.
On May 17, 2021, SM's new girl group Aespa dropped their smash hit "Next Level". They go on to win Rookie of the Year at multiple award shows, and the choreo for that song goes so incredibly viral it has a grip on the entire industry for ~6 months.
Hybe Corporation, newly rebranded as a music and technology company, begins buying various record labels to serve as their "independent subsidiaries". These labels include Pledis, which own the second largest boy group Seventeen in Korea and relatively unknown girl group fromis_9, and Source music, which owned the beloved sweet-concept girl group GFRIEND as well as beloved Grown Men-concept boy group Nu'Est.
Within months of being acquired by Hybe, Source Music announces that GFRIEND and Nu'Est will disband.
Now, when discussing any corporate drama, it is important to remember that a company is only as well managed as its CEO's ego allows.
While BTS is now the most popular boy band in the world, when they first appeared on the scene they were nothings with no money. Bang PD was their producer and CEO, and had a large hand in creating some of the trends we see today, which helped propel them to stardom. His main rivals for BTS? A boy group from, you guessed it, SM Entertainment, called EXO.
So at the end of 2021, we have a new conglomerate flush with cash (Hybe) and their main rival (SM) winning the popularity battle, as Hybe does not have a single girl group that can compete with Aespa's virality.
But actually this started even before that.
In 2018, Min Heejin quit her position as Creative Director at SM Entertainment. She had been in charge of some of SM's most successful groups from a creative standpoint, including the aforementioned EXO, as well as the legendary group SHINee. Her cited reason for quitting: burn out.
However in 2019, she accepted a job with Hybe as Chief Branding Officer. The reason, per her words, is that she is promised she'll be able to create Hybe's "first girl group", and be in charge of all the concepts and branding for that group. Per her statements, she was given a pick of Source Music trainees (as well as the members of GFRIEND who were still under contract), with which to create this group, however most of them were "too old or not skilled enough" to suit the concept she wanted. We will return to this quote.
So at the end of 2021, Hybe creates ADOR, granting MHJ 15% stock options, and pays all the associated fees with transferring the trainees she does want into her company from Source and other owned labels. They also give her a minimum of 16B won (~$11 Million) specifically to fund the debut of her girl group.
And on July 21, 2022, Newjeans debuted with "Attention".
I've only been a kpop fan since 2020 but if I'm being honest, I have never seen a debut like this. It was a fresh concept, a new sound, marked a turning point in the industry, and was, from a pure marketing standpoint, fucking brilliant.
Their next single "Hype Boy", dropped one month later, went incredibly viral and became, much like Aespa, the only dance anyone knew how to do. Newjeans were the industry It Girls.
However, I don't fuck with Newjeans and this is why — one of the members was barely 14 years old at the time of debut.
I personally won't follow any groups with members younger than 16 because I don't think teenagers should have a full time job, and younger than 16 are incredibly easy to exploit (not that 16yos aren't but it's at least slightly better usually), especially in an industry where you cannot protect them from creeps.
Like, potentially, their boss. Min Heejin.
But that's not entirely relevant yet, even though their debut wasn't without controversy: many people complained about the sexual overtones of their music and styling, even as they were being presented as the group of high school girlfriends you never had.
Now it isn't that Newjeans had no competition in the girl group space. Aespa still had hit-making power, as did another girl group IVE. However, their biggest competition? LE SSERAFIM, Source Music's new girl group that debuted in May of 2022 with "Fearless".
That's right. MHJ did not debut Hybe's first girl group.
She debuted their second.
In plain money terms, everything seemed to be working out okay for MHJ. At the end of 2022, Ador had a not-unexpected net loss of 3.2B won, but by the end of 2023, they were one of Hybe's most profitable subsidiaries. Newjeans was an industry juggernaut, selling out all their merch and concerts, and even had their own app for artist-to-fan interaction (rather than using the Hybe-owned weverse, like most groups — even non-Hybe groups — did). MHJ was sold even more shares of Ador at a low (non-market) price as a reward for her efforts, bumping her stake up to 18%.
At the end of 2023, she also acquired some additional staff in the form of a new VP, who left the Hybe Finance department to join Ador.
For any normal person, this would be a Great Success!!
But remember what I said about CEO egos?
On March 25, Belift Labs debuted their new girl group, ILLIT with the song "Magnetic".
Immediately the new group garnered comparisons to Newjeans. Not just for their sound, which has some of the same dreamy qualities, but for their styling, the method of debut (first public appearance being at a fashion show, even before their music dropped), and in my opinion, the deliberate attempt to make all the members look to be around 13/14, even though some of them are 19/20 and the youngest is 16.
And this is where we have finally reached a tipping point in our scandal.
According to MHJ, the parents of Newjeans were the ones to reach out to her about this concept "plagiarism". However, she agreed with them and wrote a professional email to Bang PD and the CEO of Belift with the parents CC'd, hoping to get an official response.
This is apparently what kicked off all the drama.
Or was it?
According to Hybe statements, they had been informed in early 2024 that the former finance guy/new Ador VP had taken confidential Hybe financial information over to Ador and was working with MHJ to find ways to force Hybe to divest from Ador so she could run it herself.
Hybe further revealed that the VP and MHJ had met with investors about buying Ador while keeping Newjeans' contracts (i.e. stealing Newjeans from Hybe). They also revealed that the VP had prepared a memo about how to make Ador "untouchable" and other ways they could "escape" from Hybe's grasp. This included a note from the VP written on March 23 (two days before Illit's debut, and several weeks before MHJ's plagiarism email) about selling Ador to sovereign wealth funds, many of which have invested in KEntertainment.
How did Hybe find all of this out?
These memos were all researched and written on Hybe-issued PCs.
It's like they slept through their annual cybersecurity training.
So now it's April 22nd and Hybe has sent their first public volley announcing the audit.
As you can imagine, MHJ responds quickly (Apr 23), releasing an interview denying that she is attempting a takeover of Ador ("I only own 18% of the stock! How would this be possible!") and that this is a hostile response to her being a whistleblower about plagiarism.
April 24th, Hybe makes another announcement, dropping the memo bombs, as well as disclosing that MHJ has repeatedly complained of other groups copying her, such as new Pledis boy group TWS, new SM boy group Riize, and even saying that Bang PD copied her work at SM when he launched BTS. Hybe also filed a criminal complaint with the local police department and announced the interim audit results, which showed very clearly that the Ador management dispute began before the Illit debut.
Here is a brief description of the following hours:
Hybe: And that's on that. We have no more to say.
MHJ: They are snakes. Bang PD lied to me. I will be holding a press conference.
Hybe: AND ALSO, SHE WAS USING A SHAMAN TO MAKE MANAGEMENT DECISIONS
On April 25th Min Heejin held one of the silliest press conferences known to man. You can read the transcript, which is very good, but here are some of the best quotes.
“But even when NewJeans told me they loved me and thanked me like their parent, I have never agreed with people suspecting me or thinking that I love NewJeans like a fan. I never liked the idol culture. My goal has always been to make my work in a clean, confident way. That's been my focus and it's been difficult for me to talk about the things that interfered with my work. I just can't agree with HYBE saying that I did all this because of money. Everything that HYBE is saying is a lie. I've never said BTS copied me.”
“It's not me that turned my back on HYBE, it's HYBE that betrayed me. It used me to the fullest and now wants to take me down because I don't listen to them. No one has done what I have done during the 30 years in K-pop. But HYBE is trying to kill someone who's done what I have as the head of a subsidiary."
"It didn't make sense, but everything had begun, so I had no choice but to say yes and just prove it in the ways that I could,” Min continues, openly weeping. “Bang Si-hyuk asked me, 'You can beat aespa in December, right?' But that was never my goal.”
I strongly recommend looking up Min Heejin memes from this press conference.
Now to anyone who cares about logic and wrongdoing, this press conference actually did literally nothing to prove she is not guilty. Please also know that at one point the VP attempted to fall on his sword and say all the documentation was his "personal speculation", a point that was quickly and easily disproved.
"I was joking about taking over Ador" is not the defense you think it is, honey.
However, it did work out in her favor in a few ways with the Korean public. First, she garnered some support from the various corporate wage slaves who identified with her frustration and desire to do something new and creative while being plagiarized and vilified by the big, bad Hybe machine.
Second, Newjeans fans rallied around her "sincerity" of wanting to support the group, who had announced in early April that they were dropping new music soon, because the sweater she is wearing mimics one that a member wears in the MV dropped just days after the press conference.
This sweater sold out of stores, btw.
Initially, Hybe said it was not going to respond to the press conference, however with the public opinion tide starting to shift, Hybe announced they will convene a special meeting of Ador shareholders on April 30th to have a vote of confidence in the leadership (i.e. as the 82% shareholder they will be kicking MHJ out of the CEO position).
They also revealed that much of this dispute began in December 2023, stemming from the contract that MHJ signed in March of that year. Now, if you'll remember, MHJ owns ~18% of Ador's shares. Starting in 2024, MHJ can sell back 13.5% of her shares to Hybe at any time, however she cannot sell back the remaining 4.5% without Hybe's consent.
This means that unless Hybe wants those shares, she is required to hold onto them — they cannot be sold on the open market (they are stock options). This is important because MHJ also has a critical non-compete clause in her contract which states she cannot do business (in the entertainment industry outside of Hybe) as long as she is Ador CEO or while she holds shares.
She has also made several complaints about her salary structure compared to the other CEOs of Hybe subsidiaries, basically alluding to gender discrimination, which Hybe has attempted to refute.
So the long and short of it:
Hybe absolutely trapped MHJ into an exploitative contract and is absolutely copying her ideas to brand their new groups.
MHJ absolutely did conspire to get out of her contract and potentially divorce Ador and Newjeans from the Hybe subsidiary system.
Remember all those things that I said would be relevant?
There are two other factors complicating things, but they are just rumors and cannot (as of now) be proven. However, they are definitely influencing how the public feels about all of this.
1) Min Heejin is very likely a pedophile.
She has a long history of using teenage sexuality as marketing campaigns, including SHINee's "Sherlock" release, where Taemin had just turned 18 — which is not an adult in Korea — and is the only photoshoot SHINee have ever mentioned being uncomfortable with.
Even in the press conference mentioned above, she says that one of her members, who was 17 at Newjeans' debut and is 20 now, "was prettier when she was younger, so much more than now".
Here is a really good thread on the matter.
Regardless of her personal sexual predilections, it is fact that MHJ has no compunctions about putting very young teenagers in sexual situations.
2) And this was brand new, dug up by the scandal itself: Bang Sihyuk may be part of a cult.
This one is a little more far-fetched, and the evidence far more circumstantial, however, much like Scientology in the US, there are many, many, many entrenched religious cults in South Korea. In fact, not-well-known boy group E'Last is caught up in a boycott because it was revealed their CEO is undeniably a member of a cult.
That said, there are some kernels of truth to this rumor, enough to make people concerned.
The twitter thread about this has been locked, but it is being reported as a rumor in the press.
And that's how all this mess started. A lot has happened since April 2024, but it's good to ground yourself in the facts, especially since there was a massive PR campaign against MHJ/Newjeans that was very explicitly funded by Hybe which was revealed only weeks ago, well after they lost all their court cases.