The former ADOR CEO slammed HYBE for a similar offense.
On November 14, 2025 (KST), during the fourth hearing of BELIFT LAB‘s damages lawsuit against former ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin at the Seoul Western District Court, the HYBE label, home to girl group ILLIT, claimed that Min Hee Jin instructed her then-employees to draft documents accusing other K-Pop groups of copying NewJeans.
The lawsuit in question has been ongoing since April 25, 2024, when Min Hee Jin accused BELIFT LAB of plagiarizing NewJeans’ concept when producing ILLIT. BELIFT LAB filed a defamation suit for ₩2.00 billion KRW (about $1.38 million USD), which Min Hee Jin countered with her own ₩5.00 billion KRW (about $3.45 million USD) suit—and the two parties have since been clashing through three prior hearings.
That said, this fourth hearing has drawn extra attention as it took place after the court ruled in favor of ADOR, confirming the validity of NewJeans’ exclusive contracts (and the members’ ultimate decisions to return). This ruling rejected all plagiarism allegations against ILLIT, with the court stating, “It is difficult to conclude that a girl group ‘concept’ falls under trademark, publicity, and/or intellectual property rights defined in an exclusive contract.”
Belift Lab Accused Of “Stealing Everything” From NewJeans In Their Plans For ILLIT
Based on this ruling, BELIFT LAB then argued in the fourth hearing that Min Hee Jin waged a campaign to manipulate public opinion against HYBE and its labels—and that, in this process, ILLIT was chosen as a scapegoat because it was a newly-debuted girl group with a smaller/weaker fan base to shake.
The agency is reported to have submitted logs of KakaoTalk conversations showing that, as early as March 2024, before ILLIT had even debuted, Min Hee Jin and her closest associates discussed using “chart manipulation” and plagiarism as methods to attack ILLIT.
When ILLIT’s debut schedule was announced on February 27 last year, an ADOR deputy director planned to accuse them of manipulating charts with a song that hadn’t even been released, in order to pressure HYBE. And on March 18, the day ILLIT’s debut teaser dropped, they showed an analyst a maliciously edited short-form video defaming ILLIT and pushed them to write a ‘sell report’ urging investors to dump HYBE stock.
— BELIFT LAB
BELIFT LAB also claimed that Min Hee Jin had instructed ADOR employees to draft and compile “monitoring documents” claiming that other K-Pop groups were copying NewJeans.
A “Compilation” Of ILLIT’s “Plagiarism” Of NewJeans Becomes A Hot Topic
According to the agency’s claim, the documents consisted of online community posts, comments, and maliciously edited short-form videos as so-called “evidence” of NewJeans being copied. BELIFT LAB noted how ILLIT suffered after being used as a scapegoat in such documents, all created as part of Min Hee Jin’s plan to push NewJeans.
Min Hee Jin’s written statements and press conferences were nothing more than a smear campaign. Her plagiarism accusations are clearly unlawful acts that cannot be protected as a form of freedom of expression.
Min portrayed herself as a righteous whistleblower and positioned herself on the ‘good’ side, prompting the public to believe there was no need to hear the other side. Following the plagiarism allegations, ILLIT suffered tremendous tangible and intangible damage, including a sharp drop in album sales and halted production, as well as canceled filming schedules, paused advertising campaigns, and members being subjected to malicious comments.
— BELIFT LAB
Following the news of the statements made at the fourth hearing, K-Pop fans remain baffled. Some of them brought up how Min Hee Jin was hellbent over HYBE’s “internal documents” that surfaced during their audit, noting how it was “the pot calling the kettle black.”
Newly Released HYBE Internal Documents Show Plans To “Throw Away NewJeans”
- “No wonder… All the comments about NewJeans being the ‘original’ makes sense now.”
- “Yikes. This woman has done so much.”
- “And NewJeans benefited from this.”
- “Damn, she tried to kill off a group that hadn’t even debuted? She’s insane. She needs to be banned from the business.”
- “I mean, her documents don’t sound all too different from HYBE’s documents… I’m baffled that she used HYBE’s documents to fuel hate toward HYBE idols [when she was doing the same]. LOL.”
- “She was set on stomping all over ILLIT even before their debut. And people on theqoo played part in that. This is crazy.”
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