Journalist alleges HYBE sought to undermine NewJeans’ achievements

Claims emerge that HYBE tried to downplay the success of NewJeans from subsidiary ADOR.

On September 25th KST, the CBS Radio program "Kim Hyun Jung’s News Show" aired a phone interview with reporter Jang Hyung Woo from the Seoul Shinmun.

In the interview, Jang described himself as an industrial journalist covering sectors like shipbuilding and aviation. He stated, “I wrote an article about HYBE’s stock price while covering NewJeans’ Tokyo Dome performance on July 17th. Following that, I received a request from HYBE to amend the article. While fact corrections should be accepted, it didn’t make sense for them to try to distort and downplay the artist’s achievements,” he claimed.

Initially, Jang let the matter go. However, after watching the live stream of NewJeans members, he changed his mind. He revealed, “The person who called was HYBE’s head of public relations and the person responsible for communications. HYBE operates under a label system, but departments like accounting and legal matters are handled by the parent company, HYBE. This person is also supposed to promote NewJeans. I’ve met countless PR managers, but it was my first time hearing someone say that an artist from their own subsidiary isn’t doing well or didn’t perform as expected.”

Jang continued, “They said that NewJeans had sold 1.02 million copies in Japan, but insisted that the phrase ‘in Japan’ was inappropriate because the sales weren’t solely from Japan, but from across the globe. They then added that the sales weren’t as strong as thought and that the record wasn’t as impressive. In normal PR, they would explain any unique aspects of the distribution and emphasize that it was a significant record. That would raise the company’s value and have a positive effect on the stock market. This whole situation was quite odd,” Jang remarked.

In the leaked recording of the call with HYBE’s PR representative, the individual can be heard saying, “We need to correct the facts, don’t we? It didn’t sell that well in Japan. It didn’t perform as well as expected, so we need to set the record straight.”

In response to these allegations, HYBE issued a statement to Kim Hyun Jung’s News Show, asserting, “We have made every effort to promote ADOR, including NewJeans’ albums.”

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