According to an exclusive report by media outlet ‘Sports Kyunghyang’ on February 20 KST, evidence submitted by Min Hee Jin’s side consisting of KakaoTalk messages between her and BTS member V was accepted as valid proof of the existence of “certain opinions which believed that ILLIT had copied NewJeans”.
Based on the trial records obtained by ‘Sports Kyunghyang’ of the dispute between HYBE Labels and Min Hee Jin over the validity of her shareholder contract, the Seoul Central District Court admitted that Min Hee Jin’s decision to “raise suspicions of copying” was a due exercise of her opinion, and therefore not “false”.
In reaching this decision, the court accepted evidence submitted by Min Hee Jin’s side of KakaoTalk messages exchanged between her and BTS’s V. In the submitted messages, V stated in response to the suspicions of ILLIT plagiarizing NewJeans, “Ae-ing, I get it. I saw them and thought.. They are kind of similar.”
Furthermore, the trial records indicated that the court considered HYBE Labels, and not Min Hee Jin, the culprit who “publicized an internal dispute and aggravated the issue by involving the press”. The court determined, “Min Hee Jin sent emails of complaint within company boundaries on April 3 and April 16 of 2024. HYBE Labels then publicized the issue by breaking the news through an exclusive media report on April 22. HYBE launched an internal audit into ADOR and Min Hee Jin on that day, April 22, and immediately broke an exclusive news report about the audit that very day… However, there is no evidence that HYBE attempted to resolve the matter internally before breaching internal trust.”