When the girl group NewJeans emerged a few years ago, they were the freshest thing to arrive on the K-pop landscape in ages. NewJeans had a fully-formed style, sound, and personality -- the kind of sleek but oddly twee dance-pop that came through on massive hits like "Super Shy." But despite enormous early success, NewJeans' label utterly alienated every member of the group, to the point where NewJeans announced that they were leaving the label that assembled the group and proceed instead under the name NJZ. That led to a legal battle, and now their former label Ador has successfully prevented the group from working under the NJZ name.
NewJeans were founded and assembled by Min Hee-jin, who was CEO of the Ador label and on the board of its parent company Hybe. She's the person truly responsible for developing NewJeans and figuring out the group's sound. (As with every K-pop idol group, NewJeans were talented young people who came together through an audition process, and they were developed extensively before being introduced to the public.) Because of an internal label power struggle detailed in a pretty fascinating Slate piece from last year, Min was pushed out of Hybe, and all five members of NewJeans remained loyal to her. They left the label, saying that the company had mistreated and harassed them and that their contract was void. Ador sued them claiming that the new version of NewJeans would "seriously damage" the label's reputation. Now, the label has won.
As CNN reports, a South Korean court ruled against NJZ earlier today. NJZ were set to play their first show under their new name at the ComplexCon Hong Kong festival on Sunday, but the court found that the group is still under contract to Ador. In a statement, Ador says that the group is welcome to perform in Hong Kong, as long as they continue to use the NewJeans name, and that the label is "committed to supporting the artists." The group has agreed to go ahead with the performance in order to "prevent unnecessary disruption or harm to those who have been looking forward" to it.
This all seems like a total fucking nightmare! Free NewJeans, or whatever they might want to call themselves!
